aqb Aritst-in-Residence Program presentations

6:00 pm Karoline PÖHN: NOBODY EXHIBITS – On Listening, Pace, and Material Agency
6:30 pm Roza MISZTELA: Rhythms of Existence – Budapest
7:00 pm Jan BASZAK – KOÓS Gábor: One Cherub Dances with Another

Karoline PÖHN: NOBODY EXHIBITS – On Listening, Pace, and Material Agency
In my artistic practice, textile materials function as carriers of knowledge, experience and history. But unlike a traditional talk, this session is not just about listening. It is about touching, sensing, and thinking together.
Participants are invited to handle the materials I work with daily: industrial surplus, discarded edges and textile fragments that usually remain unseen. They form the core of what I call Pace-Work: the intense, often invisible phase of exploration and struggle that happens before a finished piece emerges. It is the place where research takes form, decisions shift, and a work begins to speak.
Together, we will listen to these materials, explore how they negotiate memory, body and structure, and discuss how artistic practice can make space for perspectives and experiences that are otherwise overlooked.
I look forward to an open exchange, shared reflections, new connections and a moment of learning with the material, rather than only talking about it.

//

Karoline Pöhn is an Austrian Textile Artist and Researcher with a Background in Fashion&Technology as well as a Masters degree in textile.art.design. She worked in aqb for 3 months during her OÖ.Air.Gov Residency kindly sponsored by OÖ Landes Kultur GmbH and the Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest/Osztrák Kulturális Fórum.

/////

Roza MISZTELA: Rhythms of Existence – Budapest
Budapest is becoming (my) experimental space: a living organism, a body inscribed with histories, emotional traces, and the potential for healing. Through an intuitive, intermedial process combining poetry, Polaroid, and short-form video, the work maps the city's 'vegetative memory' – the subtle, material, and often unconscious memory held within its architecture, the natural flow of the Danube, and its everyday rhythms. This exploration seeks to uncover the deep, enduring dialogue between place and psyche.

//

Róża Misztela (b. Poland) is a visual artist, director, and creative producer working across film, poetry, and the visual arts. She trained at Łódź Film School and is currently pursuing postgraduate studies in creative writing at the SLA Writers’ School, Jagiellonian University. Her work, spanning interdisciplinary media, has been presented and awarded at national and international festivals, and is noted for its layered narratives, formal experimentation, and exploration of memory, emotion, and human experience.
Roza Misztela's residency was supported by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

/////

Jan BASZAK – KOÓS Gábor: One Cherub Dances with Another
The crystallizing crust and the evaporating toxins interweave, reviving long-lost primal connections. A miraculously shared glance reveals only what has faded away. Chimeric beings blur bodily boundaries, their shells proving unexpectedly permeable. Jagged edges conspire behind familiar contours, creating gaps, scars, and irregularities.
Bodies linger at the margins. They mingle, they merge, they mutate, dissolving into one another. Their surfaces lose integrity. They read the poems written upon themselves. Superfluous words are erased, their essence translated into a more universal tongue.
They stand as a living manifestation of the unspeakable.

//

Jan BASZAK
Baszak’s art explores the intersection of intimacy and melancholy. He works with posthuman and animal-derived materials, along with reclaimed textiles, drawing on queer theory, posthumanism, post-nature, and the vibrancy of matter.
His practice investigates the complex relationships between human and non-human beings, engaging with the mysticism of interspecies gaze exchange. He envisions models of community grounded in a kind of Halloween egalitarianism—spaces that embrace non-binary, non-linear forms of thinking.
Through layered sculptural installations, Baszak creates immersive worlds that revolve around fantasy, the affirmation of otherness, and the aesthetics of the abject.
Jan Baszak is represented by the WHOISPOLA Gallery. Jan's residency is supported by the International Visegrad Fund.

//

KOÓS Gábor
Gábor Koós graduated from the Graphic Design department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2012, and held the Derkovits Scholarship between 2013 and 2016. In 2014, he won the Hungarian Graphic Art Foundation Award at the XXVI Miskolc Graphic Triennial, and in 2015, he received the Graphic Art of the Year Award for his diploma work. In 2021, his creative work was recognized with the European Award at the Kraków International Print Triennial. In 2025, he was one of the recipients of the Esterházy Art Award. His works are featured in the collections of the Ludwig Museum and the Hungarian National Gallery, among others.