Sebastian Winkler
& Rafał Żarski
Names

Ghosts, demons, revenants. They seep through the cracks, settle into tissues, make themselves at home in the corners we would rather not look into. They tempt and seduce, sweetly entice – only to whisper, scream, and twist our joints a moment later. They wander freely, tangle around our legs, and peer over our shoulders as we fall asleep. But do we really need exorcisms to be rid of them? Perhaps instead of banishing them from our world, we should offer what they themselves cannot find – a refuge, a voice, and a mindful gaze.

In ”Names”, the Winkler/Żarski duo decode the meanings of evil spirits, disenchanting them and restoring their subjectivity. Rather than trying to cast them out, the artists reach out to them and ask: what would happen if we befriended our demons? Their point of departure is horror Cinema – such as “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” – in which they trace contemporary fears and social fantasies. Drawing on theories of vision, queer practices, and pop-cultural imagery, they ask: who are these lost, terrifying spirits today? Are they nothing more than predictable jump scares that wake us at 3:33 a.m., or afterimages that return when we close our eyes? The images that haunt us from screens – large and small – refuse to release our gaze. Like light that first touches the cornea before becoming an image in the brain, they leave behind a trace that cannot be erased.

The exhibition features paintings, films, drawings, and sculptures – each medium opening itself to the presence of what is unsettling and uncanny. It is an act of taming fear, of looking it straight in the eye – without hiding behind a cross or a spell.

Rafał Żarski (born 1989) is a visual artist working with video, sound, drawing, installation, and performative-curatorial practices. His work explores the politics of labor and leisure, focusing on themes of productivity and exhaustion within the contexts of contemporary technology, politics, and economic systems. He graduated in Multimedia from the Academy of Art in Szczecin (MA, 2016). From 2016 to 2020, he co-ran the Museum Travel Office project. He has participated in residency programs at the Arsenał Gallery (Białystok, 2017), Brno House of Arts (2018), and the International Studio and Curatorial Program (New York, 2020). Since 2020, he has co-run DOMIE in Poznań. Selected solo and group exhibitions include: ”I Want Everyone to Wish Each Other Plenty of Sleep” – MOS Gorzów Wlkp., 2025; “ETC: Selling Out” – Ljubljana, 2024; “Social Ecology” – National Museum in Szczecin, 2023; “Coalition” – DOMIE, Poznań, 2022; “Para-figurations” – Ground Floor Gallery, Pfizer Building, New York, 2022; “Eye, Hand, Chair” – Łęctwo Gallery, Poznań, 2021; “Constant Rendering” – The Brno House of Arts, 2019; “The Draughtsman’s Contract” – Arsenał Gallery, Białystok, 2018; “Time is Over” – Project Room, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2016; “Young Poland – Afterimages of Reality” – Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2016.

Sebastian Winkler (born 1993) works with photography, sculpture, painting, video and performance. Moving between different media, he often combines them into collage-like forms. His practice draws from images found in visual culture – transforming, analysing, reconstructing, or destroying them to explore their properties. He is inspired by texts on vision, queer theory, and cinema. Since 2019, his projects have addressed exclusion, identity critique, and queer representation. The exhibition ”Grandma Tina” (2019) asked about the roots of Polish racism; ”Skóra spruta i krew popsuta” (“Skin Unraveled and Blood Spoiled”, Stroboskop, 2021) examined the links between economic exclusion and homophobic stereotypes. In *”SELFSPLOITATION” (DOMIE, 2022) and “We’re no computers, Sebastian, we’re physical” (Foksal Gallery, 2022), the artist explored emotional labor within non-normative identities. His subsequent exhibitions, ”Prison Boys” (Pola Magnetyczne, 2023) and ”Shutter and Specter” (Pawilon Bliska, 2024), developed his reflection on the usefulness of mainstream cinema in considering queer subjectivity. His latest project, ”Lookalikes” (Whoispola, 2025), created in collaboration with Katarzyna Kozyra, addresses issues of gender and sexuality, evoking the metaphor of clones and doppelgängers.