Opening: 11.09, 6 PM
Time: 12.09 – 5.10.2025, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Place: Old Town Hall (Korzenna Str. 33/35, Gdańsk), Gallery of the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre
Free entry
Amenities: on the ground floor
ATTENTION! Due to the nature of the exhibition and the safety of the works, a maximum of 8 people can stay in the gallery at one time.
The phenomenon of artistic open-air workshops fascinates both the artists themselves and us — the observers, eager to glimpse the creative process. Time devoted to creative practice, set within a community of shared experience, opens the way to new explorations. In July 2025, the fourth ceramic workshop organized by Alicja and Dymitr Buławka-Fankidejski took place in Skórcz. The post-workshop works — inventive, crafted using various techniques, and conceptually rich — created by an international group of artists will be exhibited at the BSCC Gallery.
This will be another post-workshop Exhibition of Ceramics Alternatively, presented at the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre. The Exhibition will be open from 12 September to 5 October, with the opening reception on 11 September at 6:00 PM. The Exhibition is curated Alicja and Dymitr Buławka-Fankidejski (Academy of Fine Arts, Gdańsk) and Monika Konca (BSCC).
The exhibition will feature works by an international group of professional artists, as well as creations of the students of the Sculpture Department from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk
Artists: Rasa Justaitė-Gecevičienė (LT), Robert Buček (CZ), Aivars Baranovskis (LV), Valentins Petjko (LV), Agnė Šemberaitė (LT), Michał Puszczyński (PL), Dominika Kulczyńska (PL), Katarzyna Miściur (PL), Magdalena Cisło (PL), Thiébaut Chagué (FR)
Students of the Sculpture Department, Academy of Fine Arts, Gdańsk: Kamila Kmiecik, Julia Mazur, Natalia Adam, Julia Drozd-Tietianiec, Paula Łazicka
The workshop is organized by Alicja and Dymitr Buławka-Fankidejski in collaboration with the Department of Sculpture and Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, and the Pokój na sztuki Foundation.
ALICJA AND DYMITR BUŁAWKA-FANKIDEJSKI ON “CERAMICS ALTERNATIVELY”
The exhibition is part of the fourth edition of the International Ceramic Workshop “Ceramics Alternatively” and offers a summary of the project’s activities. It presents a broad range of artistic expression, featuring works by established Polish and international ceramic artists, as well as students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.
The Exhibition highlights personal explorations and formal solutions in the use of ceramic material, employing a variety of modeling techniques. The works stand out for their visual diversity and the artists’ individual approaches to the program’s framework — ranging from our suggested technologies and firing process optimizations, to the use of large-size gas kilns, wood firings in a reduction atmosphere and use of soda in the firing process, and more. These methods allowed the artists to reach, or come close to, the aesthetic and technical results for which they were aiming.
An important aspect of the project is the generational diversity of its participants, which fosters new relationships and sparks exchanges and inspiration in the artistic field.
This premiere presentation offers an excellent outline of all the elements briefly mentioned above. It is composed of forms with various connotations — some shaped by a strong conceptual vision, others emerging more intuitively, guided by the nature of the material used. In contrast to the event’s promotional poster — mysterious and monochrome — the Exhibition unfolds in a striking play of colour, from subtle forms to rainbow-like iridescence.
This is an Exhibition to be experienced firsthand — to take in the forms, sense the textures and smoothness, and immerse yourself in the colours...
MONIKA KONCA ON THE EXHIBITION
There is something alchemical in a creative process that engages the elements such as fire. Each of the ceramic sculptures presented in the exhibition is the outcome of many complex processes in which artisanry, knowledge, and experience converge with experimentation.
The descriptions of the kilns built by the Fankidejskis, as well as the techniques employed throughout the workshop, are particularly intriguing. The techniques included immersing hot forms in a fermented solution, using the horse hair technique — where red-hot vessels are struck with horsehair to create expressive patterns — and foil saggar firing, a protective firing method that produces striking, colourful traces of organic material on the ceramic surface.
I have always been drawn to art born of manual work, created through the artist’s direct contact with the material. Clay, one of the oldest materials known to humans, holds a unique power to awaken intuition and a sense of primal memory.
