In the 1960s and 1970s, the Biennial of Spatial Forms, the biggest cyclic open-air artistic event in Poland, was held in Elbląg. The Biennial was an outcome of cooperation between the EL Gallery and the ‘Zamech’ Industrial Plant – the two entities resolved together to recreate the myth of the pre-war avant-garde and enable collaboration between workers and artists. Artists invited by the gallery came to several-month creative residencies during which they created metal sculptures, called spatial forms, with the assistance of professionals from ‘Zamech’. Most of the works can still be seen in the streets of Elbląg.

Karolina Breguła: ‘I was invited by the EL Gallery to take part in the year-long project Awakening, which focussed on the theme of the end of the world, and I decided to focus on the spatial forms and attempt to discover their ties with a disaster. The people of Elbląg used to be proud of them and tenderly called them “bienals”. Today, they are an inconvenient legacy, moved from one place to another to free up sites for trendy new buildings. By creating an aura of threat, I wished to provoke a new perspective on the sculptures and stir an interest in them. Alongside academics from various fields, I deconstruct the spatial forms in Elbląg by situating them in a non-artistic context, which is foreign to them. The outcome of that project is a conference during which academics will share the results of their research and reflection, as well as the artistic-academic book titled Spatial Forms as the Centre of Everything.