Janusz Bałdyga | This way to exhibition

Art institutions have been the subject of continous debate regarding their role in a rapidly changing world. Whether we speak of traditional museums or newly emerging venues, institutional critique continues to question how art centres should relate to their surroundings, history, local communities, power, money (or the lack thereof) and, ultimately, to artists themselves. It seems as though the debate surrounding public and private institutions largely revolves around devising “new modes of operation”*, “interacting with audiences,” and “surrounding visitors with care and tender attention.”

In practice, however, the rhetoric of inclusivity and openness often conceals a deepening alienation of audiences – who are rarely asked what they wish to see – while simultaneously maintaining workers and artists in a state of permanent precarity and preventing the emergence of genuinely new and alternative ideas. Despite declarations on democratising access to art and building relations based on partnership, institutions largely continue to dictate the terms under which artworks are received, effectively stripping viewers of their agency. The viewer remains positioned not merely as a passive recipient, but most of all as someone deprived of interpretive space, critical curiosity and even intelligence.

This asymmetry stems from a deeply rooted belief that the public requires care, education and guidance. Art institutions frequently operate within a didactic logic in which knowledge and interpretive competence belong to curators, educators and critics, while viewers are treated as those yet to be initiated into the mysteries of contemporary art. Even when galleries proclaim “openness to dialogue” or “co-creation of meaning,” the exhibition architecture itself – from the height at which works are hung, to the lighting and layout of the walls – clearly communicates who has the authority to define what should be seen and how. One might even say that the audience is entirely deprived of agency with regard to what an exhibition is and what it means.

Paradoxically, the more art institutions strive to be welcoming and accessible, the more mechanisms of control they introduce into the gallery space. Wall texts, QR codes with audio descriptions, interactive guides, designated educational pathways – all these tools, though presented as forms of “facilitating access,” create additional layers of mediation between the artwork and the viewer. Instead of a direct encounter with art, we are offered a structured, mediated experience in which spontaneity and randomness give way to “attentive curatorial care.”

Janusz Bałdyga’s exhibition This Way to Exhibition reverses the question of the institution’s role in the reception of art, shifting responsibility to the audience. Rather than criticising the institution from an external position, the artist makes it a co-author of a situation in which the viewers must decide how far they are willing to go in negotiating the imposed restrictions.

In his intervention Crowd Control System, commonplace elements of exhibition infrastructure – barrier tapes, posts, prohibition signs, instructional plaques – abandon their subservient, auxiliary function and become the focus of attention. Instead of discreetly directing the movement of visitors, they form an intricate network of restrictions that obstructs free movement and compels decision-making: whether to adhere to prescribed rules or transgress them.

Bałdyga does not offer an easy resolution to this conflict. His aim is not a simple inversion of hierarchy nor an anarchic abolition of all rules, but rather making viewers aware that their position within the gallery space is always political, even when it appears neutral, natural, or “flowing from an open heart.”

*All quoted phrases are taken from various anonymised competition proposals for directorial positions in Polish public institutions, as well as from institutional programs, manifestos, and sectoral demands.

Jacek Sosnowski