A King of Limbs

In Haruspex, Krzysztof Grzybacz’s solo show at Pace Gallery in London and the first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom by Polish artist, he approaches the body as a site of amalgamation. A place where memory and time gather beneath the visible surface. Across the paintings, flesh appears to open, fold, and recede into textiles and landscapes, producing images that are at once intimate and strangely impersonal. The body is recognizable, but never entirely available to us.

Torso establishes this tension with particular force. Limbs and fragments of anatomy emerge through layers of openings, making the figure feel less represented than excavated. Grzybacz’s surfaces resist the polish often associated with figurative painting. Instead, they carry evidence of removal and revision through the use of muted color and thin layers of paint to create the impression that each image has been uncovered rather than constructed. 

This logic extends into Haruspicy, where body and textile forms become increasingly difficult to distinguish. The work’s horizontal expanse feels almost geological, as though the figure has become part of a tectonically shifting terrain. Elsewhere, Flag I introduce a more atmospheric landscape, while Birth returns to the body through a composition that suggests both emergence. Flowers and Primary Colors complicate these investigations further, bringing vivid botanical forms into structures that resemble bodily interiors.

What is compelling about the presentation of Grzybacz’s latest paintings is their refusal to settle into a single reading. This conceptual evolution within his work moves between figure and landscape, interior and exterior, organic life and constructed form. The title’s reference to divination becomes less an explanation than a useful framework. These paintings ask us to look beneath appearances, even as they continually frustrate our attempts to determine what exactly lies underneath. In that uncertainty, Haruspex locates its power, making looking itself feel like an act of interpretation. —Charles Moore