Exhibitions
Simone Rueß “Memory of Space – BWA Katowice” — Residency Outcomes
Friday, 16 October 2026, 5:30 p.m. 17:30
“Memory of Space – BWA Katowice” as part of the residency programme “New Topographies – Urban Structures and Narrative Spaces”
Since February this year, artist Simone Rueß, whose practice explores social memory, has been developing a multifaceted, polyphonic artwork dedicated to BWA Katowice. During several residency stays, she has spoken with people working at the gallery, those who were involved in the institution’s activities in previous decades, as well as passers-by and people working and living in the city centre of Katowice. In this artistic and research-based process, the artist has focused on the institution’s collective memory, drawing mental maps together with participants and exploring metaphors for the gallery’s work and its spaces.
The work created by the artist and her collaborators will take material form, among other things, as a video installation incorporating a dismantled plasterboard panel that once concealed the original textured wall finish known as baranek (“lamb’s wool”).
We warmly invite you to the opening event and the presentation of the outcomes of Simone Rueß’s residency, which will reveal the gallery’s complex and multilayered stories.
The artist’s residency initiated AESTHETIC CONGRESS (KONGRES ESTETYCZNY), a year-long exhibition and performance programme aimed at rethinking and updating the role and format of an art institution. The programme brings together diverse, complementary artistic languages and tools, involving artists and curators alike.
BWA Katowice serves as both the programme’s primary point of reference and its starting point: an institution embedded in the heart of the city’s urban and social fabric, historically functioning as an instrument of social engineering. The modernist pavilion, now recognised as a heritage building, dates back to the same period as the beginnings of the Polish wave of institutional critique. The need to re-examine and renew the building, both spatially and conceptually, provides a starting point for a broader discourse on the meaning and dynamics of art institutions understood in a universal sense.
For the duration of the project, the gallery’s main exhibition space will be transformed into a year-round art laboratory. Historical works will enter into dialogue with newly created pieces, together fostering a collective process of reflection.
On the walls of BWA Katowice, barely visible pencil inscriptions and drawings can be found. These are traces of the artist’s conversations and encounters with the institution’s staff — fragments of the memory embedded in its walls.
Curator of AESTHETIC CONGRESS – Łukasz Trzciński
Simone Rueß is a visual artist whose practice focuses particularly on urban space and the observation of architecture in the context of its social functions. She graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste). She has received scholarships from the DAAD programme and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2013). Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, including at Galeria Studio and Le Guern in Warsaw, as well as at Dom Utopii in Kraków, where she developed the series New Topographies of Nowa Huta.
The exhibition “Memory of Space – BWA Katowice” was made possible through collaboration with Monika Starowicz, Marianna Boś, Henryk Pyka, Małgorzata Rozenau, Tomasz Wojtasik, Marian Oslislo, Iwona Urbanowicz, Adam Romaniuk, and the staff of BWA Katowice. Some participants chose to remain anonymous. We would like to thank everyone for their involvement and contribution.
