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MINORIA
Shape of Breath
Józef Krzysztof Oraczewski
Concept & Curatorial Project
Monika Turczyńska
A Space Gallery, Venice
Presented as part of The Venice Glass Week 2026
Minoria: Shape of Breath
A Space Gallery, Venice
Presented as part of The Venice Glass Week 2026
MINORIA: The Shape of Breath is a site-specific installation created for A Space Gallery in Venice as part of the ongoing MINORIA curatorial programme and presented during The Venice Glass Week 2026.
The installation begins from a simple observation: glass is never merely an object. It is matter shaped by fire, movement, temperature and breath. Even after cooling, it continues to preserve the memory of the forces that brought it into being. Every glass form is, in this sense, a suspended moment—a material trace of an invisible process.
At the centre of the exhibition hangs a suspended metal network holding carefully selected glass objects. Removed from everyday use, they no longer function as vessels or decorative forms. They become witnesses. Each object carries within itself the memory of labour, human gesture, accumulated knowledge and time. The installation invites us to look beyond the object itself and towards the conditions that made its existence possible.
The dialogue between glass and metal forms the conceptual structure of the work. Glass speaks of fluidity, transparency and transformation; the network introduces weight, order and support. Between them emerges a fundamental paradox: movement becomes visible only when it is suspended, and breath acquires form only when it accepts its own limits. Preservation is never the opposite of change. It is one of its forms.
The network is not simply a construction. It is a structure of relationships. It evokes the invisible systems that sustain every glass object: the furnace, the workshop, the maker, the transmission of knowledge, the continuity of production and the communities built around them. The installation therefore reflects not only on the fragility of glass, but on the fragility of the cultural ecosystems from which it emerges.
Many of the objects presented in the installation originate from Polish glassworks. Some come from factories that have already disappeared; others from places where centuries of knowledge continue to survive despite profound economic and cultural pressures. Removed from their original context, these everyday vessels become more than historical remnants. They become carriers of memory and quiet testimonies to traditions whose future can no longer be taken for granted.
Beneath the suspended forms stretches a field of sand—the material from which glass is born and to which, symbolically, every form ultimately returns. Sand recalls origin, but also erosion, time and impermanence. Nothing in the installation claims permanence. Instead, it reveals form as a temporary balance within an ongoing process of transformation.
Created specifically for the intimate scale of A Space Gallery, the exhibition employs emptiness, light and silence as active elements of the work. Visitors do not simply observe an arrangement of objects; they enter a field of suspended relationships, where memory is experienced not as nostalgia, but as a living condition of matter itself.
Within the context of Venice, Murano and The Venice Glass Week, MINORIA: The Shape of Breath becomes a reflection on the responsibility of preserving not only objects, but also the knowledge, traditions and human gestures from which they emerge.
What is suspended here is not only glass, but the memory of a world whose existence can no longer be taken for granted.
THE INSTALLATION
Welcome to the
MINORIA space
The installation is built from three elemental materials: glass, metal and sand.
Nothing here functions independently.
Glass is held in suspension. Metal becomes structure without becoming enclosure. Sand recalls both origin and dissolution. Together they create a field in which no element exists alone, but only through its relationship with the others.
The suspended network is neither frame nor support. It is a structure of interdependence. It holds objects that once belonged to everyday life and allows them to enter a different order—one in which function gives way to memory, and use gives way to presence.
Beneath them, sand returns every form to its beginning. The material from which glass is born remains visible throughout the installation, reminding us that creation is never separate from transformation, and that every form carries within itself the possibility of change.
Light is not used to illuminate the work. It becomes part of the work itself. As it moves across glass, metal and sand, relationships continuously shift. Transparency becomes density. Reflection becomes shadow. The installation is never entirely still because perception itself remains in motion.
The work is completed only through the movement of the visitor. Every step reorganises the space. Every change of position produces a different constellation of objects, reflections and distances. The installation therefore exists not as a fixed composition, but as an event unfolding in time.
A Material in Time
Broken Mask by Józef Krzysztof Oraczewski
Created especially for MINORIA: The Shape of Breath, Broken Mask extends the exhibition's reflection on transformation, memory and duration.
Fragments of shattered glass are embedded within the painted surface. Over time, the transparent medium slowly cures, gradually revealing the hidden image beneath. What initially appears opaque becomes increasingly transparent. The work is therefore never encountered in a single, final state. It unfolds.
Glass is not used here as a symbol of fragility or destruction. Instead, it becomes a measure of time. Its changing transparency records a process that continues beyond the artist's gesture, allowing the image to emerge gradually rather than all at once.
The work asks us to reconsider what it means to see. Revelation is not immediate. It requires time, attention and patience. The image does not simply appear; it is allowed to become visible.
Placed within the broader context of MINORIA, Broken Mask introduces another temporal dimension to the exhibition. If the suspended glass objects preserve the memory of their making, Broken Mask preserves the experience of becoming. The work remains in transition, reminding us that transformation is not an event but a condition.
Some images cannot be seen immediately. They must first pass through time.
A Vanishing Heritage
Selected objects presented in the installation originate from historic Polish glassworks, including Ząbkowice,
Hortensja,
Niemen,
Sudety,
Irena and other manufacturers whose legacy forms part of the exhibition's research.
Glass carries memory.
Not only the memory of fire and breath, but also the memory of the people, workshops and places that made its existence possible.
