Cezary Klimaszewski: boor

From 2 to 25 October 2026 Labirynt Gallery shows “boor”, an installation by the Lublin artist Cezary Klimaszewski built around two of Marlon Brando’s film roles. It is a small, free show with a run of under 4 weeks, so if you will be in Lublin in October, put it in the plan now rather than later.

Labirynt Gallery on the exhibition (the gallery’s own English text):

What happens in our heads when a take, a scene or a character from a film stays with us for years? Do we still remember the film itself or rather our own transformed version of it, built from connotations and recurring images?

The exhibition ‘boor’ by Cezary Klimaszewski emerges from precisely this experience. The key to deciphering the project’s foundations lies in the figure of Marlon Brando, a legendary actor who has fascinated the artist since childhood.

What to expect

This is not a show of pictures on walls. It is a single installation in a purpose-built space at the gallery’s main building on Popiełuszki street, and you walk it in a set order: objects first, film last. The gallery calls the film the centre of the work but places it at the end of the route, so do not look for a screen as you come in.

What to look for, going by the gallery’s description:

• Two submarines - they stand in a small, purpose-built space; in the curator’s text the wall of a submarine is one of the surfaces that carries bullet marks.
• A steel shelter with spyholes - you look into it from outside, through the spyholes, and see a small figure inside.
• A tunnel - it leads from the objects to the room where the film is shown.
• A five-minute found-footage film - clips from “The Young Lions” cut together with footage the artist shot himself, in four short parts, with an original soundtrack. The final scene reverses the ending of Dmytryk’s film.

The title is worth decoding before you go in, because the curator, Piotr Saran, builds his whole text around it. In English “boor” means a churl, in Flemish it means a drill, and it sounds almost exactly like the Polish “bór”, a pine forest; the same glossary adds “orb”, “bardo” and “Brando”.

Context

Cezary Klimaszewski was born in Lublin in 1971, graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) and has taught there since 1998. He took his postdoctoral degree in printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2012. Trained as a printmaker, he works with spatial objects, installation and video, often with a military pedigree. He reconstructed a Goliath Sd.Kfz. 303 armoured vehicle, and for the Open City festival in 2022 he placed a monolith on Plac Litewski that recalls a bunker or a watchtower.

Brando is not a new subject for him. Galeria Biała describes his earlier installation “BUD”, named after the actor’s nickname, as a mini-museum of props from Brando’s films. It includes the ship from “Morituri”, agave leaves from “Apocalypse Now” and a scene from “The Young Lions”. The piece was shown, among other places, in the exhibition “Wojna i pokój” (“War and Peace”) at Labirynt in 2015.

Both films behind “boor” are more than forty years old. “The Young Lions” (1958), directed by Edward Dmytryk from Irwin Shaw’s novel, is an American war drama in which Brando plays the German officer Christian Diestl. Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979) gave him the role of Colonel Kurtz.

Tickets and time

Admission is free, with no ticket and no booking. The show is open Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00-19:00 (noon to 7 PM); the gallery is closed on Mondays (5, 12 and 19 October). The last day is Sunday 25 October. The opening is on Friday 2 October at 19:00, the hour the gallery normally closes, so the first full day for visiting is Saturday 3 October.

Allow 30-45 minutes. The film runs 5 minutes, so even two screenings and an unhurried walk round the objects fit into half an hour. That is our estimate; the gallery does not give a visiting time.

Quiet hours run on Wednesdays, 15:00-19:00 (7, 14 and 21 October), when the gallery switches off every work that emits loud sound or flashing light. It does not say whether that includes the film in “boor”. If you want to hear the soundtrack, come on another day; if you are sensitive to noise, Wednesday afternoon suits you, and on other days the bookshop lends noise-cancelling ear defenders free of charge.

English on site: the gallery publishes the full exhibition text in English on its English page for the show . Its listing gives the exhibition’s language as Polish, and it does not say whether wall texts are in English. Both events below are in Polish. Read the English text before you go; the installation itself needs little reading.

Groups can request a curator-led tour through the form on the exhibition page . The gallery does not say whether the tunnel and the screening room are wheelchair-accessible, so phone ahead if that matters.

Who it is for: film lovers who remember Brando in “Apocalypse Now”, and anyone who likes installations you walk through rather than read. Skip it if you want a large show for a whole afternoon, or painting: this is one compact work that fits between other stops in your day.

Events

• 2 October 2026 (Friday), 19:00 - the opening; in Polish, with Polish Sign Language interpreting by Jolanta Gromada, free - exhibition page .
• 3 October 2026 (Saturday), 16:00 - the artist’s tour. Cezary Klimaszewski explains how the parts of the installation connect and where the film references come from. In Polish, without Polish Sign Language interpreting, free - the gallery’s listing . The gallery’s English page calls this a curatorial tour; its Polish listing names the artist as the guide.

See also

• Labirynt Gallery - the institution’s profile: hours, quiet hours, how to get there and accessibility at the main building on Popiełuszki street.
• U with Two Dots - another Lublin show about what memory does to the image of a place: Katarzyna Minasowicz at Dom Słów, open until 31 December 2026.

Current information is available on the Labirynt Gallery’s page for the show .

Museum profile: Labirynt Gallery .