Sophie Tappeiner has been invited by Galeria Raster alongside The Breeder from Athens to participate in the third Warsaw edition of the project Friend of a Friend. Together, the galleries presen­t an exhibition con­fron­ting the nature of pain and discomfort—in their social, existen­tial and iden­tity dimen­sions but also the most literal, bodily aspect.

In his latest works, prepared especially for the FOAF show, Oskar Dawicki (born 1971) toys with extreme emotions. In a series of objects titled Pipes, this game takes on a literal but also ambivalent character—gold screws drill through bones in a melodious embrace. Similarly, in the photograph Hungry Gap (for My Mother), the artist directs an encoun­ter between wild animals and the tool of their poten­tial annihilation, as we observe deer snif­fing warily at hun­ters’ rifles. Extreme over­con­trol of stimuli is also the theme of the work 71 Sour­ces of Light, in which the artist illuminates an empty corner of the gal­lery. All of these works func­tion as a sort of per­for­mative still life, com­bining the existen­tial, fatalistic aura typical for Dawicki with a pain­ful diagnosis of our “here and now.”

The Breeder Gal­lery presents the work of the Greek artist and activist Geo­r­gia Sagri (born 1979). Sagri was one of the initiators of the Occupy New York movement, and her works, com­bining musical, per­for­mative and filmic elements, curatorial prac­tices, instal­lations and texts, have been presen­ted at numerous museums and art institutions, inc­luding the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Deep Cut (2018), shown at Raster, is an illusionist, over­scaled depic­tion of a deep, bleeding wound. The festering wound on the gal­lery wall suits a time of economic and social uncer­tainty, becoming a dramatic sign of con­tem­porary fears and dangers.

Sophie Tap­peiner Gal­lery presents aluminium objects by Irina Lotarevich (born 1991), a Russian-​American artist living and wor­king in New York and Vienna. The sculp­tures from the series Storage Box A4 allude to func­tional design for better organization of space and economization of work, but also inc­lude bodily references—enlarged frag­ments of her skin cast by the artist. The other artist shown by the Vienna gal­lery as part of FOAF is Kyle Thur­man (born 1986, living and wor­king in New York), whose drawings and pain­tings recon­sider popular depic­tions of the male body in con­tem­porary cul­ture. Thur­man departs from various source images to reveal non-​normative, intimate and sur­prising forms for envisaging masculinity while questioning the main­tenance of institutional violence in the mass media.