A gentle kiss on a double forehead
Jan Baszak
Curator: Kamil Mizgała
BGSW / Baszta
al. F. Nullo 8, Słupsk
20 June – 5 September 2026
Collaboration on the exhibition arrangement: Małgorzata Zelek
Graphic design: Karolina Pietrzyk and Tobias Wenig
Coordination: Sylwia Starkowska
Translations: Monika Ujma
A gentle kiss on a double forehead consolidates Jan Baszak’s creative output produced in the last seven years, dedicated to leather as a material and as a figure detached from the body, with the traces of memory and use it bears. Leather constitutes here an archival record as well as an object of attention, amplifying the experience of detail. Baszak’s animal sculptures are sewn together from reclaimed materials. A dense combination of textiles triggers associations with wounds, fur and skin extracted from their usual order. This lyrical figuration enables the victim’s perspective to be one of the stances proposed by the exhibition.
The show uses the concept of fetish understood as an element that suddenly acquires surplus meaning and becomes the focus of attention as something of greater than usual importance. In this perspective, the works reveal the tension that builds up between the visible and the unrecoverable. Fetish renders absence tangible, transferring yearning from being directed at a person towards an object and raises the question of whether an ethical relationship towards what is a mere vestige is possible. Is the attention confined to dead skin still a way of opening or, perhaps, a closing in the circulation of one’s own desire?
The eponymous double forehead carries the suggestion of a mask worn over the face. Animal heads in Baszak’s work allow for masquerade-like hiding and scare-giving and, simultaneously, operate as tools of a unifying metamorphosis. As a result, it is far from plain if we are dealing with a body, a part of it, or a costume. The title motif is echoed by one of the pieces, representing a little two-headed calf, an unwelcome occurrence in actual breeding, an animal doomed to early death. The gentle kiss directs attention to a detail that holds the gaze and releases it from the logic of completeness.
The exhibition is running concurrently with the International Exhibition of Leather Forms (curatorial team: Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew, Romuald Demidenko), on view at the BGSW in Podgrodzie, Słupsk, and Ustka.
Jan Baszak – a visual artist working in sculpture, installation, scenography, textile art using research practices. He lives and works between Szczecin, Warsaw and Berlin. His creative practice is situated at the intersection of intimacy and melancholy. His works make use of post-human and animal-derived materials and old textiles, referencing queer theory, posthumanism, postnature and the agency of matter. His art investigates the complex relationships between humans and non-humans, exploring the mysticism of interspecies exchange of glances. He outlines models of communities founded on the principles of Halloween-style egalitarianism, providing space for non-binary and non-linear thinking. Baszak creates multilayer sculptural installations that oscillate between fantasy, affirmation of the weird and abject. He is represented by the gallery Whoispola.
Kamil Mizgała – an art curator and researcher who lives and works in Warsaw. His practice involves arts research, experimental research and processes of display creation. His projects rely on overwriting reality, laying emphasis on the significance of context in which they develop. He is interested in choreographies of selection springing from personal archives of experience. He studied at the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań with which he is currently associated, and the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. He has cooperated with a number of art galleries, including Wschód, Whoispola and Promocyjna in Warsaw, Galerie Max Mayer in Berlin, Centralne Muzeum Włókiennictwa in Łódź, Galeria Labirynt in Lublin, CoCA in Toruń, MOS Gorzów Wielkopolski, Warsaw Gallery Weekend, Constellations Warsaw and Zamek Culture Centre in Poznań where he curated together with Jagna Domżalska the Artist-In-Residence Programme. A member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
Related events:
