Agata Kus. Spirits

On 24 October 2026 Bunkier Sztuki will open the first exhibition in its new space, “Bunkier w PAŁACU”, set up together with PAŁAC, a dining and cultural venue at ulica Piłsudskiego 4. Paintings by the Krakow painter Agata Kus will be on view there in the evenings until 28 February 2027.

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

Agata Kus begins with photography, drawing from her own shots, family albums, and images found online, which she crops, selecting specific fragments to transform them into painterly compositions. Traces of the digital image sometimes remain in her paintings: Instagram frames, timestamps, or battery levels. Private archives blend with images circulating online, while specific individuals, gestures, and situations begin to function outside their original contexts.

Spirits can be read not only as a narrative about contemporary social life but also as an encounter between two orders of memory. On the one hand, there is the memory of the smartphone: rapid, selective and filled with images preserved for later. On the other, the memory of the place. The palace at 4 Piłsudskiego Street was once a hub of social life. Destroyed during the war, it was subsequently rebuilt and served for decades as the seat of a theological seminary.

What to expect

The show is not in the gallery’s building on plac Szczepański but in a former palace at ulica Piłsudskiego 4, just beyond the Planty park ring. The gallery calls the venture a public-private partnership: it co-runs the exhibition space with PAŁAC and plans to host an artist residency programme there in future.

You will see 15 works from 2018-2026: ten oil paintings and five painted objects. Their subject is night-time social life as the phone camera remembers it - music, alcohol, closeness, and then fatigue and distance.

The gallery names one work: “The Young Man With a Pipa” (2025), oil on canvas, 160 × 160 cm, the image it uses for the show on its website.

The curator is Delfina Jałowik. The gallery gives neither the time of the opening nor the number of rooms.

Context

Agata Kus was born in 1987 and lives and works in Krakow. She graduated from the Faculty of Painting at Krakow’s Academy of Fine Arts, defending her diploma in Leszek Misiak’s studio in 2012, and earned her doctorate in 2018. She won the Grand Prix of the WRO Media Art Biennale in 2015, was nominated for the “Views” Award in 2017 and shared first place in the Young Art Compass ranking in 2020. Bunkier Sztuki already gave her a solo show, “Horror Picture Show”, in 2019.

The palace at Piłsudskiego 4 was built in 1879 to a design by Filip Pokutyński as the town residence of the Ogiński and Potulicki families. It later housed Krakow’s riding societies. Bombed in the Second World War, it was bought by the Archdiocese of Krakow, faithfully rebuilt and for decades served the theological seminary.

The gallery links the show to Stanisław Wyspiański’s play “The Wedding” (Wesele). It was first staged on 16 March 1901 at Krakow’s Municipal Theatre and grew out of the poet Lucjan Rydel’s wedding in the village of Bronowice in November 1900. At the end the Straw Man leads a procession of spectres and draws the wedding guests into a dance that leaves them numb.

Tickets and time

• Hours: Monday to Thursday 18:00-24:00 (6 PM-midnight), Friday to Sunday 16:00-24:00. Bunkier’s main building is open Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00-19:00, so this show is the one you can see on a Monday and late at night, but not before 16:00.
• Tickets: the exhibition page gives no admission price, and the price list on the gallery’s “For visitors” page does not mention PAŁAC. The gallery says only that the space is open to PAŁAC guests in the evenings. Before you go, ask the gallery’s ticket office: +48 668 808 352.
• Do not mix up the addresses: the “Pałac Sztuki” combined ticket on Bunkier’s price list is for the Society of Friends of Fine Arts next door on plac Szczepański, not for PAŁAC.
• How long: 15 works by one artist. Allow 30 minutes. The cellars with the Górnicki and Dobrowolski show are seen in guided groups, by booking, Friday to Sunday only. The easiest way to combine both shows is a Friday between 16:00 and 19:00.
• Best for: anyone following young Polish painting, and anyone who would rather look at art after work than on a weekend morning.
• Skip if: you sightsee in the morning and at midday. In daytime, go to Bunkier’s main building instead, where a show by the painter Kinga Nowak runs until 3 January 2027.
• English on site: the gallery publishes the exhibition text in English on its website. It says nothing about English labels at PAŁAC.

See also

• Tomasz Górnicki and Igor Dobrowolski. Underneath - Bunkier’s second show opening on 24 October at the same address, in the cellars of the palace’s outbuilding, until 29 November 2026. Sculpture and painting about homelessness, depression and exclusion.
• Kinga Nowak. A tropikal fiva uv regrejt - in Bunkier’s main building on plac Szczepański until 3 January 2027. A solo show by a painter and sculptor on the traces of colonialism in European and Polish culture.
• MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow - the contemporary art museum in Zabłocie that holds works by Agata Kus in its collection.
• Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery - the gallery’s brutalist home on plac Szczepański; there every exhibition is ticketed separately.

Opening hours and current details are on the Bunkier Sztuki website .

Museum profile: Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery .