Paco Pomet

Surreal Spanish dreamscapes laced with Dada-esque parody.

“I can always rely on the redemption of art”

Pomet grew up between the city of Grenada, where he was born in 1971, and a small town, Cordoba - his father’s hometown. As Pomet himself explains, his paintings hold a distinctively Iberian sensibility. The cynicism in his work exposes a historical residue of a totalitarian Franco regime that meant fatalism was “an ingredient almost omnipresent in our culture.” In post-Franco Spain, Pomet’s tradi...

Pomet grew up between the city of Grenada, where he was born in 1971, and a small town, Cordoba - his father’s hometown. As Pomet himself explains, his paintings hold a distinctively Iberian sensibility. The cynicism in his work exposes a historical residue of a totalitarian Franco regime that meant fatalism was “an ingredient almost omnipresent in our culture.” In post-Franco Spain, Pomet’s traditional art education at the University of Granada focused on landscapes, portraits and still life. While he found this approach limiting, it edified his need to resist through artistic expression. As a result, he developed the unique juxtapositions of his work: hyperreal monochrome figures and landscapes punctuated by piercing colour, cartoons, lightsabers, elongated limbs, and foreboding masses of pink bubblegum. Taking inspiration from vintage photographs, along with his own popular culture references, Pomet’s paintings both honour and ridicule the absurd world around him.

In 2015, Pomet exhibited at Banksy’s controversial project, Dismaland, a dilapidated theme park in Weston-super-Mare with moody attendants and broken-down rides. The show attracted unprecedented media attention, as well as more visitors than the Tate and V&A’s biggest shows from the same year. Internacional (2008), one of Pomet’s few works sourced from a contemporary colour photograph, was included in the exhibition. The painting depicts Chadian soldiers in the desert, driving into battle with weapons flailing. At the front of the truck, screaming among the seemingly jovial men, is an intruder: the Cookie Monster. Imposing this comic, fictional icon of children’s television, with the archetypal media image of the conflict between Chad and Libya during the 1980s - somewhat crudely nicknamed ‘The Toyota War’ - provokes a dark and unsettling humour that bluntly questions the sensationalism of modern media and entertainment.

Pomet’s oeuvre has a bleak sense of nostalgia. His interest in the birth of photography and cinema is due, he explains, to a naïve enthusiasm for invention in a time “before mercantilism and advertising flooded everything.” The charming rural settings Pomet selects, collected from family archives and flea markets, speak to an age when photography was an event rather than a habit. Motifs such as location pins, emojis and low battery icons recur throughout his works, functioning as ironic interventions of the present day. However, in an age of constant iOS updates, contemporary technology comes with its own immediate nostalgia: a ferocious rate of development pushing the out-of-date ever closer to the present. This alignment of new and old is at the heart of Pomet’s work: a surface layer of change thinly veiling a deeper, repetitious consistency, that - all too often - the world is reluctant to face.

Pomet grew up between the city of Grenada, where he was born in 1971, and a small town, Cordoba - his father’s hometown. As Pomet himself explains, his paintings hold a distinctively Iberian sensibility. The cynicism in his work exposes a historical residue of a totalitarian Franco regime that meant fatalism was “an ingredient almost omnipresent in our culture.” In post-Franco Spain, Pomet’s traditional art education at the University of Granada focused on landscapes, portraits and still life. While he found this approach limiting, it edified his need to resist through artistic expression. As a result, he developed the unique juxtapositions of his work: hyperreal monochrome figures and landscapes punctuated by piercing colour, cartoons, lightsabers, elongated limbs, and foreboding masses o...

Pomet grew up between the city of Grenada, where he was born in 1971, and a small town, Cordoba - his father’s hometown. As Pomet himself explains, his paintings hold a distinctively Iberian sensibility. The cynicism in his work exposes a historical residue of a totalitarian Franco regime that meant fatalism was “an ingredient almost omnipresent in our culture.” In post-Franco Spain, Pomet’s traditional art education at the University of Granada focused on landscapes, portraits and still life. While he found this approach limiting, it edified his need to resist through artistic expression. As a result, he developed the unique juxtapositions of his work: hyperreal monochrome figures and landscapes punctuated by piercing colour, cartoons, lightsabers, elongated limbs, and foreboding masses of pink bubblegum. Taking inspiration from vintage photographs, along with his own popular culture references, Pomet’s paintings both honour and ridicule the absurd world around him.

In 2015, Pomet exhibited at Banksy’s controversial project, Dismaland, a dilapidated theme park in Weston-super-Mare with moody attendants and broken-down rides. The show attracted unprecedented media attention, as well as more visitors than the Tate and V&A’s biggest shows from the same year. Internacional (2008), one of Pomet’s few works sourced from a contemporary colour photograph, was included in the exhibition. The painting depicts Chadian soldiers in the desert, driving into battle with weapons flailing. At the front of the truck, screaming among the seemingly jovial men, is an intruder: the Cookie Monster. Imposing this comic, fictional icon of children’s television, with the archetypal media image of the conflict between Chad and Libya during the 1980s - somewhat crudely nicknamed ‘The Toyota War’ - provokes a dark and unsettling humour that bluntly questions the sensationalism of modern media and entertainment.

Pomet’s oeuvre has a bleak sense of nostalgia. His interest in the birth of photography and cinema is due, he explains, to a naïve enthusiasm for invention in a time “before mercantilism and advertising flooded everything.” The charming rural settings Pomet selects, collected from family archives and flea markets, speak to an age when photography was an event rather than a habit. Motifs such as location pins, emojis and low battery icons recur throughout his works, functioning as ironic interventions of the present day. However, in an age of constant iOS updates, contemporary technology comes with its own immediate nostalgia: a ferocious rate of development pushing the out-of-date ever closer to the present. This alignment of new and old is at the heart of Pomet’s work: a surface layer of change thinly veiling a deeper, repetitious consistency, that - all too often - the world is reluctant to face.

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Paco Pomet stood in his studio alongside a painting of mountains with several canvases stacked up behind it

Paco Pommet holding a paintbrush up to a white canvas in his studio

Artist's studio with a canoe propped against a wall, tables, chairs and a variety of finished paintings

paintbrushes in three separate pots and a multitude of small paint tubes on a work surface

Bio

Paco Pomet was born in 1970 in Granada, Spain, where he continues to live and work.

Did you know?

The artists cites modern cartoon series such as The Muppets and Sesame Street amongst his artistic influences.

Process

Pomet usually works uninterrupted for extended periods, taking a painting from beginning to end in one long session to ensure a sense of continuity and maintain fresh and malleable paint.

Follow up

pacopomet.com

@pacopomet