The “In Connection” exhibition is another instalment of my work with art collections following such exhibitions as Sunshine of Your Heart, Repeating, and Medicine of Collection. It is also the effect of my contact with gallery collections of works bearing titles that are not only the names of my favourite places in the Tuchola Forest, naturally broadening perception.
The art collection of the Chojnice Museum, inaugurated in 1984, offers contact with contemporary art to residents and tourists visiting the Tuchola Forest. As a result, nature and art are very close together here, supporting people’s journeys into themselves. Through art you wander into attentiveness to the connection between your core and the cosmic system you experience when you are in nature. The two experiences complement each other, they are like breathing in and out, reminding us of how we are subtly connected to everything.
The journey to the region from where the collection originates clearly influences the design of the exhibition. The desire to capture this special contact with the landscape and its inhabitants results in a selection of works that convey processuality, transience, emotions and bodily sensations through their drawing qualities. The interweaving of horizons, places, people, animals, plants, forests and waters reveals new qualities of artistic textiles and the now classic composition of Henryk Stażewski or the collage of Erna Rosenstein. The presence of “Matches,” a sculpture by Antoni Porczak, is an impulse to look at work with the collection as a communal situation: the fire left on the match in the form of a trace triggers an image of deep time in combination with nature in the creative space at the dream address in Charzykowy, because… art is the practice of changing the world. And it already is. A folk toy from the Museum’s ethnographic collection and a tale from a meeting in a meadow in Tuchola Forest, carrying a message to the people from the Horse Nation, remind us of the freedom in this practice. This meadow closes the circle of life. A fairy tale is being woven, a living fairy tale. And it renews the memory of the relationship with the whole universe, as with the whole meadow. Sacred wildness. In connection.
D. Milewska, excerpt from the text for the exhibition

creators of the experiences: Tuchola Forest, Charzykowskie Lake, Wzgórze Wolności, Tales of the Peoples of the Earth, People of the Horse Nation
thanks to the Gallery of Contemporary Polish Art/Historical and Ethnographic Museum in Chojnice and the Municipal Cultural Centre in Chojnice
artists: Małgorzata Buczek-Śledzińska, Józef Chełmowski, Maria Teresa Chojnacka, Jan Cybis, Tadeusz Dominik, Andrzej Fogtt, Kazimiera Frymark-Błaszczyk, Maria Jasnoch-Wiatrowski, Janina Kraupe-Świderska, Lucjan Mianowski, Błażej Ostoja-Lniski, Jerzy Panek, Andrzej Pollo, Antoni Porczak, Erna Rosenstein, Hanna Rudzka-Cybisowa, Henryk Stażewski, and Magdalena Polkowska Tales of the Peoples of the Earth and Aleksandra Lubińska from Chojnice
curator: Danuta Milewska

Join us for the finale of the exhibition, that is a meeting with Magda Polkowska and the ancient art of storytelling – Tales of the Peoples of the Earth with the Horse Nation – 05.10.2025, 16.00, 20 Gdańska St.