Centre | Julian Bachur / Daniel M. Leśniak

Centre | Julian Bachur / Daniel M. Leśniak

Duża Scena Gallery UAP, 24 Wodna Str.
Opening: 25.09.2025, 17:30
Exhibition dates: 25.09 – 5.10.2025
Finissage: 5.10.2025, 18:00

Artists Julian Bachur and Daniel M. Leśniak come together to tell a shared story about the condition of the contemporary individual. The titular Centre becomes a place of confrontation between two distinct personalities and two different, yet complementary, artistic languages. The artists’ works are united by a common reflection on the fate of the individual in society – multilayered, at times tragic, burdened with experience and inner conflicts, yet also infused with the need for rebellion and the attempt to break free from accumulated masks.

In preparing the exhibition, Bachur and Leśniak entered into a dialogue not only on the level of ideas but also of form, creating a joint painting. The juxtaposition of different techniques – the textures of cotton canvas, shades of grey, and the appearance of colour accents – opens a space for multidimensional interpretation.

Thus, Centre becomes a meeting point of two perspectives that together construct a narrative about a human being confronting their own place in the world.

Julian Bachur

Julian Bachur addresses existential and social themes, focusing on reflections on the process of shaping identity. His works open up space for contemplation of the human condition and the place one occupies in a world full of pretence and contradiction.

The “I” is entangled in the rhythm of the collective, in a march that constantly dictates its tempo. Each step carries the tension between memory and forgetting. It is a moment of suspension, where an apparent choice collides with inevitability. Identity reveals itself as a dialogue between true experience and the layers imposed by culture, history, and social expectations. The geometry that appears in his works is not only a form but also a symbol – a precise aperture contrasting with organic matter.

What appears as authentic, and what is merely another imprinted layer?

Daniel M. Leśniak

In his practice, Daniel M. Leśniak engages in a dialogue with memory and experience, weaving personal biographical threads with universal symbols. The large-format canvases he creates build their narrative through the rawness of the material and the economy of means – traces, indentations, and cut-outs become an equal language of meaning.

Animal and biblical motifs, such as the figure of a deer pierced by an arrow or the silhouette of a man surrounded by bullets, refer to archetypes of sacrifice and collective memory, while resonating with the experience of the individual. In his work with lead sculpture – heavy, almost monumental – the artist seeks a material equivalent of trauma: an object whose physical mass embodies the burden of memory and responsibility.

Biographical Notes

Julian Bachur – born in 2000 in Poznan, an artist primarily working in oil painting. His works open up space for reflection on the human condition and the place one occupies in a world full of pretence and contradictions. He is currently a Painting student at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts Poznan. A graduate of Mechatronics and Virtual Design Engineering at Poznan University of Technology. His practice extends beyond traditional painting to include drawing and object-making, combining different means of expression to create multidimensional artistic experiences.

Daniel M. Leśniak – born in 2001 in Zielona Góra, a visual artist whose practice revolves around issues of identity, generational trauma, and social observation. He works with painting, analogue photography, and sculpture, using materials such as lead, steel, and concrete. A graduate of Journalism and Social Communication at Adam Mickiewicz University, he is currently a student at the Photography Department of the University of the Arts Poznan.