About us

Wyspa Progress Foundation, founded by Grzegorz Klaman, Jarek Bartołowicz and Adam Gajda, has been operating in Gdansk since 1994, and is a public benefit organization. The sources of our activity date back to 1985 still informally as an artists' collective. Running for over 30 years of activity important art venues in Gdansk such as Wyspa Spichrzów (1985-1995), Baraki (1989-1990), Wyspa Gallery (1990-2002), Otwarte Atelier - Dawna Łaźnia Miejska (1992-1998), Modelarnia (2002-2012), Wyspa Institute of Art (2004-2016), Alternativa Festival-Hala B90 (2010-2015).

We have organized several thousand events, exhibitions, screenings, workshops, concerts and debates, which acted as a platform for discussing visual culture in our country and its place on the international cultural map. The "adaptive practices"we used guided us through the radical socio-political changes in Poland from Martial Law to turbo capitalism mobilizing us to define the language of analysis of these changes. Being a quasi-institution, we draw experience from observing the past tradition in the field, but avoid once structurally defined shape. Our concept is horizontal, hybrid (research-exhibition- workshop), and our strategies are based on creating relationships and stimulating communicative processes, not on a closed defined representation.
Our task is not only to present the most interesting phenomena of contemporary artistic culture, but also to construct an intellectual background and documenting research program. Thus, we are an interdisciplinary exhibition, research and educational organization. Among the resources min. collection, library/reading room, publishing house and archive of contemporary art WYSPA-base. An important part of the program is Wyspa AIR Port, a residency program aimed at introducing an international group of researchers, theoreticians, critics and creators of visual culture to the Tricity and Polish art scene.
We have pursued the above goals with great success at the Wyspa Institute of Art, founded in 2004, located on the former sites of the Gdansk Shipyard fulfilling an intellectually and artistically stimulating role for the post-shipyard areas, entering with its program into              the discussion of their historical role, linking them to the history of independent artistic movements in Gdansk and contemporary innovative artistic practice.
In 2016, after 12 years, the Wyspa Progress Foundation was forced to vacate building 145B, which was the headquarters of the Wyspa Art Institute. In order to continue its activities, the Foundation made an effort to organize a new venue on Sobieszewo Island. The new venue Art Lab Wyspa (2018) is oriented towards exploring connections with new technologies, biomedicine, ecology, performatics, experimental forms of imaging and new theories of culture in particular, posthumanism.

President: Grzegorz Klaman, Vice President: Piotr Tadeusz Mosur
Council: Maciej Smietanski (Chairman), Jaroslaw Bartolowicz (Vice Chairman), Robert Kuśmirowski.