The last seven years of intense, focused research into the potential of skin as an element are at the heart of the solo show by Jan Baszak (Szczecin, 1994), on view until September 5th at the BGSW in Słupsk, Poland. A delicate kiss on the double forehead draws on the long tradition of a prophetic, artisanal encounter with a material that has run through the course of history, between utility and investment in luxury.
Skin, by its very nature, comes from the body of sacrificed creatures, and this origin runs through all of Baszak’s work, which plays with steps and evocations marked by mystery and the precariousness of existence itself. By emphasizing the material’s nature as a covering, the artist works with the idea of the mask and a mysterious opening onto a void, one that recalls a passage into a dreamlike dimension.
The exhibition’s title takes its cue from a two-headed calf, featured in one of the works on display. From there unfolds a journey that investigates the nature of the fetish, turning a traditional material like skin into the true paradigm shift of the entire show. Skin as a symbol of the body, but also as the intuition of a new costume, moves within art’s typical drive to overturn and rewrite everything.
In his search for a patina that encloses and seals organs and viscera, Jan Baszak also works with materials like stockings and scraps of fabric which, thanks to their elasticity and sewing-machine craftsmanship, recreate the appearance of a coat for mysterious, beloved creatures (as in the sculpture Two-headed goat, 2025).
Between memory, fetishism and mystery, the installations tell a story that embraces a powerful aesthetic of decay. A recurring melancholy and poses of abandonment shape a reading of this theater of figures, suspended between defeated and repressed desire.
The pedestals on which the works rest evoke stasis and the total absence of measurable time. The worked materials, rendered in what the artist calls the «precarious appearance of the eternal», inspire a mix of awe and reverence, the same one felt in front of every archetypal figure with towering contours. Designed at twilight, Jan Baszak’s creatures live, and powerfully shine, in a time suspended, outside of time.
