by There is a lot of art about birth, death and rebirth, but not much of it uses cucumbers. However, the canned goods are the largest solo show so far through the Polish artist Rafał Zajko. Large salt glasses filled with salty cucumbers and small figures in the form of cryogenic preserving chambers. This combination of fantastic science fiction and everyday mouth is Zajko’s trademark. The artist based in London has spent the past few years to show ceramic and concrete sculptures with flights of cybernetic romance and allusions for vaping, baking and pimples.
In the spin -Off, as this show in the Focal Point Gallery is called in Southend, he has gotten deep immersion in a huge mess of ideas about durability and rebirth. The middle of the room is dominated by an egg floor sculpture that is moved and redesigned all week. Ceramic tiles placed over the surface and look like a map of planetary systems or control panels for extraterrestrial spaceships that are covered with incomprehensible buttons, keys and displays. Circular sections of it can be lifted out and replaced by objects from the cupboards on the wall: small concrete eggs, ceramic -kaiser buns, cucumber glasses.
It is as if Zajko asks what the meaning of life is forever – if they are observed all the time
Eggs are everywhere. They are cut around the room in showcases in benches. They are shaped into huge, uncomfortable stools in the middle of the gallery (an allusion to designer Philippe Starck’s legendary but useless lemon squeezer). They are embedded in reliefs on the wall that look like maps of future cities. They are symbols of rebirth, endurance and survival.
In the other main gallery, a huge red eye blinks on it in a huge plastic bubble and flashes laser when it extends an endless cloud out of Vape smoke, a dirty miasma of monitoring state aesthetics, as if Zajko asks forever if they are observed all the time.
Zajko lines the walls between the galleries and painted frescoes from eggs and this Philippe Starcksfter’s Juics, which surround a huge relief of gray humanoid bodies that are occupied with pink chewing gum. Vitrines are filled with architectural sculptures from upcycled church candles.
The whole thing is named in relation to pop culture (every work is named after a film that has at least one remake, a star born, funny games, cruel intentions), art and design history, Polish mythology and so on. It feels overwhelmed and undervalued. It is so enthusiastic about its own endless references that the history of work is lost a little.
This is a shame, because the aesthetics are great. Zajko is unique: it is like a pastel -colored alien; Science fiction horror take over a gentle, cotton sweetness; A McDonald’s designed by an Xenomorph; A Mattel metropolis. It is attractive, tempting, you want to touch everything, get lost in it.
The main boost of the show, the main idea, is brilliant. It is so full of fear of death and fear in the future: This is the art of a spirit that buzzes with concern about what comes next and desperately tries to stick to self -feeling. However, this esoteric science fiction and severe theoretization are rooted in everyday life of these rolls and cucumbers. There is all a feeling of joy and humor, a connection to the past, reality. To live forever, see what the future is doing, may be frightening, but at least there will be cucumbers.
