Oskar Chmioła / Realised / 2011

Całopalenie

Całopalenie was a spatial install-action by Oskar Chmioła, realised in 2011 during a guest exhibition by Galeria Dzika at the Krasiński Library in Warsaw. Its principal means were silence, the architecture of the hall, and the disappearance of small feathers suspended on almost invisible threads. It was not a musical performance.

Key facts and classification

Date / period: 2011
Place: Krasiński Library, Warsaw; guest exhibition by Galeria Dzika
Role and collaborators: Oskar Chmioła — installation artist and performer
Genre: install-action; spatial installation activated by performance
Type of event: exhibition and activation of an installation
Approach / perspective: process art; performative practice
Thematic strand (interpretation): Object, gesture and spatial transformation; Action in public space; Body, perception and experience
Style / mode of realisation: site-specific; silence, subtle movement, disappearance

The classification is an editorial interpretation. Comparative categories do not imply membership of a movement or a declared source of inspiration.

Description of the work and the artist’s account

Preserved account: Całopalenie

Full document in the archive · Source URL

Galeria Dzika as a guest at — Biblioteka Krasińskich, Warsaw, 2011 Biblioteka Krasińskich, still a venue for artistic activities at the time, invited Galeria Dzika to organise an exhibition. At the exhibition O. Ch. created the install-action ‘całopalenie”. To the gallery (walkway) of the hall, which, as those familiar with the place know, runs below the ceiling of an enormous hall, he attached very fine grey threads, such that they blended into the background and were not visible in the space. They all ended in small feathers at one end and converged at the most central point of the space at the other. The performance consisted of pulling them behind the curtain hanging in the entrance located at this most central point in the space.

Open the source material

Silence, disappearance and the memory of place

From the hall’s upper walkway, the artist extended thin grey threads whose colour and slight thickness made them blend into the interior. Small feathers hung at one end; the other ends converged by the entrance at the central point of the space. During the action, the feathers moved from different parts of the hall towards that point and disappeared behind a black curtain. Pulling in the threads activated the installation, turning a static arrangement of material into a process of emptying the field of vision.

Silence was a fundamental condition of this experience, not a lack of musical accompaniment. Attention shifted to subtle movement, the difficulty of discerning the threads, and successive moments of disappearance. The extensive space gradually converged in one direction, before its light, moving signs crossed the threshold of visibility. Architecture was not a neutral backdrop: the hall’s height, its upper walkway and the position of the entrance determined the construction and course of the action.

According to the artist’s clarification, disappearing behind the curtain evoked a soul passing beyond the veil of a burnt body. The title Całopalenie linked this figure to the memory of the place. In October 1944, German soldiers burned the collections assembled in the Krasiński Library on Okólnik. This historical context makes the withdrawal of material traces a work about loss and absence: instead of reenacting the fire, the work used the movement of fragile forms and the silence remaining after their disappearance.

The relationship between body, sign and memory was constructed through installation, not an illustration of a historical event. The feathers did not stand for particular lost library objects; their lightness and disappearance structured an experience of transience at a place marked by the destruction of material carriers of culture. Całopalenie thus joined a one-time action to an existing space and its history: relocating the work would require those relationships to be redefined, rather than simply repeating the arrangement of threads.

History of the place: National Library of Poland — the collections during the war

Images, files and documentation

Links preserved in the documents

Complete source account in nine languages

The historical account and its translations are retained; the catalogue text incorporates the artist’s clarification.

Art-historical and humanities contexts

Suggested readings and comparisons, distinguished from documented references.

Source document · Editorial method and bibliography

Account based on the artist’s record and clarification and historical sources: 23 September 2026.