Paco Dalmau

Circuits Collection tells the metaphorical journey of an abstract painting into its metamorphosis between sculpture and installation, carried out by a succession of intrinsically connected changes. The project structures a multidisciplinary proposal (painting, sculpture, and installation), which is introduced by four series within the collection. Some elements that are recurring in each series are, the intensity of colour, organic shapes and three-dimensional depth. Some of the topics that are developed in this proposal are colour psychology, change of identity, and mental health. Authors such as Eva Heller and Robert Plutchick, and their studies on the psychology of colour in relation to feelings and emotions, support the theorization of the project. Each stage of the process materializes a new identity, a new message, a new visual syntax. The series are:

Return (painting) ongoing.
Evolution (painting/sculpture) ongoing.
Borderline (sculpture/painting) ongoing.
Revolution (installation) in development.

The series:

Since 2014, Paco Dalmau has been working on the series of paintings, Return series. They are paintings with a melancholic and mysterious content, where the suggestion of shapes and the lack of definition of their elements produce sensations of longing, of searching for a higher or simply different aspiration.
This series is made up of abstract paintings that formally navigate the heterodoxy of the medium. Its characteristics show us classical works, worked in oil on canvas. These pieces, which are the beginning of the metamorphosis process, present soft and harmonious chromaticism, without stridency, creating diffuse, blurred and deep atmospheres.
In 2018, certain works from the Return series, after having been exhibited, did not find their place in the world and returned to the artist’s workshop. This little story, which is the story of so many good paintings, was the beginning of the Evolution series.

Evolution series (2018- current), gives this painting a second chance, a revision that directs it to adopt a new identity. With clear references to the microscopic world, the elements that make it up are more defined, and float on the surface of the painting between glazes and fragments of colour. These shapes become organic, and the colours are exaggerated. Depth in the frontal plane is no longer produced through vanishing points, but rather becomes physical, three-dimensional. The visual syntax of the set (frontal and lateral planes) is more complex and baroque, which is built through the succession of layers, all of them different in value and saturation.

Borderline series (2024- current), It is a direct consequence of Evolution. Its first pieces are produced with waste and discards from its predecessor’s production process. The main characteristic of these works is freedom of form. They represent the break with the spatial limitations of the canvas. The paint overflows the border of the vertices of the painting, and the colour traces a gradient starting from the white colour of the gesso, until a great saturation of the pigment in its new limits.
The series talks about overflow and the inability to control emotionally, and about distorted perceptions of reality or uncontrolled moments in our daily lives. Painting has the vital need to escape from what is established, to cross borders and explore new realities. This series wants to break with formalisms, academic disciplines and artistic dogmatism. It wants to escape from the canvas, becoming something unspecific, different and liberating.

Paco Dalmau.
Last update: 01-09-2024