25/06/2026
Waterbottles x 8 (1994/2026)
Robert Rumas
One-day presentation of a work from the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art Collection, with the artist
One-day presentation of a work from the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art Collection, with the artist
- Robert Rumas is a visual artist, curator, theatre scenographer, and designer of contemporary and historical art exhibitions, as well as exhibition environments for major cultural institutions in Poland and abroad.
- He was born in 1966 in Kielce. In 1991, he graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (now the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk). Between 1987 and 1991, he was associated with the interdisciplinary Studio of Fundamentals of Visual Design led by Professor Witosław Czerwonka.
- Since the beginning of his artistic practice, developed from 1989 onwards, he has addressed the problem of society as an object of manipulation through the mechanisms of economics, religion, nationhood and race. Importantly, his work involves a critical reflection on Polish Catholicism, its superficiality and hypocrisy. Rumas frequently employs the aesthetics of kitsch, treating it not as a failure of taste but as a critical tool. By juxtaposing religious, national and media symbols, he exposes the mechanisms through which images and signs shape the collective imagination and social emotions. Kitsch becomes a means of investigating realities concealed beneath layers of cultural habits and ready-made narratives. Elements that are exaggerated, sentimental or excessive reveal the conventional nature of values and meanings that are often regarded as natural and unquestionable.
- Within the Polish context, this aesthetic is particularly intertwined with religious and national iconography. By drawing upon its emotional potential, Rumas examines the tension between the official mythologies of the community and everyday experience, in which symbols lose their unequivocal meanings and become subjects of social negotiation.
- An important area of his practice is also the exploration and design of alternative social models. The situations and actions he creates often take the form of temporary spaces of individual freedom, revealing the anarchistic dimension of his artistic practice. His critique of contemporary society manifests itself through the exploration of possibilities for the existence of utopian structures and non-normative forms of action.
- In 1995, he curated the landmark generational exhibition of critical art Antibodies at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.
- In 2015, he was awarded the prestigious Katarzyna Kobro Award for lifetime achievement, granted by the artistic community and the Museum of Art in Łódź.
- For more than two decades, he has collaborated with leading theatre directors, including Michał Zadara, Paweł Łysak and Marta Górnicka. He has designed scenography and theatrical environments for productions at the Grand Theatre – Polish National Opera, the Powszechny Theatre, the New Theatre and the Komedia Theatre in Warsaw, the Stary Theatre in Kraków, the Polish Theatre and the Contemporary Theatre in Wrocław, the Polish Theatre in Poznań, the Polish Theatre in Bydgoszcz, the Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk, as well as German theatres including Maxim Gorki Theater and Komische Oper in Berlin, Staatstheater Braunschweig and Münchner Kammerspiele. His productions have also been presented at the Avignon Theatre Festival.
- Discussing scenography, Rumas has said: “Scenography is not an autonomous art form – it is part of a staging, an event, a performance – regardless of whether it emerges in a theatre, gallery, church or on the street. By constructing a stage environment, it also becomes an important element of public space. It not only complements cultural events but often serves as their driving and provocative force.”
- The artist is also engaged in research on the history of Polish and international scenography. In 2020, he curated the exhibition Changing the Setting. Polish Theatrical and Social Scenography of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.
- As an exhibition designer working with both contemporary and historical art, he has collaborated with numerous curators, including Dorota Monkiewicz, Anda Rottenberg, Jarosław Suchan, Hanna Wróblewska, Daniel Muzyczuk, Joanna Zielińska and Bojana Pejić. His exhibition projects have been presented at leading art institutions such as Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Cricoteka in Kraków, the National Museum in Warsaw, the Museum of Art in Łódź, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Kunsthalle Bochum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.
- Rumas is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the critical art movement in Poland during the 1990s, alongside Katarzyna Kozyra, Artur Żmijewski, Paweł Althamer and Zbigniew Libera.
