Basel, Switzerland
Jun 15 – 21, 2025
We are thrilled to be participating in Basel Social Club with a presentation of Krzysztof Jung's and Daniel Rycharski's works.
If you are interested in a preview of the presented works, please do contact us via info@gunianowikgallery.com.
For Basel Social Club 2025, we propose Daniel Rycharski’s (b. 1986) sculptural work Troughs (2022). These pieces engage directly with the venue’s themes of value, exchange, and inequality, reimagining forgotten rural objects as containers of both literal and metaphysical worth and inviting reflection on collective identity and economic transformation.
Rycharski is a conceptual artist whose practice bridges rural and queer identities, spirituality, and the socio-political tensions between tradition and modernity. His series Troughs transforms wooden farm troughs, dismissed as relics of pre-industrial agriculture, into poignant symbols of value and memory. By lining the interiors with golden pennies, Rycharski imbues these overlooked objects with sacred resonance, questioning capitalist notions of worth and highlighting the spiritual and communal loss tied to rural life’s decline.
The Troughs continue his exploration of the ‘death of life in the countryside’, addressing depopulation, industrialized agriculture, and the erosion of human-nature relationships. The golden coins evoke a sacralized aura, juxtaposing the troughs’ utilitarian origins with their contemporary symbolic rebirth.
Active from the 1970s – 1990s, Krzysztof Jung (1951–1998) was at the forefront of queer art in Poland. For Basel Social Club, we propose a selection of Jung’s intimate male portraits, created between the 1970s and 1980s. Jung’s portraits, intended for the erotic cabinet room, celebrate themes of queer desire and reciprocity, presenting male intimacy as an act of quiet resistance within unequal societal structures.
These personal drawings, discovered in the artist’s apartment following his untimely death, predominantly depict men who were close to him—partners, friends, and lovers. The men are calm, introspective, yet free and unreservedly erotic, their images intertwining to form a tapestry of male-to-male love and friendship. The eroticism in his work, though palpable, serves as a conduit for deeper emotional truths rather than being an end in itself. Through delicate pencil shading or meticulously broken ballpoint lines, Jung’s drawings become affirmations of queer desire, filled with longing and personal projection.
The works proposed for Basel Social Club fit seamlessly into the erotic cabinet room, where themes of desire and vulnerability center. Jung’s portraits embody the tenderness and trust that defined his relationships, with recurring motifs, such as the bed, symbolizing spaces of connection and introspection. These drawings are not merely representations, but intermediaries of the connections and emotional and physical intimacy that permeated Jung’s life.
