QUARTER | Kacper Bijoś, Monika Jóźwicka, Adam Rudolf Karpiński, Gabriela Woźniak

Address: Fort Institute of Photography Gallery, Fort Mokotów, 6 Wł. Szpilmana Street, Building 4, Warsaw

Opening (Vernissage): June 25, 2025 | Wednesday | 7:00 PM

Opening hours: Wednesday – Friday 2:00–6:00 PM; Saturday – Sunday 12:00–6:00 PM

Admission: free

We warmly invite you to join our accompanying events. More information below.

Facebook event:

QUARTER / KWADRA is a presentation of four distinct artistic voices — Kacper Bijoś, Monika Jóźwicka, Adam Rudolf Karpiński, and Gabriela Woźniak — students of the Łódź Film School for whom experimentation, authenticity of expression, and the physicality of the creative process are of key importance.

Their works exist at the intersection of artistic practice, documentary observation, and staged construction. Their engagement with the medium — whether through moving image, object, or space — is based on developing original, self-devised methods. The materiality of the process is essential: hand-built sets, direct interaction with space and tools, and a deliberate embrace of temporariness.

These are experimental practices rooted in performative action and personal reflection. The artists do not seek to reproduce reality, but rather to build their own visual codes from it — in search of answers to questions that genuinely move them.

The exhibition title — QUARTER / KWADRA — refers to one of the phases of the moon, in which only half of its face is visible. It marks a moment of transition that becomes a metaphor for the creative process: suspended between light and shadow, when the shape is only beginning to emerge and has yet to fully reveal itself.

Artists: Kacper Bijoś, Monika Jóźwicka, Adam Rudolf Karpiński, Gabriela Woźniak

Curators: Szymon Kobusiński, Paweł Bownik

Visual identity: Gabriela Woźniak

Exhibition partner: Łódź Film School

IFF is supported by: Fort Mokotów, White Stone Development

ARTISTS

Kacper Bijoś

Visual artist and student of Photography at the Film School in Łódź. His practice focuses on documenting fragments of reality, experimenting with form and modes of expression. He draws inspiration from his region of origin, local customs, heritage, and untold stories.

Monika Jóźwicka

Visual artist and student at the Film School in Łódź. Her practice combines photography, video, and performance, using her own body as a medium. Her work centers on themes of female identity, creating personal, symbolic imagery often taking the form of intimate rituals. She explores mechanisms of control and the inheritance of violence, as well as the possibilities of resistance, transformation, and reclaiming one's voice. Drawing from fairy tales, alchemy, and psychology, she constructs her own mythology of femininity.

Her works have been exhibited at, among others, Krakow Photomonth, Cracow Art Week KRAKERS, the Festival of New Art in Frankfurt (Oder), the Spin-off section of Fotofestiwal Łódź, Galeria Szczur in Poznań, Węgiel Film Festival, Rybnik Fotofestiwal, the Labirynt Festival in Słubice, and at the Fort Institute of Photography in Warsaw as part of the “Urban Legends” project.

Adam Rudolf Karpiński

Visual artist and student at the Film School in Łódź. His creative work investigates mechanisms of seeing, the construction of perspective, and the expansion of the boundaries of objective image-making.

He is particularly interested in how technology shapes our perception of reality.

Gabriela Woźniak

Born in 2002 in Kraków. Third-year Photography student at the Film School in Łódź. Visual artist, exhibition curator, and coordinator of cultural and social projects.

She works across disciplines, using photography, installation, and video art in her practice.

Her work has been shown in Nuremberg, Sopot (FFWS Festival), Kraków (Photomonth, KRAKERS Cracow Art Week), Łódź (Fotofestiwal), and Lublin (Eastern Theatre). In 2024, she curated and produced an exhibition for the FRINGE Section of Krakow Photomonth, held in the former Main Post Office. Since 2019, she has co-led Mosaic Association, which brings together young creatives from across Poland and engages with local communities.

FEATURED SERIES

Photo from the series NEGATIVE SPACE by Kacper Bijoś

NEGATIVE SPACE | KACPER BIJOŚ

Negative Space is an attempt to capture a moment of suspension — between past and present, between function and form.

