Mirella von Chrupek. Romance au chocolat

Five miniature dioramas in which chocolate plays the landscape, the treasure or the leading lady have come from the Wedel chocolate museum in Warsaw to the mezzanine of Bunkier Sztuki. They stay there until 3 January 2027. It is the smallest of the shows the gallery opens on 23 September, and the only one the lift does not reach.

Bunkier Sztuki on the exhibition (the gallery’s own English text):

Mirella von Chrupek’s project, Romance au chocolat, is your entry into a cocoa-scented dreamscape. Five display cases. Five stories. One sweet chocolate universe. Each one tells its own story, yet they are all tied together by a single motif: chocolate, appearing in different shapes, roles and fantasies. Sometimes chocolate forms the very landscape itself; other times it becomes the hero of the scene - a precious artefact, a symbolic centerpiece, or even an almost human character.

Known for crafting poetic micro-realities, Mirella has this time built her dioramas to spark imagination across many moods: adventurous, romantic, fairytale-like, salon-inspired and futuristic. Each scene, crafted with Mirella’s signature subtle humour, glows with joy and lightness.

What to expect

Not a room but five glass cases on the mezzanine, the half-floor between the ground and first floors. You look into them close up, like a shop window, so this is about detail rather than scale. The show is co-organised by the E. Wedel Chocolate Factory Museum in Warsaw, for which every piece was made.

A show under the same title ran at the Wedel museum from 8 January to 16 April 2026. Coverage of that edition describes five scenes:

• “Lovers” (Zakochana para) - two wafers play the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.
• “Pirates’ Treasure” - a pearl praline on the ocean floor, guarded by a pirate crab in love with a goldfish.
• “Forest Supplies” (Leśne zapasy) - tiny forest creatures find chocolates in the grass instead of berries; Warsaw coverage called it “Sweet Supplies”.
• “Cocoa Planet” - Ptasie Mleczko marshmallows, a classic Polish Wedel sweet, explore a planet of chocolate rocks and cocoa geysers.
• “Choco Coco” - a surreal fashion salon with a handbag made of chocolate squares, a nod to Elsa Schiaparelli.

The English titles of the first, third and fourth scenes are our translations. Bunkier’s own photo captions name “Leśne zapasy” and “Pirates’ Treasure”, but both photos are credited to the Wedel museum and may have been taken in Warsaw. Firmer ground is the gallery’s own text, which names five moods: adventurous, romantic, fairytale-like, salon-inspired and futuristic. They match the five Warsaw scenes one to one, though the gallery publishes no list of the dioramas shown in Krakow.

Context

Mirella von Chrupek is the pseudonym of an artist born in Łódź in 1980 and based in Warsaw. She started out online and became widely known for “Gablotka” (The Little Showcase). From 2014 to 2017 she turned an old shoemaker’s glass case on Marszałkowska Street into a street gallery and staged thirteen displays in it. As early as 2011 the critic Ewa Małgorzata Tatar described her work as camp pastiche of cultural myths.

That matters here, because Bunkier frames the show as a study in camp, the taste for artifice and excess that Susan Sontag mapped in her 1964 essay “Notes on Camp”. The other thread is Wedel, the Warsaw chocolate maker founded in 1851. Its packaging once carried Zofia Stryjeńska’s Polish dances, and its Warsaw museum now commissions work from contemporary artists.

Tickets and time

Bunkier prices tickets per exhibition: 11 PLN regular, 6 PLN reduced, 2 PLN special, 20 PLN family, and every exhibition costs 5 PLN on Tuesdays. The gallery does not say whether the mezzanine cases need their own ticket or come with one of the main shows; ask at the ticket desk, on your left just inside the doors.

If you are seeing more than two shows anyway, the combined ticket with the Palace of Art next door costs 32 PLN (reduced 20 PLN, family 70 PLN). It covers everything running in both galleries and is valid for three days. The price list has no free-admission day; Tuesday is the cheapest.

Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00-19:00 (11 AM-7 PM), last entry 18:30, closed on Mondays. Closed 1 November and 24-26 December; open 11 November, and until 15:00 on 31 December. The gallery has not yet published its holiday hours for 2027. The gallery is on plac Szczepański, a few minutes’ walk from the Main Market Square.

The mezzanine is the one space in the building the lift does not serve; you reach it by stairs or a stair platform lift. If you use a wheelchair, tell the staff on arrival or call ahead on +48 668 808 352.

Allow 15-20 minutes for the cases alone and treat them as an add-on to a bigger show in the same building. Best for families with children, fans of miniatures and anyone who remembers “Gablotka” in Warsaw. If you saw the show at the Wedel museum last winter, you will recognise the scenes and can skip it.

English on site: the gallery publishes its exhibition text in English, but does not say whether the labels in the cases are bilingual. A guided tour in a foreign language costs 170 PLN plus tickets.

What the press says

LoveKraków.pl (22 Sep 2026, Filip Zapał): a preview of Bunkier’s autumn programme. It places the chocolate dioramas on the mezzanine and presents them as the fruit of a partnership with the Wedel museum in Warsaw - link (Polish-language source). The artist says in it that chocolate “is a subject that connects many people” (our translation).

Vogue Polska (16 Jan 2026, Aleksandra Kupras), on the Warsaw edition: a description of the five scenes. It also notes that the show returns to the idea of accessible, story-telling art familiar from “Gablotka” - link (Polish-language source).

No review of the Krakow edition exists yet; both pieces are a preview and a report.

Updates

• 23 Sep 2026 - page created on opening day; dates, prices, hours and mezzanine access checked against Bunkier Sztuki’s own pages. The gallery’s events calendar, which runs to 21 November, lists no events tied to this show.

See also

• Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies - opened the same day at Bunkier, until 13 December. Designers shown through their personal belongings, a good companion to the cases if form is what interests you.
• Kinga Nowak. A tropikal fiva uv regrejt - the third new show in the building, also until 3 January. Paintings and sculpture on exoticism and colonialism, set beside folk art objects.
• Celine Levitan. The Language of Pearls - Bunkier’s show outside the building, in the Wyspiański Pavilion, until 31 October. Sewn pictures of fabric, sequins and fake pearls: the same gallery, another scale of play with ornament.
• E. Wedel Chocolate Factory Museum, Warsaw - the museum the dioramas were made for, and the show’s co-organiser.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Bunkier Sztuki website .

Museum profile: Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery .