We invite you to Grzegorz Sztwiertnia’s exhibition *Hymn o perle*(Hymn to a Pearl), whose opening will take place on Friday, January 23, at 7:00 p.m. at the Mammal Foundation in Warsaw.
Warsaw, 15m83 Targowa St.
Friday, January 23, 7:00 p.m. – opening reception
Saturday, January 24, 12:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. – guided tour (2:00 p.m.), talks
Ode to the Pearl ( Part Two) 2026
"Hymn of the Pearl"— a visual project divided into three parts that gathers and reconstructs a visual representation of the presence of Polish Jewish communities centered around the forgotten button factories that were established and operated in many Polish cities before 1939. In its core visual component, the work takes the form of three expansive painted panels—“panoramas”—that present, through simple narratives, a montage of scenes and motifs found in scattered archives. Each panel, measuring 600 x 170 cm, presents freely assembled scenes from the archival imagination of the history of button factories operating at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries on three continents, likening their founders and workers to mythical seekers of gnosis.
The title refers both to one of the most famous texts of the Gnostic tradition— the Hymn on the Pearl ( also known as the “Hymn on the Soul” or the “Hymn on the Garment of Glory”) —which takes the form of a poetic allegory about the human spiritual journey—and to the work by American painter Larry Rivers (1923–2002), *History of Matzah*. The dialogue with Rivers’s work is a reconstruction of the identity and history of places (tenement buildings, streets, neighborhoods, cities) steeped in Jewish existence—culture, language, and labor. Similarly, the symbolic and imaginative potential of shells, mollusks, pearls, mother-of-pearl, fishing, exploitation, plunder, armor, uniforms, violence, and war (concepts and phenomena with which the button-making industry is associated) constructs not so much an allegory as the vectors and dynamics of the present.
The current exhibition in Warsaw is based on a selection from a modest collection of available documents concerning two button factories in Praga—at 7 Radzymińska Street and 7 Brzeska Street.