Scope BLN

Scope BLN presents SHORTHAND Solo Exhibition by Austin Alphonse Opening: Thursday, May 21 at 06:00 PM May 21 – June 19, 2026 Shorthand presents the preparatory material behind Austin Alphonse’s painting practice. Known for large-scale figurative oil paintings that examine American masculinity, class identity, and the mythologizing of working-class life, Alphonse builds his images through an extended process of drawing, writing, collecting, photographing, collaging and careful revision. This exhibition brings together materials from the artists studio that typically remain unseen: thumbnail sketches, compositional studies, preparatory drawings, fragments of writing, and loose studio notes.

Scope BLN presents UNFINISHED FINISHED Solo Exhibition by Ayong Son April 22 – May 15, 2026 Opening: Wednesday, April 22 at 06:00 PM In her solo exhibition Unfinished Finished, the Scope BLN’s artist in residency, Ayong Son explores the shifting relationship between process and result in contemporary image culture. In a time when images are rapidly produced, distributed, and consumed, the boundaries between creation and result are beginning to blur so much that we find it difficult to determine what is authentic. Through a minimal yet conceptually precise installation, the exhibition stages a reversal: what appears to be stable becomes temporary, and what is understood as final reveals itself as ongoing.

The opening of Ayong Son’s solo show UNFINISHED FINISHED was filled with so many unfinished and finished talks, questions and answers about the image and its life in the conditions of the contemporary visual environment and all the challenges that arise from it. Through a subtle but rigorous gesture, the exhibition questions how we define completion, authorship, and authenticity in an era of endless reproduction. It invites viewers to reconsider what they recognize as a result—and whether such a category can still hold.

Thank you to all the artists - for the inspiring talks and the performance - part of TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE: Queer Relations in the Posthuman Age at Scope BLN. Alejandro Montero Bravo I Chang Gao I Jane Garbert I Gabriel Gutierrez Morales I Viktor Petrov I Paweł Reczek I Anton Stoianov I Jakob Urban I Lee Mun Wai Curated by Boris Kostadinov

TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE Queer Relations in the Posthuman Age Scope BLN Cinema Room   A ritual tradition in materiality can be found in the work by Paweł Reczek, where into an atavistic and historically persistent notion of the body is implanted the concept of the collection and management of biometric data. At first glance, the absurd interaction between the deeply natural and the advanced digital gives a perspective the continuous metamorphosis of the organic with the technological appearance of the contemporary archetypes of our bodies.   The electricity in the interactive installation by Chang Gao is fully functioning, connecting the sculptures through built-in electronics. Desire is a dynamic process between human bodies and technologies. The sensors and the skin conductivity of the participating viewers function as metaphors of techno-erotics, where intimacy is beyond skin-to-skin contact and naturally transfers into technological infrastructures and algorithmic systems.   Lee Mun Wai’s solo dance performance intertwines fashion, sexuality, desire, and reflects on how current technologies of our social interactions shape the way we visually desire and experience bodies. Simultaneously sculptural and fluid, his body encounters and tries to incorporate two grossly oversized, two-dimensional garments, designed by Romanian fashion designer Dinu Bodiciu.   The film by Gabriel Gutierrez Morales tells the story of a generation that grew up on dating apps like Grindr and Tinder — a virtual but real place where you are not alone and you are in a protected environment. Romanticizing the routine of texting, showing up at strangers’ homes, the pleasure, the disappointment, and the quiet journey back to yourself when you delete Grindr to start all over again the next morning.   Curated by Boris Kostadinov Photos: @chroma.studioberlin and @idasophia_artist

TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE Queer Relations in the Posthuman Age Scope BLN Project Space The icon by Anton Stoianov merges medieval painting techniques with gender as biopolitics, deconstructing patriarchal iconography through insectoid forms and female biological markers. In this posthuman future, gender becomes a fluid, hybrid force of resilience. Alejandro Montero Bravo explores how the early internet promised unlimited queer freedom, while today’s digital space is shaped by power structures and conservative norms — transforming escape into a controlled extension of reality. Viktor Petrov reinterprets “Scouting for Boys,” tracing its racist, militaristic and machismo roots to the present: chemical desire, dating platforms, and digital “cloning” of gay male appearance from Fire Island to Rio, Berlin and Tel Aviv. Jane Garbert’s glass objects suggest connection — lemon as battery, cable as conductor — yet the “copulation” remains impossible. Their non-functional, fragile nature hints at imagined and often unreachable contact. Jakob Urban’s monochromes collect screenshots from the queer dating platform ROMEO, exploring anonymity, hidden desire and self-censorship within digital intimacy. Curated by Boris Kostadinov Photos: @chroma.studioberlin

What an incredible evening — filled with so many friends, colleagues, guests, and beautiful encounters. Thank you to everyone who joined us for the opening of TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE – Queer Relations in the Posthuman Age and for the powerful performance for the exhibition at Scope BLN. We’re grateful for the energy, the conversations, and the shared curiosity about how our technological present reshapes desire, our bodies, and the ways we imagine connection. Saturday, April 11 at 06:00 PM. - Artists talks and a performance by Mun Wai. TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE is on view until April 17, 2026

Lucy Ellis recently arrived at Scope BLN for a 6-month residency. She is a visual artist working across moving image and expanded animation. Her practice emerges from a conflicted relationship with technology, oscillating between technophilia and technophobia. Ellis uses analogue as a deliberate slowing, an act of resistance against technology’s speed, obsolescence and constant evolving nature. By reworking obsolete material both physical and digital, she treats waste not as an endpoint but as material in circulation that is slowed, looped, and reactivated. Artwork: @——!!!, 2024, digital mixed media loop animation, VHS transfer video/sound length: 1:11 (meant to be watched on loop infinitely)

Scope BLN presents TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE Queer Relations in the Posthuman Age Alejandro Montero Bravo I Chang Gao I Jane Garbert I Gabriel Gutierrez Morales I Viktor Petrov I Paweł Reczek I Anton Stoianov I Jakob Urban I Lee Mun Wai Curated by Boris Kostadinov Opening: Friday, March 13 at 6:00 PM Lübecker Straße 43 10559 Berlin The group exhibition TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE explores how queer subjectivity is shaped within the intertwining of the biological, the digital, and the synthetic. As gender and identity become increasingly fluid, the exhibition asks not who we are, but how we are transformed within the framework of technology. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s cyborg, the posthuman here is not speculative — it is everyday life. AI, biometric tracking, and hormone therapies expand possibilities while quietly structuring them. The body is organic and coded at once. Virtual presence provides new opportunities, but it also exposes us to surveillance. The research part of TECHNOLOGY OF DESIRE is supported by Recherchestipendien Bildende Kunst 2025 by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt - Berlin

An impactful finissage of SEEPAGE / PRZESĄCZANIE by Paweł Reczek, featuring an artist talk that illuminated the conceptual foundations of the project, followed by a profoundly resonant performance where the narratives taken from Polish folklore was organically woven into the artist’s personal mythology!

Thanks to our artists in residency Pawel Reczek, Ayong Son, Lucy Ellis and Austin Alphonse for showcasing their past and current projects in our informal studio visits yesterday.

Seepage / Przesączanie by Paweł Reczek is a project that boldly, but also delicately mixes legends with personal mythology, collective memory with essential moments from the artist’s life. We take a closer look at three stories: the Striga, buried alive for being different and returning to life because it possessed two hearts and two souls; a beautiful Aquarius who drowned young man to spend eternity with him; and the fate of two shepherds who died during a storm and became flames or shadows protecting the mountains. Each character is associated with specific plants and materials: blood, dirt, milk, honey, fire, and wool, which are used to create the drawings.