Many of the objects presented in the installation originate from Polish glassworks whose history stretches across generations. Some were produced in factories that have already disappeared. Others come from workshops that continue to preserve extraordinary knowledge while facing increasing economic and cultural pressures.
These objects are not presented as museum artefacts or nostalgic souvenirs. They remain ordinary vessels. Their significance lies precisely in their everyday nature. They remind us that cultural heritage is not preserved only through exceptional masterpieces, but also through the quiet continuity of objects that accompany daily life.
The installation therefore becomes an act of attention.
It asks what disappears when a glassworks closes.
Not only buildings or production lines.
But gestures.
Knowledge.
Relationships.
Entire ways of understanding material.
What is at stake is not simply the survival of glass, but the survival of the cultures that continue to shape it.
Heritage disappears quietly.
MINORIA
MINORIA is an ongoing curatorial project exploring the conditions through which form emerges, memory is carried by matter, and perception gives shape to experience.
Each chapter begins from a different material, place or phenomenon. Yet none of them seeks to illustrate a concept or construct a closed narrative. Instead, every installation creates a field in which meaning unfolds through the encounter between material, light, space and time.
MINORIA is concerned with moments of transition.
With the fragile threshold where movement becomes form.
Where presence begins to separate itself from absence.
Where memory ceases to belong only to the past and becomes an active force within the material itself.
Rather than offering explanations, the project invites a different mode of attention. Objects are approached not as isolated forms but as carriers of relationships, processes and histories that continue to resonate beyond their visible surface.
Each chapter develops this inquiry through a different medium. Together they form an expanding body of work that examines not only what becomes visible, but also what remains suspended, incomplete and still in the process of becoming.
MINORIA does not seek definitive conclusions.
It remains intentionally open — allowing each exhibition to become another point of entry into a wider investigation of matter, perception and memory.
Every chapter begins where certainty ends.
WHAT REMAINS?
Memory survives
only while someone continues to carry it.
Every material carries memory.
Some preserve it for centuries.
Others disappear almost unnoticed.
Glass belongs to both.
It survives as an object while the world that produced it quietly vanishes.
Factories close.
Furnaces fall silent.
Tools are abandoned.
Skills disappear with the people who once carried them.
What remains is not only the object itself, but the invisible knowledge embedded within it.
Every vessel presented in this exhibition is therefore more than a physical form.
It is evidence that material can remember what institutions, industries and generations gradually leave behind.
The installation does not attempt to preserve the past.
It asks a different question.
What still deserves to be carried into the future?
Józef Krzysztof Oraczewski
For more than four decades, Józef Krzysztof Oraczewski has explored painting as a space in which matter carries emotional and psychological intensity beyond representation.
His works emerge through long processes of accumulation, transformation and reduction. Surface is never merely surface. It becomes a place where memory, gesture and material continue to interact long after the act of painting has ended.
For MINORIA: The Shape of Breath, Oraczewski extends this investigation beyond paint itself. Glass enters the work not as an external material but as part of the image's internal structure. In the Broken Mask series, fragments of shattered glass gradually become transparent, allowing hidden forms to emerge over time. The work does not depict transformation; it undergoes transformation.
Within MINORIA, Oraczewski's practice becomes part of a wider reflection on memory embedded in matter. His works remind us that images are never entirely fixed. Like glass, they continue to change with time, light and perception.
Every image remembers more than it reveals.
Monika Turczyńska
Artist, curator and founder of A Space Gallery and ORAC Gallery.
Monika Turczyńska develops long-term artistic and curatorial projects situated at the intersection of installation, philosophy and poetic thought. Her practice explores the conditions through which matter, memory and perception generate meaning, creating environments in which exhibitions become not only presentations of artworks but autonomous conceptual works in their own right.
She is the founder of MINORIA, an evolving artistic and philosophical project investigating emergence, transformation and the fragile relationship between presence and disappearance. Through installations, writing and curatorial practice, she develops a distinct language in which material becomes a carrier of thought and thought itself assumes spatial form.
A Space Gallery
Located in the historic district of Castello, A Space Gallery is an independent platform for contemporary art, long-term curatorial research and international dialogue.
Rather than presenting exhibitions as isolated events, the gallery develops projects that unfold over time through collaboration between artists, materials, places and ideas. Each exhibition becomes part of a wider investigation, allowing contemporary art to function not only as representation but as a way of thinking.
Situated in Venice during the Biennale season, A Space Gallery creates a meeting point between local context and international artistic practice. Its programme is dedicated to projects that combine intellectual precision with material sensitivity, offering space for works that continue to resonate long after the exhibition has ended.
Every exhibition begins long before it opens.
VISITOR INFORMATION
MINORIA:
Shape of Breath
12–20 September 2026
A Space Gallery
Salizada Santa Giustina 2930
30122 Castello
Venice, Italy
Opening
16 September 2026
7:00 PM
Opening Hours
Daily
14:00–19:00
Presented as part of The Venice Glass Week 2026
Contact
PRESS MATERIALS
MINORIA:
Shape of Breath
12–20 September 2026
A Space Gallery
Salizada Santa Giustina 2930
30122 Castello
Venice, Italy
Press materials for media, curators and professional enquiries.
Press & professional enquiries
Monika Turczyńska
A Space Gallery
aspacecastello@gmail.com