A child behind a curtain asks: can I come out now? And pokes one eye out to check whether the people have gone. Here a dark, shaggy face peers out from between pink curtains: one eye, glancing sideways, and a bit of lower lip. This is Wilkołek, the hero of Arman Galstyan's paintings: a monster who, many say, does terrible things, while in fact he is often frightened himself and was born in Warsaw. He is the one asking the question in the title. The answer belongs to whoever stands in front of the curtain.
The painter
Arman Galstyan (born 1994) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he studied with Mirosław Bałka and Paweł Susid. Warsaw-born and of Armenian roots, he paints domestic life and its small private rituals, and often returns in his own pictures as a watched, vulnerable figure. The ordinary scene, painted large, takes on the weight of something monumental.