The Spin Off

In this mind-blowing and dazzling exhibition, Zajko takes us into a mysterious realm of art and domesticity, of manufacturing and consumption

Rafał Zajko, Denim, 2025. Performance in collaboration with Contemporary Elders and Agnieszka Szczotka at Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, 2025. Photo: Amber Merry.

Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea
26 March – 7 June 2025

by SABINE CASPARIE

Rafał Zajko likes bread. It appeared in ceramic form at his show at Public Gallery in 2021, where I first encountered his work, and it was the thing that stuck with me then as the antithesis of art – basic, edible, perishable. So, I was happy to encounter the bread again at this exhibition at Focal Point Gallery, like a welcome gift, a spin-off of sorts.

Introducing the exhibition in the first gallery, which is painted a sugary pink, Zajko ignores the six modest, ceramic kaiser rolls resting on the shelves of one of the Larders (2025) – cabinet-like sculptures with relief sliding doors. Instead, he grabs a glass pot filled with pickles (which also contains ceramic miniatures of earlier sculptures), then walks to the large floor-based sculpture in the centre – eight modular parts on wheels, arranged in an ellipse. Each module has an apple-green base and an elaborate relief pattern on top, like the tiled murals you find at underground stations or entrances to public parks. The circular shapes turn out to be lids, and Zajko lifts one lid carefully in order to put the gherkin in its place (gallery staff will be reconfiguring the installation daily). It is captivating to watch, a mix of art performance and the banal gestures usually associated with shopkeeping. Zajko seems at ease in this mysterious realm of art and domesticity, of manufacturing and consumption. Born in Poland in 1988, the year before the fall of the Berlin wall, he came of age in an era when consumer goods still had something of a magical aura.

Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off, Installation view, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, 2025. Photo: Corey Bartle-Sanderson.

The star of this exhibition is not the bread but the egg. In the middle of the installation Funny Games (2025) is an egg-totem and six egg-shaped chairs; they don’t look that comfortable and the veneer of consumerism is already starting to crack. Four duck-egg blue benches placed around the ellipse contain built-in glass boxes with eggs – real ones this time. A rusty pink wall relief, mirroring the shape of the large, central ellipse, shows the top of one ceramic white egg sticking out; three real eggs are nestled inside its intricate web of lines, curves and cavities.

Rafał Zajko, Cathedral II (Nest), 2025. Bodysuit in collaboration with Stefan Kartchev. Installation view, Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, 2025.

The relief is Zajko’s trademark creation, his versions so unusual and original that I can only describe them as a cross between a circuit board and the playfield of a pinball machine, or what would happen if an electrician were asked to design a structure to transmit electricity through a Louise Nevelson sculpture. There is a more industrial-looking relief, its curves similar to train tracks, painted a patinated green. When I stand a little closer, I spot a tiny, ceramic human head in one of its compartments; it is perched, Brâncuși-like, on its side. Zajko seems to relish these elements of surprise and disruption – shaking up our perception, mixing up references to cinema and theatre, to fairytales and myths. The exhibition title, Spin Off, turns out to be a perfect metaphor for his works: they branch out, cross-reference, rehash, cycle back.

Rafał Zajko in collaboration with artist Mike McShane, A Star Is Born, 2025. Installation view, Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, 2025. Photo: Corey Bartle-Sanderson.

A Star Is Born (2025), described by the artist as a “self-performing sculpture”, occupies the entire second gallery. Created in collaboration with artist Mike McShane, it consists of a huge acrylic bubble, protruding from a heavy, black circular wall. When the installation is switched on, the sculpture fills itself with smoke through a complex mechanical structure at the back, visible when walking around it. The smoke is blown into the glass sphere through seven circular nozzles, each with a different pattern of abstract shapes, lines and compartments, like miniature versions of Zajko’s reliefs. To complete the spectacle, white and red laser beams are projected into the glass ball, curving like the coloured streams of a fountain. It is mind-blowing and dazzling, this feat of electrical engineering and artistic design – a wild, futuristic breathing machine, hissing and churning. When I catch Zajko later, on a vape break outside, I wonder for a split second if this is part of the artwork, too.

Rafał Zajko in collaboration with artist Mike McShane, A Star Is Born, 2025. Installation view, Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, 2025. Photo: Corey Bartle-Sanderson.

A vitrine, painted in the same candy-colour green as some of the sculptures, houses four wall-based sculptures encased in bio concrete. The grey oval forms (egg-shaped, did you get it?) contain small paintings inside, like tablets: more machines and more eggs. Zajko painted these using a fresco technique that he learned on a residency for the British School of Rome last year. A large rectangular wall relief in the centre has tiny pieces of cast pink chewing gum stuck to it. It is the most political work, inspired by the chewing gum left on the Berlin wall that cut off Zajko’s home country from the west, but ironically it is the only work that leaves me indifferent. Zajko’s art is strongest when it remains both complex and fantastical, when the dark underbelly of capitalism is hinted at, yet never made literal.

Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off, Installation view through CCTV, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, 2025.

Zajko’s production line of artwork seduces you then leaves you longing for something intangible. It captures consumer culture perfectly: its relentlessness and its desire. When you exit the exhibition, you can see the other “consumers” projected to CCTV on a screen above the reception, as if caught red-handed. The exhibition booklet compares this view from above to a church or an architectural plan, but Zajko’s work has to be experienced, not theorised. Visiting his exhibition encapsulates what it would feel like going to Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island: an amusement and a curse. It is an utterly brilliant ride.