Coined by cultural theorist Grafton Tanner to describe the late-capitalist compulsion to continuously refresh and extend the past, “foreverism” is a term that lies at the heart of The Spin Off. Rafał Zajko’s works embrace this phenomenon, merging folklore, pop culture, and science fiction to investigate how history is perpetually repackaged and recontextualised. The result is an exhibition that blurs the lines between past and future, authenticity and fabrication.
Focal Point Gallery in Southend hosts the first UK institutional solo exhibition of Rafał Zajko, a Polish-born, London-based artist, open till June 7, 2025. This ambitious new body of work offers a theatrical and immersive exploration of memory, repetition, and cultural cycles. Spanning sculpture, ceramics, fresco, and installation, the exhibition continues Zajko’s practice of world-building while engaging with contemporary ideas of nostalgia and preservation.
Funny Games, Zajko’s most ambitious installation to date, is a dynamic and ever-changing environment featuring modular platforms, elliptical ceramic reliefs, and towering egg-shaped sculptures rearranged daily by gallery staff according to precise diagrammatic instructions. Drawing inspiration from architect Frederik Kiesler’s “Endless Theatre” (1916), Funny Games embodies infinite possibilities of transformation, serving alternately as an artwork, a theatrical set, and an architectural experiment. Embedded within the installation are symbolic elements – a miniature sarcophagus preserved in a pickle jar, ceramic kaiser rolls, and eggs – nestled within sculptural larders that contain reinventions of Zajko’s earlier works. It also serves as the stage for a performance featuring members of Contemporary Elders, Focal Point Gallery’s community group. Their ritualistic movements within the space, alongside those of visitors and gallery staff, are captured by CCTV cameras, creating a live-broadcasted cycle of performance and preservation. Through this interplay of surveillance and spontaneity, Zajko examines the tension between controlled repetition and organic transformation.
A Star Is Born emerges as a self-performing sculpture that breathes. Literally. Building on the artist’s previous work, Lazarus (2020), which required Zajko’s own breath to generate smoke, this new iteration automates the process. At regular intervals, the sculpture exhales clouds of vapor, echoing the cyclical rhythms of both respiration and cultural revival. By eliminating the artist’s physical presence, Zajko further interrogates the autonomy of objects and how history is animated by external forces.
Zajko also introduces a new medium into his practice – fresco painting – using raw pigments applied to porous ceramic tiles. These frescoes appear throughout the exhibition, reinforcing the theme of recurrence and preservation. By integrating this ancient technique into a contemporary context, Zajko underscores the paradox of time: the past is always present, and the present is always looking backward. As such, The Spin Off is a reflection on cycles – both personal and cultural. As the exhibition concludes its run in Southend, it will travel to Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Poland, in 2026, symbolically returning to Zajko’s childhood home. This journey, like the works themselves, is an ongoing loop, a spin-off of time itself.
The Spin Off
March 26 – June 7, 2025
Focal Point Gallery, Southend, UK
About Rafał Zajko
Rafał Zajko (b. 1988, Białystok, Poland) is a London-based artist. Zajko was recently awarded the Abbey Fellowship at the British School at Rome (Spring 2024). His sculptural commission, Bread and Milk, was shown in Autumn 2023 at Kunshalle Wien in Austria. Recent solo exhibitions include Clocking Off at Queercircle (2023), Song to the Siren at Cooke Latham Gallery (2022), Amber Waves at Public Gallery (2021), Resuscitation, Castor Projects, London, UK (2020); We Were Here/My Tu Bylismy, Galeria Im. Slendzinskich, Białystok, Poland (2019); Unputdownable, White Cubicle, London (2018). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including London Open 2022 at Whitechapel Gallery; New Contemporaries 2021 at South London Gallery; X Museum, Beijing, China (2020); TJ Boulting, London, UK (2020); and Bold Tendencies, London, UK (2020).
Contemporary Lynx acknowledged Rafal Zajko in the 2020 Allegro Prize.
