We have always wanted to show these two works at Kronika, perceiving them as a supplement to the identity of the institution and the city itself, but there was never a good occasion to do that... They both provide an impulse for the further process of weaving stories that revolve around Bytom.

The first version of Sobczyk’s painting, currently in deposit at the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, was presented at the famous exhibition What’s Up, organised in 1988 by Andrzej Bonarski. The Bytom exhibition of the painting’s new rendition is accompanied by its stencil version, which will serve to create a mural in the urban space of Bytom when the exhibition has come to an end.

Maleńczuk’s lyrics transferred onto the walls by Tomasz Bierkowski and Paulina Duźniak convey in an ironic way a simple story of Edek Leszczyk, yet they bear a more general reference to the triviality and perversity of fate.

“Edek Leszczyk had a fiancée in Bytom
Got on a train on his way to the wedding [...]

Life composes the best songs
The best scenes are set by fate
That what happened had to happen
Here’s what Leszczyk has to say:

Wedding called off – her father switched the TV off
Her mother cried she’d pass away
The dog started barking, the father started barking
The fiancée was barking as well

Edek calmly rose from the couch
Calmly put his sneakers on,
Went to the station, got on a train,
What train – it is not known.”
...

Stanisław Ruksza