“I can always rely on the redemption of art.” (Paco Pomet)

Paco Pomet’s oeuvre is a visually and thematically stunning dialogue between vintage photographic imagery and painting, which fuses past and present, real and surreal, compelling the viewers to question their perception and what they consider familiar and credible. In his treatment and reconstitution of these other-era scenes, Pomet distorts time and manipulates the conventions of the visual language of both mediums, creating perplexing scenes that assume nothing and question everything. 

Drawn to the realism and documentary nature of photography, Spanish artist Paco Pomet uses the medium as a rich and endless source of starting points from where he whistfully, satirically re-examines the scene. Particularly interested in vintage press and amateur photography, the artist seeks out a range of source material, including recovering black-and-white photographs from archives and flea markets and then interpreting those subjects on canvas, often commencing with a distinctive monochrome color palette, to later dismantle the original scene with the introduction of improbable and odd elements, historical and pop references, and vivid colors. The surprising juxtaposition of unrelated elements from different eras and imagery, heightened by Pomet’s precisely painted interpretation, gives his paintings both delightful and bizarre allure and reveals the influence of painters like Mark Tansey and René Magritte on the artist’s visual language. Once immediately familiar scenes are no longer logical or predictable, but somewhat faux historic records imbued with absurdity or the grotesque, confronting the viewer with the contradictions of the human existence.

Paco Pomet was born in 1970 in Granada, Spain. He received a Fine Arts Degree from the University of Granada, Spain, and later attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, NY, USA.

Aside from numerous solo and group shows in Europe and the United States, Pomet’s works have featured at the Beijing International Art Biennale, receiving an Award for Excellence in 2010, and at Banksy’s controversial art project Dismaland in Somerset, England in 2015. The same year, The Baker Museum in Florida organized a retrospective of his works.

Pomet’s paintings are in the permanent collections of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Madrid, Spain; the Spanish Academy in Rome, Italy; the Santander Museum of Fine Arts, Spain; IVAM (Valencia Institute of Modern Art), Spain; the Colecciōn Solo, Madrid, Spain, as well as many private collections.

He lives and works in Grenada, Spain.