Have you ever asked yourself if a jar of mayonnaise can become a work of art? Or if advertising can speak the same visual language as a museum masterpiece? These questions lie at the heart of POP ART or NEW POP. Łódź Kaliska with Patrycja Plesiak, an exhibition presented at Galeria DAP in Warsaw.
Bringing together the artistic language of the Polish collective Łódź Kaliska and contemporary fashion designs by Patrycja Plesiak, it explores the enduring relationship between art, advertising and popular culture. Organised by Kantor Sztuki and curated by Michalina Franasik, it offers a fresh perspective on the legacy of pop art through a distinctly Polish lens. Franasik’s curatorial concept connects two distinct artistic languages through their shared engagement with popular imagery, revealing how the legacy of Pop Art can be reinterpreted through Polish cultural references.
Franasik’s curatorial concept connects two distinct artistic languages through their shared engagement with popular imagery, revealing how the legacy of Pop Art can be reinterpreted through Polish cultural references.
Łódź Kaliska: combining the uncombinable
Łódź Kaliska, founded in 1979 and associated with the country’s neo-avant-garde, has consistently challenged established artistic conventions through photography, performance, humour and absurdity. Its practice questions the boundaries separating high art from everyday experience, often transforming familiar cultural references into unusual visual compositions.
Rather than treating art as an isolated sphere, Łódź Kaliska uses it as an active participant in contemporary culture. Irony and humour have long served as essential elements of the group’s artistic identity, allowing its members to reinterpret social conventions, cultural stereotypes and established visual traditions. The collective’s works frequently combine seemingly incompatible references, creating images that are immediately recognisable yet open to multiple interpretations.
This perspective finds a new expression in NEW POP, an artistic programme developed in the early twenty-first century that draws upon the visual codes of advertising, consumerism and mass media to explore the changing role of images in society. The programme continues the collective’s long-standing interest in challenging artistic hierarchies while responding to the increasingly influential role of mass-market imagery.
Where nothing quite belongs, there’s NEW POP
The history of pop art did not end with Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans. The fascination with mass-produced objects, commercial imagery and the aesthetics of everyday life continues to resonate with contemporary artists. Through NEW POP, Łódź Kaliska offers its own interpretation of this artistic legacy, drawing attention to the relationship between art and advertising. The exhibition’s strength lies in demonstrating that pop art need not reproduce American cultural icons to remain relevant. It can develop its own visual vocabulary from local experiences and shared cultural memories.
For NEW POP, advertising becomes more than a source of visual inspiration: it emerges as an artistic language through which the collective examines the values, aspirations and contradictions of contemporary society. By adopting the aesthetics of consumer culture, Łódź Kaliska transforms commercial references into opportunities for artistic experimentation. While Warhol explored the imagery of American consumer society, NEW POP introduces a distinctly Polish perspective. Its references emerge from local traditions, familiar brands, literature and shared cultural experiences.
The exhibition’s strength lies in demonstrating that pop art need not reproduce American cultural icons to remain relevant. It can develop its own visual vocabulary from local experiences and shared cultural memories.
The exhibition’s curatorial framework is particularly important in bringing these ideas together. Rather than presenting NEW POP simply as an extension of an established artistic movement, Michalina Franasik positions it within a broader conversation about Polish identity, consumer culture and the circulation of images. At a time when social media and advertising permeate everyday life, the exhibition’s exploration of visual culture feels particularly relevant. The dialogue between Łódź Kaliska’s works and Patrycja Plesiak’s fashion designs is also interesting because it shows how an idea can take on different forms, but without losing its originality. It encourages viewers to reconsider how pop art’s visual language moves across artistic disciplines, shaping the ways we encounter and experience art.
Name a more iconic duo — Stefan and the mayonnaise
Among the exhibition’s most recognisable works is Stefan i majonez (Stefan and Mayonnaise), a photographic series that captures the humour and conceptual ingenuity of Łódź Kaliska. At first glance, the combination of a celebrated Polish writer and an ordinary jar of mayonnaise may seem entirely absurd. Yet the work reveals a carefully constructed network of cultural associations.