The starting point is the fading practice of constructing scarecrows — figures of agrarian everyday life, now systematically disappearing from the landscape.

These makeshift silhouettes, totems of local folklore that once occupied the aesthetic margins, are reinterpreted by the artist. Placed on structures designed by Alicja Tkaczyk and created in the spirit of trashion — the creative reuse of discarded materials — they resonate with themes of redefinition and transformation.

As agricultural intensification and the modernization of crop protection methods progress, traditional scarecrows are losing their practical function. Their role as deterrents is being replaced by a new, symbolic and contemplative presence. Their appearance in the landscape becomes merely an echo of former practices, simultaneously drawing attention to humanity’s shifting relationship with nature.

The artist seeks to create a space of confrontation between the old and the new — and to assign new contexts to symbols rooted in cultural memory.

Photo from the series CUSCUTA by Monika Jóźwicka

CUSCUTA | MONIKA JÓŹWICKA

This project focuses on mechanisms of control and violence passed down through generations.
The bathroom — a chamber of daily rituals, cleansing, and transformation — becomes the stage for a psychodrama in which I embody three archetypal figures: the Child, the Mother, and the Father.

Rather than telling a linear story, I analyze its fragments. I break memory down into pieces, reconstructing the structures of family patterns and revealing mechanisms of inheritance and resistance.

Hair — the central motif — functions both as a thread connecting generations of women and as a symbol of patriarchal bonds. Through constructed scenes and the use of my own body as both tool and sign, I attempt to reclaim voice and agency in the wake of generational trauma.

Photo BIEŻANÓW [detail] by Adam Rudolf Karpiński

| ADAM RUDOLF KARPIŃSKI

Adam Rudolf Karpiński creates a reality that appears familiar and ordinary, yet proves to be unattainable without the mediation of the camera. By assembling dozens of fragments of landscape, he constructs panoramic records of vast spaces. These images retain subtle imperfections, mismatches, and texture shifts, bearing the traces of their construction and revealing their artificiality.

In developing his own vision of an “objective” gaze, the artist establishes a point of view that does not correspond to human perception. In doing so, he creates a mode of seeing that is alien to human experience — a methodical recording of the environment unbound by the limits of vision. He minimizes perspective foreshortening, resulting in a frontal composition that extends uniformly across the width of the image.

Railway tracks introduce a rhythmic, vertical pattern — a kind of trompe-l’œil. They become another element in the artist’s play with perspective: while the landscape is shown frontally, the tracks appear to be captured from a different angle. This clash of seemingly contradictory perspectives draws attention to the fabricated nature of the image.

The artist explores the relationship between the world as it is, and the world as it is seen.

Text: Sonia Witak

Photo from the series LA DANSE by Gabriela Woźniak

LA DANSE | GABRIELA WOŹNIAK

This work directly references Henri Matisse’s painting La Danse, confronting its utopian vision of communal dance with the realities of contemporary social relations.

The dancers, suspended outside a specific time and place, participate in a ritual of repetitive movement that gradually intensifies. Their bodies become tools for exploring the limits of physical and mental endurance. The visible exhaustion on their faces and the increasingly fragile sense of harmony emphasize a process of collective sacrifice — a shared offering.

Each gesture affects the others, revealing mutual dependence and a gradual loss of individuality in favor of a collective rhythm. La Danse becomes a reflection on the contemporary dimension of everyday suffering — embedded in systemic tension, the pressure to belong, exhaustion, and the constant need to adapt.

PROJECT 

QUARTER / KWADRA is a presentation of projects created by students from the Photography Department at the Film School in Łódź. It showcases debut works and offers a chance to discover new artistic voices.

The project continues a collaboration initiated in 2024 between the Fort Institute of Photography (IFF) and Film School lecturers Szymon Kobusiński and Bownik. It is designed as a recurring platform for presenting emerging talents through thematic exhibitions or group showcases. Each exhibition is developed under the artistic guidance of Szymon Kobusiński and Bownik.

The project was launched in 2024 with the exhibition Urban Legends by the CECH Collective. More about the exhibition here