Home Sweet Home exhibition at Łęctwo Gallery, 2026
curated & text by Mateusz Włodarek
picture by Szymon Sokołowski
Home sweet home is a promise of peace, warmth, and security. This idiomatic phrase circulates through interiors like a spell—printed on signs by the door, wallpapered above the sofa, cut from plywood and displayed on a dresser. Part decoration, part amulet. It is meant not only to adorn a space but also to perform a function: to soothe and reassure us that home is a safe place.
In his latest works, Kacper Tomaszewski examines this promise. He investigates what it is actually made of and how it takes material form. Yet he is not interested in its decorative layer alone, but rather in the concrete mechanisms through which security is produced: keys, door handles, metal shutters, curtains. These familiar objects of everyday life shape the relationship between inside and outside—a relationship that manifests itself through locking, covering, and filtering. They establish boundaries, separate, and sometimes simply barricade. Through these simple gestures, security ceases to be merely a slogan and becomes something tangible.
Tomaszewski also expresses this narrative of how security is constructed through the materials from which he creates his works. The metal bars that form the shutters function as protective devices, yet they also evoke structural elements. Bars stabilize constructions and ensure the durability of buildings. Alongside them appears plywood, a material used to make furniture, shelves, doors, and various domestic decorations. Plywood is meant to warm a space and give it character, but it also organizes, partitions, and protects it. Cotton, the material on which Kacper creates his paintings, operates in a similar way. It filters and diffuses light, softening vision while simultaneously revealing, concealing, and safeguarding the interior.
The central element of the exhibition is a steel house placed on a wooden branch that connects the gallery’s two levels. It recalls childhood dreams—of escape, of having a place of one’s own somewhere beyond the routines of everyday life. On the one hand, Tomaszewski amplifies this realm of fantasy by placing Sylvanian Families figurines inside the structure, creatures that are at once zoomorphic and anthropomorphic. On the other hand, the house itself is cool and gleaming. The steel reflects the viewer’s gaze, making it difficult to clearly distinguish between what is outside and what is within. It still resembles a shelter of some kind, yet it no longer functions in the way one might expect.
And ultimately, it remains unclear whether this is still a home or merely an idea of one. Where, exactly, is this “sweet home”? Perhaps it is closer to a burrow than to a place that truly provides a sense of safety.