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.

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