Just a Thing - Saint Petersburg

In search of the extraordinary in ordinary objects. The project features ten specially designed works by ten young Polish designers: Aze Design, Beton, Paweł Grobelny, Krystian Kwieciński, Lapolka, Malafora, Bartosz Mucha, Piotr Stolarski, Arek Wolski, and Łukasz Wysoczyński.

The exhibition, first shown at DMY 2011 in Berlin and subsequently in Paris and Vienna, is now heading east – to St. Petersburg and Lviv. The eastern leg of the exhibition will begin in May 2012 during the Saint-Petersburg Design Week festival from May 23 to 30, 2012.

The theme of the exhibition JUST A THING revolves around the ordinary object, seemingly dull and unappealing. However, this seemingly trivial topic has unleashed vast reserves of creativity, inspiring designers to come up with extraordinary solutions. The curator of the exhibition tasked the designers with creating any object that could fit into a standard plywood box measuring 75x75x75 cm. Thus, the only design constraint was the size of the box.

Some of the authors of the works presented at the exhibition are established, well-known creators in Europe, such as Malafor, Aze Design, Beton, and Paweł Grobelny, while others, like Krystian Kwieciński and Łukasz Wysoczyński, are just beginning their journey. All are talented designers whose works astonish with imagination, passion, and humor, provoking thought about the role of design in our lives and proving that surprising answers can emerge from simple questions.

The projects presented at JUST A THING comment on the recently published book by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw titled “Out of the Ordinary. Polish Designers of the 20th Century,” edited by Prof. Czesława Frejlich, which discusses Polish design in the 20th century. The book and the exhibition thus invite reflection and discussion about “ordinary and extraordinary” things, attempting to define “ordinariness” in design and to determine whether an object is merely an ordinary item or something more.

The curator of the exhibition is Agnieszka Jacobson Cielecka, an expert in Polish and international design and applied arts, and the author of numerous design exhibitions. The organizers of the exhibition – the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola – successfully support and promote Polish design and designers abroad.