Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies

A snapshot of contemporary Polish design through sixteen designers and studios, each shown with a personal object that sits behind the work. Bunkier Sztuki, the city’s contemporary art gallery just off the Main Square, opens it on 23 September 2026 at 18:00 and runs it until 13 December; a ticket is 11 PLN, 5 PLN on Tuesdays.

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

What kinds of objects inspire contemporary designers? What do the things they surround themselves with reveal about them? How do personal experiences, places, emotions, and memories shape the objects that eventually enter our homes and public spaces?

“Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies” is the first exhibition in Poland dedicated to contemporary design that presents designers through the lens of their personal belongings, private histories, and material biographies. Rather than focusing solely on finished products, the exhibition explores the relationships between designers and the objects that accompany them in everyday life and throughout their creative processes.

What to expect

The format is easy to grasp even if you know none of the names: a finished design next to something private that explains a little about the person who made it. The line-up mixes designers working under their own names, among them Malwina Konopacka, Maja Ganszyniec and Krystian Kowalski, with studios such as Grynasz Studio, Nodi Studio and UAU project. The gallery gives no object count and does not say which floor of the building the show occupies.

What you will actually see, according to LoveKraków.pl and the Polish design press:

• “Unia form odrzuconych” (Union of Rejected Forms) by Magda Jurek - a monumental ceramic picture that opens the show; the gallery has added it to its own collection (LoveKraków.pl).
• Piotr Kuchciński’s electric guitar - a private object the site describes as essential to his creative process (LoveKraków.pl).
• The IRYS furniture collection - the newest line from Bizzarto, the show’s partner, designed by Grynasz Studio and included in the display (Design Alive).
• A Japanese ceramic teapot from Martyna Barbara Golik’s archive - the gallery’s lead image for the show and a fair sample of the kind of object the whole thing is built on. The page does not state outright that the teapot is on display.

A bilingual Polish-English catalogue is announced, with essays, interviews with the designers and photographs of their studios. No price or publication date yet.

Context

Aleksandra Koperda is an art historian and journalist who writes about design for the Polish editions of Vogue, Vogue Living and Architectural Digest. She has run the Hygge Blog since 2016 and wrote “Teraz polski dizajn” (Polish Design Now, Znak Koncept, 2023).

That book tells the story of Polish design through individual objects. One is the only existing copy of the Pająk (Spider) chair by Edmund Homa, which stood forgotten for decades in the house of a former factory carpenter outside the Tricity of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot. Agata Kiedrowicz is a curator, critic and lecturer who looks at the social, cultural and sensory side of design.

Krakow has its own design lineage. The city’s Academy of Fine Arts was the first school in Poland to train industrial designers. In 1961/62 Zbigniew Chudzikiewicz and Andrzej Pawłowski started a three-year industrial design programme there, and in 1964 it became the Faculty of Industrial Design.

Tickets and time

Ticket for this show: 11 PLN regular, 6 PLN reduced, 5 PLN every Tuesday, 2 PLN special, 20 PLN family. Bunkier charges per exhibition and its price list has no free day, so Tuesday is the cheap day. Holders of the Karta Krakowska, the city’s card for people registered or paying income tax in Krakow, get 20% off regular and reduced tickets. Holders of the Polish Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny) get 60% off.

Seeing more than one show? The combined ticket with the Palace of Art (Pałac Sztuki) next door costs 32 PLN (20 PLN reduced, 70 PLN family), covers everything on in both galleries and is valid for three days. A ticket that lets you come back to the same show is 15 PLN (10 PLN reduced).

Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00-19:00 (11 AM-7 PM), closed on Mondays; last entry and ticket sales end 30 minutes before closing. During the run the gallery is closed on 1 November and open as usual on 11 November, a Polish public holiday.

Allow 45-60 minutes. Best for people who buy from small studios, work in design themselves or simply like seeing inside other people’s workshops. Skip it if you want the history of Polish design, from the post-war decades to the 1980s: this is a survey of today’s scene, not a historical show.

English on site: the gallery publishes an English page for the show and announces a bilingual catalogue, but does not say whether the wall texts are in English. A guide for a tour in a foreign language costs 170 PLN plus tickets.

Events

All events below are announced in Polish; the gallery does not list any of them as English-language.

• 5 Dec 2026, 12:00 - tour with curator Agata Kiedrowicz; announced on the page of the Koperda tour, details not yet published - announcement
• 17 Oct 2026, 11:00-14:00 - “Things close and important”, a creative writing workshop with Barbara Sadurska for adults and seniors, starting with a tour of the show. It costs 10 PLN, sign-up is by e-mail, and you bring an everyday object or keepsake of your own - details
• 4 Oct 2026, 12:00 - curator’s tour with Aleksandra Koperda, 20 PLN, tickets at the box office on the day; the ticket also covers the gallery’s other shows - details
• 29 Sep 2026, 16:00 - sensory tour with material samples to touch, part of the 4th Festival of Sensitive Culture. It lasts 60 minutes, costs 2 PLN and is open to all ages; meet at the ticket office, booking by e-mail - details
• 23 Sep 2026, 18:00 - opening (time from the gallery’s press release) - exhibition page

What the press says

LoveKraków.pl (22 Sep 2026, Filip Zapał): a round-up of Bunkier’s three autumn shows with comments from the director and the curators. On the design show it singles out Kuchciński’s guitar and Magda Jurek’s ceramic piece at the entrance - link (Polish-language source). Curator Agata Kiedrowicz tells the site they wanted to show design “from behind the scenes, but also from the research side, a kind of sociology of the object or anthropology of things” (our translation).

Design Alive (22 Sep 2026, Michalina Wolińska): a preview that adds that Bizzarto’s IRYS collection by Grynasz Studio is part of the display - link (Polish-language source).

Wprost, Dom section (22 Sep 2026, Magda Grefkowicz): a preview that reads the pairing of a studio piece with an object tied to a specific memory as the show’s backbone - link (Polish-language source).

Label Magazine (11 Sep 2026, signed MG): a preview illustrated with photographs from the designers’ studios, Malwina Konopacka’s among them - link (Polish-language source).

Four pieces so far, all published before the opening. No review yet; the show opens on 23 September.

See also

• Kinga Nowak. A tropikal fiva uv regrejt and Mirella von Chrupek. Romance au chocolat - the two other shows Bunkier opened on the same day, both until 3 January 2027. Celine Levitan. The Language of Pearls is also on until 31 October. Each show is a separate 11 PLN ticket, so from three regular tickets up (Tuesdays aside) the 32 PLN combined ticket with the Palace of Art is the cheaper option.
• Picasso and the Pikasiaks. Modern Ceramics - at the Szołayski House, across the same square, until 7 February 2027. Polish ceramic design from the late-1950s thaw: the historical background this show leaves out.
• Andrzej Pawłowski. Kineforms - in Tadeusz Kantor’s former studio flat on Sienna Street. Pawłowski co-founded the programme that became the Krakow academy’s Faculty of Industrial Design; here you see his moving light pictures from the 1950s.
• Sculpture for the Wall Unit - at Królikarnia in Warsaw, until 25 October 2026. Porcelain figurines designed at the Institute of Industrial Design in the 1950s, once shelf ornaments in Polish flats, now collectors’ pieces.

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

Museum profile: Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery .