We continuously surround ourselves with objects. Our apartments and wardrobes are overflowing with useless junk and, tricked by an artificially created desire to have, we buy more. Manufacturers offer us newer and more visually attractive things that provide an illusion of being fashionable and up-to-date with the latest trends, no matter what your style is. What does this mean for designers who are part of the production cycle? How can they tackle these issues?
These questions were addressed in Pani Jurek’s exhibition entitled Więcej niż Design (More than Design) in the Straw Bale pavilion as part of the COP24 Climate Summit in Katowice. Magda Jurek is a conscious designer who tries to produce sustainable objects with the use of recycled and natural materials. The exhibition reflected on the role of designers in a world dominated by excessive consumption.
The PSIKUSY: Remix Your Dog project consists of a book and playing blocks. It focuses on the creation of mixed breed dogs, offering numerous shapes, colours and other aspects of dogs, which only nature can create – including their personalities. The publication contains 40 cards with images of pure-bred dogs, intended for cutting and making collages. One can create various dog hybrids’ from cut-out snouts, paws, bellies, tails, fur, and patches. The multitude of graphic and painting techniques used in the project allow for an infinite number of canine variations.
Pani Jurek and Małgorzata Gurowska are the authors behind PSIKUSY: Remix Your Dog. A multi-layered text full of symbolic meaning – a mongrel manifesto written especially for this book – evokes human traits and behaviours. Illustrations for the book were created by renowned Polish illustrators such as Jacek Ambrożewski, Małgorzata Gurowska, Marta Ignerska, Pani Jurek, Edyta Ołdak, Paulina Pankiewicz, and Maria Strzelecka, as well as a 7-year-old girl: Wandzia Hermanowicz. The book is in both Polish and English, making it bilingual and suitable for children and adults alike.
In 2019, the BWA Municipal Gallery in Bydgoszcz opened an exhibition based on the PSIKUSY project. In principle, both the artbook and pads aim to teach tolerance for otherness, sensitivity to dog's harm and openness to beauty outside of known canons. Apart from the exhibition, the gallery also organized a workshop Wszyscy Jesteśmy Kolażami (We Are All Collages), during which everyone had the chance to create their own mongrel.
The exhibition Z Drugiej Strony Rzeczy: Polski Dizajn po Roku 1989 (The Other Side of Things: Polish Design after 1989, 2018) at the National Museum in Krakow, presented two projects created by Magda Jurek. The exposition led viewers through the development and gradual evolution of Polish design over the last three decades. In addition, it drew attention to its experimental sphere, which plays with technology, materials and form and is not profit oriented. The youngest generation of Polish designers often touches upon social problems and ecology in their projects. Moreover, they often operate on the borderline of different disciplines, presenting their work at festivals or in galleries, Pani Jurek is one of those designers and the museum included her Meduza (Medusa) and Memofaktury (Texture Memory) pieces in the exhibition.
Pani Jurek's latest collection, TRN, which won the Must Have Award at the 2020 Łódź Design Festival, features different furniture and lighting inspired by the works of painter and graphic designer Jan Tarasin. Tarasin’s paintings depicted objects as a series of signs and symbols – Magda Jurek TRN collection reverses this process, turning ideograms into items. The simple, three-dimensional pieces of furniture correspond to one another as if they were characters of a made-up alphabet. The collection includes mix-and-match module ceramic lamps as well as several versions of tables and mirrors handcrafted from solid wood in cooperation with Square Drip studio.