The title refers to Stefan Żeromski, a major figure in Polish literature, whose novel Przedwiośnie, published in 1924, is partly set in Nawłoć, a fictional estate associated with the Kielce region. This geographical connection leads to Majonez Kielecki, one of Poland’s most recognisable regional food products, produced in Kielce and deeply embedded in the country’s culinary culture. The unexpected juxtaposition of a canonical literary figure and a mass-produced food product becomes a playful exploration of the cultural meanings attached to ordinary objects. By bringing the two together, Łódź Kaliska creates a symbol of collective memory and national identity. What makes this association so effective is its simplicity: once the connection is revealed, the seemingly ridiculous pairing begins to make perfect sense.
By bringing the two together, Łódź Kaliska creates a symbol of collective memory and national identity. What makes this association so effective is its simplicity: once the connection is revealed, the seemingly ridiculous pairing begins to make perfect sense.
The Warsaw exhibition further introduces audiences to the collective’s photographic practice through series such as Sezon II (Season II), Tryumf (Triumph) and Gorsety (Corsets). Together, these works reveal how humour, exaggeration and unexpected visual associations have become central to the artistic language of Łódź Kaliska.
The series also demonstrates how an artwork rooted in a specific cultural context can communicate beyond national borders. Works from the Stefan i majonez series were previously presented in the exhibition POP ART VOIR PLUS… at MAC Saint-Martin in Montélimar, France, alongside pieces by internationally recognised artists including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. This international context adds another dimension to the Warsaw exhibition, suggesting that the culturally artistic references, even though specific, can become part of a much wider conversation about popular imagery.
Fashion? An extension of art
An important dimension of the exhibition is the collaboration with Polish fashion designer Patrycja Plesiak, whose collection PLESIAK × Łódź Kaliska translates the collective’s artistic ideas into the language of contemporary fashion.
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Plesiak has developed an international design practice characterised by experimentation, distinctive visual concepts and an interest in pushing the boundaries of fashion. Her work has been presented at fashion events in cities including Paris, Milan, New York and Vancouver. Her involvement aligns with the exhibition’s idea of exploring the boundaries between disciplines, as fashion offers another avenue for visual experimentation.
Rather than merely reproducing existing artworks, the designs offer a contemporary interpretation of NEW POP, demonstrating how artistic concepts can move beyond the gallery and become part of everyday life.
For this collaboration, the designer draws inspiration particularly from the photographic series Gorsety (Corsets) and the work Czerwony Stefan, Cezary, Andy (Red Stefan, Cezary, Andy). A striking palette of black, white and red, combined with graphic simplicity and the collective’s characteristic sense of irony, establishes a visual dialogue between the photographic works and the garments.
Rather than merely reproducing existing artworks, the designs offer a contemporary interpretation of NEW POP, demonstrating how artistic concepts can move beyond the gallery and become part of everyday life. Fashion emerges here as a mobile artistic medium, carrying images, meanings and cultural references into public space.
This relationship between art and fashion reflects one of the exhibition’s central ideas: images do not exist exclusively within art institutions. They circulate across different areas of contemporary culture, acquiring new meanings as they move between photography, advertising, design and clothing.
Discover a new perspective on pop art
Inspired by the legacy of pop art, yet deeply rooted in Polish cultural identity, NEW POP transforms familiar objects, images and symbols into unexpected artistic narratives. What might initially appear to be an amusing combination of commercial products and cultural references gradually reveals a broader reflection on the images that shape our everyday experiences.
Through Michalina Franasik’s curatorial approach, POP ART czyli NEW POP brings together photography, fashion and familiar cultural symbols to offer a contemporary Polish interpretation of Pop Art. The exhibition demonstrates how the movement’s visual strategies remain relevant beyond their original American context, creating a dialogue between artistic experimentation, consumer culture and collective identity.
POP ART or NEW POP. Łódź Kaliska with Patrycja Plesiak
1.09–27.10. 2026
Galeria DAP, ul. Mazowiecka 11A, Warsaw, Poland
