Bartosz Mucha

Bartosz Mucha is a graphic designer and founder of the Poor Design brand. He was born in 1978 in Kraków.

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Bartosz Mucha, photo: private collection

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Bartosz Mucha

He studied at the Faculty of Graphic Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where in 2004 he acquired a diploma at Professor Piotr Kunce's poster design studio. Mucha lectures at the Faculty of Art at the Pedagogical University of Kraków. For the past few years he has been realizing his Poor Design project. He currently lives and works in Kraków.

Mucha is not a typical designer, as he pays little attention to the possibility of realizing and manufacturing his ideas. It is often impossible for some of his projects to be narrowed down to the conceptual layer. His works carry an existential message and a modern belief in the possibility of improving mankind's quality of life. This special feature articulates the social role of designing, especially of visionary designing. Mucha works on the border between art and design.

An expression which he likes to use is ‘functional fixation’, meaning ‘an inability to spot the new life of an object already paired with a particular aim in mind’. The artist goes against this functional fixation as well as stereotypes to propose seemingly uncommon uses for various items. Especially popular are his projects based on simple wooden clips which he changed into USB flash drives, lamps, butter knives and pencils (2008). His ideas go deeper – not limited to the items themselves but concerning the functioning of humans in the contemporary world. Additionally, the newly applied function is connected with entertainment and the artist's specific sense of humour.

Bartosz Mucha, "Bubu House" — Bartosz Mucha, 'Bubu House', photo: courtesy of the artist

In 2003 Bartosz Mucha created the Poor Design brand, which aims to popularise the use of easily available and cheap materials. All its products are designed and created independently by Mucha but sometimes the burden of assembling the already-prepared materials is placed on buyers’ shoulders. The items designed by Mucha are very easy to assemble, e.g. a ‘poor’ lamp made out of cardboard and tracing paper (Poor Lamp, 2004). One of his first projects was Duporet (2004), a simple chair to be assembled by the buyer (the set was a combination of five wooden elements, twelve screws, and a screwdriver). The project was later developed into Duporet Bujany (2008). In a different realization, he designed a black cube changed into a comfortable armchair when unzipped (Kostka Ludzika, 2005).

Using some Poor Design products may seem awkward, like for instance a dressing case which is a fold-out sleeping mat (Pracoholik, 2005) or slippers made of a piece of felt in the shape of a cross (2005). In line with the idea of withstanding the well-established patterns of functionality Mucha proposes alternative ways of using bicycle bells. Instead of a bell attached to handlebars, the artist brings it to one's wrist to use to clear a path on busy pavements. In a different project he changed the Polish emblem into an inflatable pillow which is helpful when one learns to swim (2006). For those troubled by nervousness, the artist developed packets of the antidepressant Nervofol, with fragments of bubble wrap (which is helpful in relieving stress) inside the packets.

Selected works by Bartosz Mucha – Image Gallery

Embeded gallery style

display gallery as slider

For the Poor Design project Mucha created The POOR Light (2007) design, based on the profile of a lamp, which uses natural light (the shape of the lamp is cut from a black curtain) and the light emitted by electronic devices (a white lamp with a black screensaver on a computer).

The most radical of Poor Design's projects is Nic (2005). The artist developed a chair that does not need any raw materials – all we need to do is to lean our body against a wall in a particular way. Instead of a bed, Mucha recommends lying down on a clean floor or (in summer) on grass or a beach.

In 2009 Mucha pursued the 12% Normy project. He committed himself to designing one prototype each month for the whole year. The tasks he imposed upon himself were notably tough. He designed, for instance, a lamp starting from the question what it would be like if a whole lamp was a lightswitch. Common coathangers gained unusual shapes – of a pistol, an umbrella and leaking paint. An object that imitates two legs at a run may be used in a number of ways, including a hanger and a rack. However, as the designer claims, ‘its potential has not yet been recognized’. A (gold?) bar is also a broom and is thus symbolically degraded. An inflatable bear was changed into a beach ball by increasing the size of the toy’s head. The artist also suggested that he corrects the ongoing mistake of producing singular heads. The 12% Normy project was never fully finalized as the twelfth prototype was never created. Instead of it, Mucha showed a schematic drawing of a nuclear mushroom cloud, saying:

The presented eruption of a nuclear bomb symbolizes the moment when a project stands against its own designer. Some things should have never been invented.

