Kuba Stępień
Throbbing Scale
29.6—10.8.24
galeria SKALA 



I have long been lucky enough to feel real, no matter what diminishments or depressions have come my way. And I have long known that the moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you.”
 
-M. Nellson, Argonauts


Continuing the reflections captured in the film „All the Stories I Have Ever Told You Were Fiction” Kuba Stępień goes beyond the frames of recorded scenes, expanding them with a spatial installation at galeria SKALA. The exhibition „Throbbing Scale” presents a personal vision of collective tenderness, revealing its complex and dynamic structure. Everyone and everything is thought about and cared about in the joint experience, like the camera, documenting the ephemeral matter of emotions and interpersonal tensions, is brought to life by the performers and becomes an integral part of the group.
 
“The film transports viewers into a surreal world of gestures and non-verbal narration created by the performers, who unite in semi-improvised movement. Six interwoven scenes of video performance create a hypnotic collage of fiction, imagination, and desires, constructed from images of bodies, collective movement, and intimacy, challenging the standards of normative communication and binary orders.” — Romuald Demidenko
 
Freely moving between visual art media and pushing the boundaries of their capabilities to suit their artistic expression, Kuba Stępień weaves fantasies, proposing a new way of thinking about coexistence.
SKALA



A nonverbal intimacy spree, radically caring.  When hierarchies shift, certain expectations may either, and an exhibition text might as well become an appreciative love letter. 
 
As an artist myself, Kuba’s significant other and creative partner, working aside as well as with them, has been an absolute, indisputable pleasure. With day one our transdisciplinary minds met, and since I just can’t get enough of this person. 
 
This situation takes fantasies, pleasures seriously. Body waste constructs. 
Paintings are made with spit, 
There’s a lounging area, 
a doodle,
a sequence of unused movie clips flow for everyone to see what exactly didn’t make it to the final cut, 
a party flyer with an angel’s ass looking so vulnerable and ripe for a nice hard whipping. 
 
I like to think of the Throbbing Scale exhibition as an uplifting rabble rouser cabin, where passions highlight and minds veer all over the place, as in small bunnies hopping away towards endless wild horizons.
Emma Szumlas




“I always piss with my full power, the water makes loud noises, I’m strong.”*
There’s no way to hide it, probably something bout the way my body’s built
Sounds like someone’s deep frying a chicken
 
I leave the bathroom and you squint. You smell like the home that I’ve lost
I rub my index finger against the thumbnail three times, there’s a dent. I wasn’t aware it’s a stim
until a nail technician once told me in my gel nails era 
 
I smell like musty, poorly dried laundry, not fresh. This is what you say when you hug me goodbye and I worry that the smell I’m not aware of fills up the whole room, becomes the aura 
that I cannot control but some see (everyone sees, smells?)
There’s a bunch of people around, I grab my vape
 
I’m suddenly insecure, small, wrapped up in a bad smell
The stinky grey hoodie that fills up the whole room 
 
„It’s ok baby, X said it because someone else, bigger and even more important than you
hurt X while saying goodbye before” that’s the little guardian angel I carry inside me speaking 
 
We move our lips, there’re sounds coming out but simultaneously we carry another conversation
it happens under the table, our lips are moving and lying 
 
At least I take pride in the smell of my body. I drink lots of water
Do I smell the same without you? I’m afraid I’ll stop. I’m afraid I’ll put on weigh, grow uncontrollably 
 
The hoodie smells fine to me but I’m thinking bout it way too much. I kinda force a hug 
on a couple friendly people I talk to that day later on, so I can see their reaction 
No one says anything, you bitch 
 
The little angel inside me thinks you’re lying. But what if they’re the fake ones? 
Since me and you stopped talking I’ve been mostly using my second language
the language of polite, not too deep, words and gestures 
 
„Stop this, bitch” says the angel
 
* Tumblr
Gabriela Sułkowska 
 
Processes are absorbed by intertwining speeds, perspectives, and deviations; until suddenly they bend and question everything due to displacement.
Relationships have their own awareness. This dark category of the group is a being — a created code that slips through the grid of open practices. The wondrous reverses the flows that look, enter inside, and run in a herd.
Unlocking layers of the image slide off the white cube, activating relationships and reworkings. An obscure collectivity and semi-permeable barriers build in the space, drawing close. They do not strive for unity but reveal closeness. They press against each other while simultaneously creating disturbances, aberrations. They build spaces that oppose the binary order — these places not only persist but also unleash peculiar narratives.
The exhibition is a sticky bath in flickering light. It exposes relationships and pulses, shimmering as they gather rhythms common to the divided. This immersion is not separate, not discovered, not isolated; it is a network and remains in the network, darkening over time (like latex).
Kamil Gustaw Mizgała
 
Kuba Stępień’s exhibition “Throbbing Scale” was selected from among 62 proposals submitted for the first edition of the open call program at the SKALA gallery. The jury, consisting of Paweł Pachciarek and the gallery team, unanimously chose Kuba Stępień’s exhibition project. It stands out for its mature artistic expression, in which the artist moves freely and consciously. Kuba Stępień has developed unique methods of working with theoretical texts and translating them into visual language. The project is also characterized by thorough artistic research into contemporary social phenomena and the formation and consistent development of the aesthetic and substantive autonomy of artistic expression.
 
The texts by Kamil, Emma and Gabriela accompanying the exhibition are authoritative and are published without editorial or editorial interference.
The exhibition is co-financed by the Department of Culture of the City of Poznań and the Department of Culture of the Greater Poland Voivodeship, based at the Marshal’s Office of the Greater Poland Voivodeship in Poznań.
Free admission.