In 1954 Lucian Freud painted "Hotel Bedroom": his wife lies in bed, he stands in shadow by the window. Here is the same scene seventy years on, moved to a bathroom. One figure lies draped over the rim of a tub, holding a phone with fingers as long as noodles, its screen the only cold light in the painting. The other stands at the back, pale, with a bird's head, the apparition of the title. Grzybacz pulls paint off with a sponge rather than laying it on. So which one is the ghost, the one standing or the one staring at the screen?
The painter
Krzysztof Grzybacz (born 1993) graduated with distinction from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He paints flowers, the people close to him and quiet interiors, and the real subject underneath is usually intimacy and the way communication slips and misfires. He has shown at X Museum in Beijing, Harkawik in New York and the Dawid Radziszewski Gallery in Warsaw, and in 2026 he has a solo show coming at Pace in London.