One of the earliest works by Dłużniewski is the series of ink drawings Ikonogramy (197-74). The 55 works in the series reference the symbols of pictorial and painting language. At a 1977 exhibition in Foksal Gallery, Dłużniewski displayed six works under the shared title Obraz Wobec Obrazu. They were concerned with the relationship between that which lies within the image, i.e. the semantic field, and the external sphere, which exceeds the frame. The piece Exterieurment displayed at Repassage Gallery was similar in character; it was as an opposite of an environment, so it also expressed a reflection on placement of an artwork in respect to the extra-artistic sphere. Dłużniewski played with expectations towards art as a practice perpetuating presumptions and stereotypes in his ironic piece Obraz, Replika, Kopia (Image, Replica, Copy). Using these three words, the artist composed clusters of notions, representing more and more absurd configurations: An Image of a Replica of a Copy, a Replica of an Image of a Copy, or even A Copy of an Image of a Copy of an Image of a Copy of a Replica of an Image of a Replica of an Image. In 1979, in an old tenement house in Foksal Street, Dłużniewski displayed his work Ślad po Obrazie. In an abandoned apartment, a mark was left on one of the walls after a removed painting. The artist took a picture of that empty spot as if he wanted to emphasise the fact that art exists even when we don’t see it, as a potentiality carrying a meaning. Dłużniewski’s art is ephemeral, unconventional and most of all intellectual.
The artist keenly introduced paradox and irony (e.g. inverted stairs, an image of an absent painting), carried out operations with words (Pląkąt at the exhibition Auteur Poster at the Warsaw-based Współczesna Gallery in 1972), which were often the basis of his works. Dłużniewski never ceased writing literary works, however, it wasn’t until the eighties when words began to appear in his visual works on the same level as the thus far used means of expression. Reflection, which searches for meaning through words and images comes up in several series of collages from that period: Podwójny Różowy Pieprz (1980), Artyści Żyją na Granicy Dwóch Światów (1981), and Literatura Piękna (1982).
In the mid-80s, Dłużniewski focused on exploring the relations between the meaning of words and their grammatical gender in different languages. While browsing through an album of drawings by Dürer, he noticed that death was presented as male, as opposed to Slavic iconography, which presents it as a female figure. It turned out that more of those differences exist, relating to such fundamental concepts as war (feminine in Polish, masculine in German), heaven (neuter in Polish, masculine in German), faith (feminine in Polish, masculine in German), and space (feminine in Polish, masculine in German). The artist does not attempt to answer the question of why this is the case, but rather remains at the level of questions and tries to find a perfect form of representing them. Wishing to apply order to the theme in these works, he marked the genders with colours – red for masculine, blue for feminine, and green for neuter. In the projects, which took the form of spatial compositions or paintings, colour played both a symbolic function and that of systematising the linguistic analysis carried out by the artist (Rodzaj i cień, 1985; Obszar żeński, 1991). The piece Łąka i Śmierć (1987) is a long canvas, a fresco drawing showing a dozen human silhouettes representing different European languages, with relevant colours marking their body parts according to their assigned gender. A figure of death, either male or female, is falling down below each silhouette. The picture makes a reference to the Elysian Fields, to strolling people whose souls are departing.
In 1988, Dłużniewski started working from memory, basing his works exclusively on what he remembered. His wife Małgorzata and Maciej Sawicki painted the pictures according to his concepts. The artist presented his work Geonauci in a 2000 exhibition at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle. At the edge of a large cube painted in white, he positioned miniature bronze sculptures, tiny figures of creatures, which, according to the artist’s description, were invisible and made a short visit to our planet. More information about Geonauci can be found in the book Odlot.