Labirynt Gallery

Practical info

What to expect

Lublin is the largest city of eastern Poland, roughly 170 kilometres south-east of Warsaw, and Galeria Labirynt is its main venue for contemporary art. Do not come looking for a permanent display: this is a municipal institution built around changing exhibitions. Its lineage goes back to 1956, when the Bureau of Art Exhibitions (BWA) was founded in Lublin. The gallery developed a programme of its own between 1974 and 1981, continued it inside the BWA structure, and has worked to a new artistic concept since 2010, currently under director Barbara Sawicka. What hangs on the walls therefore changes every few weeks, and the roster mixes established names of Polish contemporary art with artists showing for the first time.

The main building at ul. ks. Popiełuszki 5 is single-storey but surprisingly deep. Beyond the principal exhibition hall it holds the Foyer, the Black Room, the Edu Gallery, an education studio and a basement known as the Labirynt Cellar, with a bookshop just inside the entrance. The layout matches the programme: openings come with author meetings, film screenings, public debates on current affairs, an open reading room and a broad menu of workshops. The gallery describes its ambition as joining the local to the universal, and many of its projects are national or international in reach.

Labirynt also holds a collection of its own, assembled since the turn of the 1960s and 1970s and regarded as one of the more significant Polish holdings of neo-avant-garde art. It includes experimental work by the Lublin Grupa Zamek, among them Jan Ziemski; performance art by Włodzimierz Borowski and Jerzy Bereś; photo-media work by Natalia LL and Józef Robakowski; critical art by Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek; concrete poetry from the international Logomotives group; and New Expression painting from the circle of Gruppa. Its largest showing so far, Turns of the Avant-Garde, opened in 2010; the works now return in thematic shows and in education work.

Tips

Entry to the exhibitions is free, with no ticket to buy and nothing to book. The Popiełuszki 5 building is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00 to 19:00; on Mondays only the offices work. On Wednesdays between 15:00 and 19:00 the gallery runs silent hours, meant for people sensitive to noise and sensory overload.

Galeria Labirynt 2, at ul. Grodzka 3 in the Old Town, shows exhibitions Tuesday to Sunday from 15:00 to 19:00, while the Labirynt Plaza space at ul. Lipowa 13, entered from ul. Ofiar Katynia, houses the Azyl Library, open Tuesdays 13:00 to 19:00 and Wednesday to Sunday 12:00 to 19:00. A wheelchair stands by the entrance for free use, noise-cancelling headphones can be borrowed at the desk, and induction loops are installed at the ticket window and in the Black Room. There is no lift and no cloakroom, and the ramp up to the ticket desk is too steep for a wheelchair. If you need support during an event, e-mail the gallery at least two days ahead.

Getting there

The gallery sits at ul. ks. J. Popiełuszki 5 in the Wieniawa district, a walk of about fifteen minutes west of Lublin’s Old Town. MPK Lublin bus lines 2, 8, 13, 15, 55 and 303 stop nearby, and the closest Lublin City Bike station, number 6921, stands on ul. Poniatowskiego. There is a car park below the gallery with a marked accessible bay; a strip of gravel between the car park and the pavement makes wheelchair access harder. The gallery also publishes the timetable of the link from Lublin Airport.

Nearby museums

The gallery’s second address on Grodzka street stands beside the Grodzka Gate, which makes the Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre and its account of Jewish Lublin the obvious companion visit. A few minutes on rises the National Museum in Lublin at Lublin Castle, a sharp counterpoint to the newest art. For the story of the city, climb the Kraków Gate to the Museum of the History of the City of Lublin.