At the roots of the Zakopane style lies not only the work of craftsmen, but above all the temperament of Stanisław Witkiewicz who sought in the architecture of Podhale a vision of the future and who could perceive in wood and ornament something more than decoration. For him, Podhale was a living laboratory of form – a place where tensions, deformations, and exaggerated proportions emerge. In his thinking, the wooden cottage became a dramatic structure, and the carved pattern – a record of emotion.

It is from this heritage that we depart at JUTKA. The shelf and table by Krześlarz – made of solid, varnished, and carved wood in the 1970s by the carpenter-sculptor Wojciechowski – and the iconic armchair designed by Witkiewicz himself are introduced into the gallery space as a living trace of that ambition.

The artists invited to the exhibition work in the spirit of a home understood as a cohesive whole, but differently: they do not reconstruct; instead, they draw from tradition what is still alive – technique, ritual, gesture. In their objects, folklore becomes a catalyst for exploration, and craftsmanship – a tool for building a new intimacy. Agnieszka Owsiany’s scenography, woven from straw like a contemporary jutka or podłaźniczka, completes this gesture. The straw, raw, intricately bound decoration returns here as a sign of everyday ritual, an object-metaphor that links the home with ceremony.

JUTKA is a story about the home as an ecosystem of meanings: about what we inherit, what we transform, and how we build our own forms of dwelling. It is about how contemporary design can become a conversation – not only between aesthetics, but between generations.