Close to the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Partyzantów Street in Słupsk is the Scout House. The building in the Art Nouveau style was created by Walter Schultz, an interior designer who produced unique hand-painted wallpapers. The Słupsk Archives contain documents suggesting that he purchased a plot of land in the street then called Blumenstrasse from Adolf Munter around 1903. Apparently, the building that currently houses the BGSW served as an outhouse during Schultz’s time. Was it there that the designer worked? Was it there that he retired to in order to create his marvellous interior design drawings? Did he sit at his desk, meticulously drawing patterns on wallpapers which he then covered with paint ever so carefully? Or, perhaps, was where he thought up ideas as to what the house that was to become his calling card would ultimately look like? A villa whose original interior can only be guessed from scraps of history discovered by its current owners: wooden parquet, a bricked door hidden in the bathroom, remnants of a red wallpaper miraculously preserved under the wainscoting. Today, these furnishings are merely phantoms forming an afterimage not only of its past glory, but also of the city’s pre-war history.

Zuzanna Kozłowska creates minimalist objects, drawing subtle inspiration from the story of the Słupsk artist and his extraordinary villa. Her works seem to be records of several months of sleepwalking through Schultz’s imagined house. She does not, however, produce sentimental and nostalgic museum exhibits supposed to guide visitors around the no longer visible past of the villa, but pays tender attention to what is really there. Her gaze moves smoothly over the walls shimmering in the sun and stops at shadowed cracks in the parquet. It is in these inconspicuous traces of the not-too-distant past that she discovers stories, yet stops them from growing to monumental proportions. The artist firmly resists the urge to expand the stories or to use them to construct multi-layered analyses. Simple narratives become important, relating the present as well as the past in a unique fashion. Kozłowska concentrates on the private lives of objects, allowing them to exist on their own terms, and sometimes bringing them together in new arrangements.

The artist presents the results of her search economically, as if she wanted to present them in slow motion, not sure about how much of herself to reveal and how much to leave undisclosed. How much to reveal of her own perspective and the stories that have gripped her. However, they are only small part of a whole the greater part of which remains undiscovered. For the past to return, it must be deliberately reinvented and reconstructed according to new principles. Only then can it be remembered.

Zuzanna Kozłowska (b. 1997, Olsztyn) – a visual artist working with graphic design, spatial objects and installations. She graduated from the Lithography Studio at the Faculty of Graphic Arts and dr Wojciech Bąkowski’s Poetics Studio at the Faculty of Media Art, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

In her work, she explores the poetic and narrative dimensions of everyday objects, interiors and architectural spaces. She is interested in the transformation of materials and spatial relations – she often works with found objects of industrial origin and raw materials, which she incorporates into multi-layered compositions. The traces she finds in objects and structures provide her with a departure point for recontextualising their history and building new meanings. Graphic design is to her both a medium and a conceptual tool that allows her to question the issues of reproduction, temporality and intervention in space.

She is a founding member Lure.9701 – a nomadic artistic project focused on exhibiting. Currently participating in the Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Programme for Art in Public Space (2024/2025), taught by Marie Lund and Francesca Astesani. Winner of the 2024 Entry Initiative and the Grand Prix of the 2024 Young Biennale Fisheye. She lives and works in Copenhagen.

Marta Kudelska (b. 1987, Sosnowiec) – a curator and art critic, she graduated in cultural studies/contemporary culture (critical theory of contemporary culture) and art history from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In 2024, she obtained her PhD in art studies, having presented a dissertation on the strategies and practices of young curators from Katowice and Kraków (passed with distinction).

Her curatorial and research practice is primarily concerned with issues related to the connection between contemporary art and the romantic tradition (artists developing magical, horror and esoteric themes), she has staged exhibitions and written articles on this subject. Since 2022, she has been carrying out an art-research project Ernesta Thot, examining the influence of esotericism, horror and magic on contemporary and modern artistic practice. Also interested in strategies and practices employed by art curators, young art, as well as the reflection on art institutions and independent artistic initiatives.
In 2013-2014, she was associated with the Museum in Gliwice and the Czytelnia Sztuki Gallery there. Between 2014 and 2017, she was the spokesperson for the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art. She worked in the education section at the Museum of Kraków from 2017 to 2020. Collaborates with the Museum of Photography in Kraków. She is the deputy editor of the academic journal Zarządzanie w kulturze. Works at the Department of Contemporary Culture, Institute of Culture, Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Collateral events*:

15 MAR 2025 SAT 12:00
Zuzanna Kozłowska and Marta Kudelska meet the audience at the exhibition

23 APR 2025 WED 17:00
“Walter Schulz i jego willa przy dawnej Blumenstrasse 31” (Walter Schulz and his villa in former Blumenstrasse 31), lecture by Joanna Rutkowska

17 MAY 2025 SAT 19:00
The Night of Museums: last chance to see the exhibition – curator Marta Kudelska will guide visitors through the exhibition
*events in Polish