8 November 2025

Exhibition "Words Reflect on Themselves" at Museum Jerke

Polish artists at Museum Jerke in Germany — the exhibition "Words Reflect on Themselves." On 8 November 2025, an exceptional exhibition, "Words Reflect on Themselves," opens at Museum Jerke in Recklinghausen, featuring works by Polish artists. The show explores the relationships between word and text, poetry, and image. The curator, Daniel Muzyczuk, invited celebrated artists from different generations working across a range of media. On view will be, among others, works by Paweł Kowalewski, founder and co-creator of Gruppa, one of the most important artistic formations in 1980s Polish art — a rare opportunity to see the artist's work from that period alongside his most recent paintings. Visitors will also be able to see the work of Andrzej Partum, born in 1938, one of the most highly regarded pioneers of neo-avant-garde art in postwar Poland. There will also be unique works by Małgorzata Rittersschild from the 1980s and 90s, and by acclaimed artists of a younger generation, born in the 1990s — Zuzanna Bartoszek and Agata Ingarden. The exhibition will also feature work by other outstanding artists — Wojciech Bąkowski, Tomasz Kowalski, Anna Ostoya and Tomasz Żołnierkiewicz. The show is accompanied by ekphrases — poems by Zuzanna Bartoszek, Marcin Czerkasow, Darek Foks, Emilia Konwerska and Natalia Malek. "You'd have to see it!" is a sentence that ends discussion and leaves the worlds of the visible and the literal in eternal separation. Experience teaches us, however, that not everything has to be seen to be told — and that the story of an object is often far more interesting than its actual appearance, writes the exhibition's curator, Daniel Muzyczuk, director of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. The exhibition shows the work of artists who, in making images, draw on textual mediation, and the various relationships that can arise between the realms of text and image. We'll see objects that don't exist, whose appearance is mediated only through narrative. We'll also see works that rest on the destabilising of meaning through ambiguous text, as well as diary-page paintings and inkwell paintings… This is an exhibition not to be missed! The event takes place in an exceptional venue — Museum Jerke, a private institution founded by collector and art patron Werner Jerke. It is the first, and so far only, museum devoted exclusively to Polish art located outside of Poland. The exhibition "Words Reflect on Themselves" premiered at the Stefan Gierowski Foundation in Warsaw. The exhibition's partner is the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf. The project was co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund, as part of the Promotion of Polish Culture Abroad 2025 programme. The opening takes place on 8 November 2025 at 5:00 PM. All welcome!