with/against the flow. Contemporary Photographic Interventions

From 6 November 2026 to 10 January 2027 Labirynt Gallery will show two touring exhibitions from the German institute ifa at once, about photography that is not content merely to record the world. Five artists based in Germany rework press photographs, online images and urban architecture. Admission will be free.

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

Imagine you are a photographer needing to go out into the world to take new pictures. But what does “out” actually mean these days? And how can we tell what “new” pictures are? What value does photography have as an artistic medium in an era in which everything has already been photographed and the world is awash with an incessant stream of networked images? What are the issues that need to be addressed today? And how?

What to expect

These are two separate exhibitions under one title, each with two artistic positions. The first brings together artists who work with media images, the second those who intervene in the city itself. The gallery gives neither the number of works nor the room they will occupy. There will be photographs, video recordings and film installations.

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

• Viktoria Binschtok - sets her own street photographs against images from the internet, and shows that in a world run by algorithms an online image no longer reflects reality but creates it.
• Michael Schäfer - in found press photographs he replaces the faces of the real protagonists with his own photographs of actors. The printer dots of the press image then collide with his hyper-sharp fragments.
• Sebastian Stumpf - uses a closing garage door and seaside architecture in Portugal for small actions that he always performs himself. He repeats the same movements in one location after another.
• Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs - will show works made in Berlin, behind refurbished streets and in places Google Street View does not reach; they work with ordinary roof beams, pyrotechnics and optical illusion.

You will get most out of it if you treat the show as a test of your own trust in photographs. At each work, ask yourself what is document and what is staging; the artists deliberately leave the question open.

Context

The exhibitions were produced by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) in Stuttgart, which is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. The institute sends its exhibitions on tour around the world: the part with Binschtok and Schäfer has been travelling since 2016, the part with Stumpf and the duo Onorato & Krebs since 2019. The second part has already been shown in Nanjing, Shanghai and Bucharest, among other places. The project partner is the Goethe-Institut.

Florian Ebner is a German art historian who curated the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Since 2017 he has headed the photography department at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. With Christin Müller he was artistic director of the first edition of the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg in 2017.

All the artists were born between 1964 and 1980. Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs are a Swiss duo who met as students in Zurich and have worked together since 2003.

Tickets and time

Admission is free, with no ticket. The exhibition will be open Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00-19:00 (noon to 7 PM); the gallery is closed on Mondays. The opening will take place on Friday 6 November at 18:00, an hour before the gallery normally closes. The exhibition page does not say whether the works can be seen earlier that day; the first full visiting day will be Saturday 7 November. The last day is Sunday 10 January 2027.

Quiet hours on Wednesdays, 15:00-19:00: the gallery then switches off works that emit loud sound or flashing light, under the rules set out on its accessibility page . It does not say whether this covers the videos and film installations in this show. If you want to see everything running, do not come on a Wednesday afternoon.

Holidays: the gallery has not published opening hours for 11 November or for the period from 24 December to 6 January. If you plan to visit on those days, check the visitor page or phone ahead.

Allow 45-60 minutes. Four positions, including video, need more than a quick walk-through; that is our estimate, as the gallery gives no visiting time. The gallery’s Polish listing for the show gives the language as Polish, while its English listing names Polish, English and Ukrainian. Groups can request a curator-led tour through the form on the exhibition page .

Who it is for: people who take photographs and wonder what is still the point of taking them, and visitors who like art with a wink. Skip it if you are looking for classic reportage or pictures of Lublin: here photography is a tool for experiment, not a chronicle.

Events

• 6 November 2026 (Friday), 18:00 - exhibition opening, in Polish and English, interpreting: Agata Oborska, Polish Sign Language (PJM) interpreting: Jolanta Gromada; free admission - exhibition page (the sign language interpreter is named only in the Polish version).
• 7 November 2026 (Saturday), 11:00 - guided tour of the exhibition, an hour before the gallery’s usual opening time; free admission. The page gives a language only for the opening and does not name the guide - exhibition page .

Updates

• 2026-10-14 - the gallery moved the opening from 19:00 to 18:00; its newsletter of 14 October gives the same time. The Polish version of the exhibition page now also names the Polish Sign Language interpreter for the opening (source: exhibition page , Polish).

See also

• Labirynt Gallery - the institution’s profile: hours, quiet hours, how to get there and accessibility at the main building on Popiełuszki street.
• Cezary Klimaszewski: boor - the current show in the same building, an installation built around Marlon Brando’s film roles. It closes on 25 October 2026, before this exhibition opens.
• Tomasz Zawadzki - abstract paintings by a Lublin artist at the National Museum in Lublin, open until 3 January 2027, almost the whole run of this exhibition.

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

Museum profile: Labirynt Gallery .