What was the Exchange Gallery?

Galeria Wymiany was an independent art gallery, founded by an artist couple in 1978 in their private apartment at ul. Piłsudskiego 7 (then ul. Mickiewicza) in Łódź. It was a forum for art, a place for the exchange of ideas, works and artistic publications. It never became a museum, because it had no such ambitions. According to Józef Robakowski, Galeria Wymiany was a "place of initiatives," where art prints and works were also presented, and to which people from Poland and around the world came. A guest room awaited hosts and guests, where the likes of Valie Export, Paul Sharits, Jiří Valoch and Orlan spent the night. Robakowski hung on the walls of the apartment an exhibition of small and "poor" papers published by artists in a few or several dozen copies, to which no one paid attention at the time. The artist's gesture was guided by the idea of respecting something that had not yet gained the status of art. The whole thing had no material aspect, because Galeria Wymiany was an anti-commercial initiative. It existed until 2022. The meeting will be attended by: Małgorzata Potocka – visual artist, actress, director, film producer, performer, author of experimental films, video works, photography and music videos. From childhood she appeared in feature films. In 1978 she graduated from the Acting Faculty of PWSFTviT in Łódź, and in 1981 from the Directing Faculty at the same school. In 1985 she was a scholarship holder at the Film Workshop Millenium in New York and lectured at several universities in the USA. She belongs to the Stowarzyszenie Filmowców Polskich and the Stowarzyszenie Twórców Kultury. Józef Robakowski – creator of Polish art and contemporary culture, author of iconic film, photographic and video works, art historian, educator, collector, exhibition curator, theorist and conceptualist in one person. He co-founded, among others, the ZERO-61 group and the Warsztat Formy Filmowej team. He initiated important events and artistic actions. In 2018, Józef Robakowski donated the International Collection of Galeria Wymiany, its Archive and book collection to the Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej in Warsaw. The meeting will be led by Robert Jarosz – curator of the Archives of Women and Men Artists at the Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej in Warsaw.