PaweL Reczek

22.06.1998     Nisko     POLAND

Raised in a small village in southeast Poland, I grew up surrounded by nature and a close knit community. My artistic practice began with theatre studies, an experience that was both deeply personal and challenging, ultimately bringing me closer to myself. Seeking new forms, I pursued a painting and visual arts course, and drawing later. As a visual artist, my practice primarily is based on drawing and performance, delving into themes of identity, presence, character, and action, all beginning from my own body as a focal point.

My background in theatre and performance reconnected with my studio practice, using my body, my experience, and helping me to reinvent my queer identity.

I use the articulation of theatrical techniques and exercises to generate drawings. The process is based on a protocol: breathing, stretching and improvising, leaving traces of each action on paper. The drawings are the result of the different gestures, still questioning the actual importance of such documentation versus the performance itself.
My work investigates themes of creation through the quest for an alter ego: one that evolves into both actor and star. These works originate as reimagined versions of unlived lives, intertwining elements of a content-driven journey to create new worlds. Using the experience of acting, the vulnerability of self-taping and the emotional intensity of castings.

In this series, I explore self-making techniques and the concept of selfhood. These reflections are rooted in cinema and theatre narratives, by use of masks and posters, serving as a lens through which I investigate the interplay between personal expression and performative roles.
Using my body and face as a material, I create drawings and collages that fragment and reconstruct me, forming characters that exist within the worlds of pop culture, grotesque aesthetics, and cinema, all crafted entirely by me. These creations incorporate references to specific
masks, signifying positionality, queerness, and the heritage of my home country.

Painting is an impulse, an intuitive sequence of movements through my body prints, that feels like materiality. In the series of shedded drawings, the paper is the skin. By peeling to transparency, forced to fragility.