Curator: Katarzyna Gołecka

Opening with an artist-led tour: 2 September 2026 (Wednesday), 6:00 p.m.
Exhibition: 2–27 September 2026

How can sound be photographed? How can one capture the energy of improvisation, the intensity of concentration, the tension between the stage and the audience? How can the experience of experimental music be translated into the language of images?

The exhibition Energy/Sound/Energy presents photographs by Tobiasz Papuczys and Kazimierz Ździebło, created during successive editions of the Avant Art Festival. These are not, however, concert photographs in the traditional sense. The artists are not concerned with documenting events or creating a visual archive of the festival. Instead, they focus on what resists straightforward representation: flows of energy, resonances, states of intensity, and the relationships emerging between sound, body, light, and space.

Both photographers have spent years developing distinctive visual languages that move beyond the boundaries of documentary photography. Tobiasz Papuczys, whose practice is rooted in theatre, performance, and the study of contemporary visual culture, approaches photography as a medium of experience. Kazimierz Ździebło, working between documentary, abstract, and staged photography, searches for images capable of conveying the emotional and affective dimensions of reality. Their perspectives converge within a space of experimentation that has formed the foundation of the Avant Art Festival’s programme for more than two decades.

The works presented in the exhibition do not illustrate music. Rather, they attempt to enter into dialogue with it. Blurred images, multiple exposures, fragmented compositions, and the interplay of light and movement transform the photograph into a visual counterpart to the sonic structures present throughout the festival programme. Photography does not freeze a moment here; instead, it preserves its dynamics, becoming a trace of an experience that continually escapes complete representation.

An integral part of the exhibition is a sound installation created by Kostas Georgakopulos, director of the Avant Art Festival. The composition draws on works by selected artists connected with the festival’s history, alongside Georgakopulos’s own compositions, creating an acoustic environment for the photographs on display. Sound does not function as illustration, just as the photographs are not intended as documentation of concerts. The two media jointly create an experiential environment in which image and sound remain in constant dialogue.

The result is a multidimensional narrative about the energy of experimentation: about what happens between the stage and the audience, between sound and image, between documentation and lived experience. It is a visual and sonic score of the Avant Art Festival, whose central protagonist is energy itself: invisible, fleeting, yet perceptible to everyone who takes part.

Tobiasz Papuczys is a theatre and documentary photographer, curator of photography exhibitions, theatre scholar, film scholar, and university lecturer with sixteen years of teaching experience. He is the winner of GRAND PRESS PHOTO 2026, receiving first prize in the Own Vision category.

He has been a six-time finalist of the Theatre Photography Competition organised by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw, winning its fourth edition in 2018 and receiving third prize twice, in the sixth edition in 2020 and the ninth edition in 2023. Since 2019, he has been the official photographer of the Dramatyczny Theatre in Wałbrzych.

Papuczys has also worked as an artistic consultant and dramaturg with Cloud Theater on the productions Technology Is a Being at the Feature Film Studio in Wrocław and Don K. at the National Museum in Wrocław. Between 2008 and 2018, he worked as a theatre critic.

Since 2010, he has taught at the University of Wrocław, where his courses cover theatre, film, the performativity of photography, and contemporary visual culture. He is also associated with the Grotowski Institute, where for many years he has conducted his own original workshops in theatre photography.

His photographs have been published in, among others, Przekrój, Polityka, Newsweek, Gazeta Wyborcza, Tygodnik Powszechny, The Japan Times, Teatr, Didaskalia, Dialog, Dwutygodnik, Odra, Rita Baum, and Vogue Polska.

In 2020, he was nominated for WARTO, the cultural award of Gazeta Wyborcza, for “consistently capturing the emotions of the stage in theatre photographs, which have become an indispensable part of the audience’s experience of a performance.”

He served as a jury member of the seventh edition of the Theatre Photography Competition in 2021 and was a finalist of Grand Press Photo in 2023 and 2026. He is a member of the Association of Polish Art Photographers (ZPAF).

Kazimierz Ździebło is a photographer and curator, as well as a psychologist and psychotherapist. In his photographic practice, he focuses primarily on documenting concerts, theatre performances, and artistic events, while also working with abstract, street, and staged photography. Rather than simply documenting reality, he is interested in its subjective interpretation and in developing a distinctive visual language capable of conveying emotion, atmosphere, and the individual experience of a particular moment.

He has collaborated with numerous festivals, including Sanatorium of Sound, Avant Art Festival, WRO Biennale, Konteksty International Sokolowsko Festival of Ephemeral Art, PPA, Industrial Festival, Mózg Festival, and the Hommage à Kieślowski International Film Festival. He has also worked on projects for a wide range of cultural institutions, including WRO Art Center, the Grotowski Institute, Firlej, Kolektyw Kobietostan, Impart, OPT, and Entropia Gallery, as well as for publications devoted to culture and music such as Glissando, Ruch Muzyczny, Noise Magazine, Popupmusic.pl, and nieTakt, where his photographs have been published on numerous occasions.

His work has appeared in festival catalogues and art publications in Poland and abroad and has been used on album covers by Polish and international artists, including Michael Zerang, Kollaps, Savage Republic, Mentor, Ślina, Sneaky Jesus, Pretensje, and Bezsenna. In 2018, together with Paweł Romańczuk, he created the sound installation Ułóż to wszystko / CupItAll, presented during the 16th edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review.

He is the author of three solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. He has also published one book. At the centre of his artistic interests is the human being — emotions, experiences, and relationships with the surrounding world. He is currently working on two long-term photographic projects scheduled to be presented in 2027.