"The essence of being a sculptor is based on an absolute understanding of the language of matter - how it communicates through form, texture, weight, but also how passing time speaks through it. The dialogue that is established between the sculptural material and the artist's hands is the essence of creation - making sense of and taming the resistance of the medium. This kind of thinking about sculpture assumes that the creation of the work itself is always the sum of gains and losses. In giving shape and meaning, the sculptor gives up other possibilities inherent in the matter, losing its original, intact form.

Looking at Jan Musiałowski's work through this prism, one can see that the material the artist works with becomes a living tissue pulsating with accumulated energy. In his works, stone, steel and wood become carriers of hidden forces which become realised in a new form. The artist does not so much transform the material as reveal its inner dynamics and potential. Brutally chiseled forms or layered structures made of steel resemble elements created by the explosion of ancient forces, frozen in a material shape. This work is based on a demiurgic struggle with matter, leaving a trace in the form of an object suspended between order and chaos. Musiałowski often creates from various materials, which he juxtaposes in contrasting relations. He combines wood with industrial steel; some surfaces are polished with absolute precision, while others are treated extremely sparingly. Created with the author's own technique, the compositions resulting from the layering of steel filings emerge as traces of elemental collisions or the effect of geological forces shaping minerals hidden under the layers of earth for thousands of years.

Musiałowski's art challenges the resistance of matter, and his objects reflect an effort to extract from the raw material its original energy and to record this transformative process in a sculptural medium. Every trace of tool and every layer of steel contribute to the testimony of this effort. These sculptures are a realised record of tension - a search for the point at which chaos is transformed into form, the raw truth of matter and the gesture that shapes it.

Natural Matters is a story about the physicality of contact with the medium and the organic rhythm of transformation recorded in it. Musiałowski does not reproduce states of reality, but explores its fundamental tensions, rhythms and processes. As a result, his works balance on the boundary between construction and decay, strength and erosion. Each element of his compositions seems to be part of a larger cycle of nature, in which the sculptor is an observer and mediator between what is primordial and what can be shaped by the human hand." Stanisław Małecki - excerpt from the text accompanying the exhibition.

Jan Musiałowski was born in 1992 in Warsaw. In 2017, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Faculty of Graphic Design. He is a scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. He realises sculptural, graphic and multimedia projects. Among other things, he creates sculptures made of steel in an independently developed technique, kinetic sculptures and installations. He has taken part in group exhibitions, including Muddle at the LeGuern Gallery (2024), X Triennale of the Young at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko (2023), Loostro at the BWA Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski (2023); he has also shown his works at individual exhibitions.