In 2010, on commission from, the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków on the occasion of the Etnodizajn Festival, Mucha designed Taczkokołyska, which joined a traditional wooden cradle with a childish wheelbarrow.

Thanks to the combination, the wheelbarrow is more mobile and it is easier to change the location of lulling a child to sleep, which helps its occupant fall into slumber.

Mucha has become engaged in para-architecture, meaning the problem of home, apartment, and rest. Similar to the 2% normy project, the artist decided to enforce on himself a particular system of work and starting from April 2010 he created one para-architectonic project a week. The results of his work were shown in the middle of 2011 at the Kordegarda Project in Warsaw. The exhibition was called 52 leniwe tygodnie: Paraarchitektura. Just as in the case of Poor Design, the artistic regime brought projects and prototypes from the border of art, design and architecture. Their common aim is bodily convenience and the relaxation of the soul. By analysing contemporary cities, Mucha draws the conclusion that their occupants need a place of seclusion and relaxation more than anything else. To achieve this aim he is not afraid to use already-existing objects, like noise barriers near highways, which he transforms freely. Many of his projects are shelters created in the most peculiar places, like for instance inside a table or inside a supermarket’s signboard. He also analyses rituals that divide time and space into home and work. Mucha shows that a home may be a trap for an artist, whereas a false sense of complacency may subjugate. Magda Kardasz, the curator of the exhibition writes:

A joke, an irony, playing with meanings – those are artist’s most favoured techniques. He is characterised by an interest in utopic thinking, a persistent seek for the ideal home, despite being conscious of ideal’s elusiveness.

A combination of jokes and a play with the meaning of functionality distinguishes his projects awarded at Lodz Design Festival.

The Poor Toys series was spotted in 2013 and represents a new way of thinking about toys that may serve both young and adult users. In the project Mucha used various banal objects of daily use, such as a bath plug, a floor brush and a laundry clip. In his interpretations those banal objects were turned into three types of toy cars with a dual functionality. As well as toys, they may be used as organizers (Peg Car), shoe brushes or even business card stands (Brush Car).

A similar play on the multifunctionality of the designed objects is present in the watch series Vice Clock, titled as one of the must-haves of 2015. Apart from showing time, those watches may also serve as organizers or nutcrackers.

In 2019, Mucha published a book entitled Ręka w Torboschronie: O Obsesyjnej Potrzebie Tworzenia, Czyli 100% Normy, which documents the author's obsession with designing and making objects. The book is a continuation of the 2010 project 12% Normy and summarises his creative period from 2016 to 2018.

An approximate deadline helped set the pace of work and did not let me fall out of rhythm. The implementation of subsequent projects became an opportunity to tell a story about a unique encounter in space between a man and an artificially created object in a symmetrical relationship. Thanks to this, a very personal story about man and object – an actor and his accompanying props – came about.

The items created by Mucha come from the Poorex studio, previously Poor Design. The studio is oriented towards designing and creating unique objects or short series, which are sporadically produced and distributed. Studio POOREX presents its works in galleries and cooperates with cultural institutions. Their work is based on three foundations: experimentation, objects and para-architecture. The works are often supplemented by short video clips.

The Rożnowskie, or a Refuge in Tabaszowa project came about spontaneously at the beginning of 2020. Mucha devoted exactly a year to its completion; in this time, he built a house in Tabaszowa on Lake Rożnowskie and created a series of sculptures – masks and heads – and hand-carved stools. He considers this time as nearly meditative – repetitive work in concentration, solitude, being close to nature and living according to the changing seasons of the year. Mucha regained the joy of the simplicity of creation. He built for himself and his own pleasure.

