Emily 2 unfolds on the bleak outskirts of Poland, in settings built from local myths and the afterimages of forgotten crimes. The exhibition begins to function as a space of B-class horror. Its plot is based on stories once whispered in the immediate surroundings, where evil lurked at every step—both terrifying and deeply fascinating. The artist treats his objects like props, artifacts, and decorations torn from a cinematic context, while simultaneously invoking filmic strategies and modes of expression. He creates works steeped in nostalgia for the American, pop-cultural visuality of horror—something he could only experience through the screen. The horror scenography spans three levels of the gallery, fluidly shifting between the countryside, the city, and a fictional filmic space. Czaro’s approach is rooted in an intuitive combination of symbols and visual cues. Objects inspired by Halloween decorations take on an even more uncanny character as they intermingle with funeral flowers. Grotesque masks gaze down from the walls. The painted objects resemble the walls of forgotten streets, constructed from layers of fictional movie posters superimposed over one another. We never learn who the titular Emily is. In a space inspired by a cinema hall, we glimpse only a looping opening sequence of a film we cannot see. The best seat has already been taken. The objects placed in the attic level move away from pop-cultural tropes, drawing instead on real situations and personal experiences that unfolded somewhere between the city and the countryside. Old memes, seen on archaic websites, accompany brutal scenes known not only from TV crime reports but also from the local area. The space becomes a visual representation of a liminal scene, a transformation. A deer sheds its antlers, a killer removes his mask, a teenager discovers the monstrosities of the world. For the viewer, it remains unclear what consequences this transformation has for the plot of Emily 2. Czaro doesn’t offer a ready-made narrative or a solution to the mystery. Instead, he draws us into a suspended state—somewhere between memory and hallucination. It’s an experience in which private fears intertwine with collective myths, and the boundary between what is funny, frightening, and real begins to blur. Emily remains absent, yet her presence is palpable throughout the gallery space—like the echo of a film we will never see, though perhaps we are already part of it.

— Gabi Skrzypczak