Scope BLN

presents

 

SEEPAGE / PRZESĄCZANIE

SOLO EXHIBITION BY PAWEŁ RECZEK

 

February 6 – February 27, 2026

Opening: Friday, February 6 at 06:00 PM

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A central motif in Paweł Reczek’s solo exhibition is the figure of the creature or monster, beings that hide from the world, yet attract those who have harmed them, driven by the logic of revenge. Misjudged, misunderstood, and born different, these figures embody both threat and beauty (outside social standards). Their theatrical forms become metaphors for otherness, desire, and survival, while also acting as mirrors of human behaviour.

The monsters are damaged and wounded, yet they remain mysterious, beautiful, and seductive.

Pop-culture is fascinated by monsters and fan fiction that explores innocent yet violent desire. In folklore, these creatures are whole, revealing their double nature: good and evil, dark and light, male and female, life and death.

 

Paweł Reczek draws deeply from Polish folk culture, where love is understood as eternal, genderless, and placed above social norms. This understanding connects directly to queer love in his work. These traditions, unconsciously cultivated through everyday rituals and intertwined with religion, remain a living presence in collective memory and continue to shape his visual and symbolic language.

The hottest is teenage guilt. It appears through the exoticization of the self, youth, naivety, and romantic suffering. It is strongly connected to place: his village, the forest, and folklore. It is a mythology of a small place that transforms into a surreal world.

 

In the exhibition Seepage / Przesączanie, we take a closer look at three stories: the Striga, buried alive for being different and returning to life because it possessed two hearts and two souls; a beautiful Aquarius who drowned young man to spend eternity with him; and the fate of two shepherds who died during a storm and became flames or shadows protecting the mountains. Each character is associated with specific plants and materials: blood, dirt, milk, honey, fire, and wool, which are used to create the drawings.

 

Paweł Reczek is a Polish artist whose work explores the body as both material and tool. Working across performance, drawing, painting, film, sculpture, and photography, he constructs multi-layered systems in which physical processes generate meaning. Narrative is not used in a traditional sense; instead, meaning emerges through action, repetition, presence, and transformation. He developed his visual language in Warsaw, Milan, and Paris.

Central to his practice is the body in a theatrical context. Through acting techniques, bodily exercises, and performative states, Paweł investigates how heightened physical awareness can produce connection, vulnerability, and immediacy. The body becomes a site of continuous negotiation between control and instinct, discipline and intuition. His projects unfold as interconnected cycles rather than isolated works. Films, sculptures, photographs, and drawings function as autonomous objects while simultaneously forming parts of larger, self-contained systems. These systems draw from film, theatre, myth, and nature, creating distinct visual languages.