The story of Mucha's pandemic experiment appeared in the form of an exhibition at Zachęta in the summer of 2021. The designer described the course of the project in Tabaszowa in his favourite format — a photo book. The viewers could see the photos documenting the stages of his work both in the album and on gallery walls. The title of the exhibition alludes to the nineteenth-century experiment and the book Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau, a thinker and ascetic puritan, who postulated starting the world anew and transforming man. One idea put forth would be through getting closer to nature and returning to the primitive forms of life.

Thoreau built his hut in the woods using lumber from local trees, as well as from elements recovered from an abandoned house in the area, just like Mucha. The artist's ecological approach is evident throughout the project: he used old windows, and he also recycled wooden waste left over from construction from which he built sculptures resembling ritual masks or totems. He set them up in the space of the gallery on classic museum pedestals or hung them on the walls. These are Bartosz Mucha's first experiments with wooden sculpture. The objects presented at the exhibition are somewhat reminiscent of the exhibition of folk craft, which is a completely new style for Mucha. The joy of experimentation that accompanied the artist is written into them.

Selected prizes:

2015 - Must have, Lodz Design Festival for clocks: Vice Clock 2 i Vice Nutcracker
2013 - Must have, Lodz design Festival for Poor Toy

Selected individual exhibitions:

2011 - 52 leniwe tygodnie. Paraarchitektura, Kordegarda Project , Warsaw
2010 - 12% normy, the Faculty of Industrial Design, Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw
2009 - 12% normy, BWA Design, Wrocław
2007 - Dizajnmuzeum 2. Oświecenie, F.A.I.T., Kraków
2006 - Dizajnmuseum, F.A.I.T., Kraków
2005 - Sześcian w zlewie, BB Gallery, Kraków; BB Gallery, Wrocław

Selected group exhibitions:

2021 – Projekt Rożnowskie. Azyl w Tabaszowej (The Rożnowskie, or a Refuge in Tabaszowa), Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw
2015 - Jakarta, Polish Design. In the Middle of, Helsinki Design Week, Moderna. Industry + Handicraft, Designbock Festival, Praga, Polished Up
2014 - Cologne, Germany, Polished Up: design from Poland, Instanbul, Turkey, Polska in Between
2013 - DMY, Berlin, Germany, Łódź Design Festival, Łódź
2012 - Pop-Up. Design Between Dimensions, Musée de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains, Lozane, France, Unpolished 6, Milan, Italy
2011 - Zwykła rzecz, International Design Festival, DMY 2011, Berlin, Germany, Unpolished 6, Milan, Italy
2010 - Unpolished 5. Young Design from Poland, BC Design Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, Berek! Szukam!, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Znaki Czasu, Toruń; Projekty wybrane, BWA, Zielona Góra; Polish! Folk, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Polish Design Expo, Expo, Shanghai, China; Etnodizajn Festiwal, Kraków; Ponderabilia, Poznań; Design Act Festival, Moscow, Russia; Łódź Design Festival, Łódź
2009 - Piekło rzeczy, Galeria Kronika, Bytom; Goodbye Design, Galeria Design, Wrocław; Made in Poland, Gliwice; Naturalne zasoby polskiego designu, Stalowa Wola; Science & Fiction, Galeria Zderzak, Kraków; Alfabet polski, BWA, Tarnów; Warszawa w budowie, Museum of Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Etnodizajn Festival, Kraków; Real World Laboratory, Museums Quartier, Vienna, Austria
2008 - Laboratoire du réel - Le design d’Europe Centrale, Saint-Étienne, France; International Design Biennale, Saint-Étienne, France; 10xPL. Jeune designers polonais, Marseille, France; Vienna Design Week, Vienna, Austria; Łódź Design Festival, Łódź; Heppen Transfer - Otwarcie!, Heppen Transfer Gallery, Warsaw
2007 - Mój świat. Nowa siła subiektywności, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Manual CC, Kronika Gallery, Bytom; Łódź Design Festival, Łódź
2006 - East Desires, Outpost Gallery & Church of St Simon and St Jude Norwich, Barwy klubowe, F.A.I.T., Kraków
2005 - Art Poznań 2005, Poznań

Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, June 2011. Updated, August 2021 by HSz.