-
Since the
show changed daily, people would return again and again, and some even came to
see what he had asked me to do. The actions were never formally announced, but
I would explain to people who asked that they were seeing an Andreas Slominski
piece. Some even expressed concern over how I was executing the instructions
–in a way, Slominski’s work turns the tables by keeping the curator occupied in
the installation at all times. From 22 August until 22 September, 10 am to 6
pm. I was the landlord, curator, exhibition guardian and guide. As Harald
Szeemann told me on a walk in Appenzell: “The curator has to be flexible.
Sometimes he is the servant, sometimes the assistant, sometimes he gives
artists ideas of how to present their work; in group shows he’s the
coordinator, in thematic shows, the inventor”.
The French painter Fernand Leger posing in his Paris studio with British model Anne Gunning. This was a shoot for LIFE magazine in 1955, which took place two weeks before Leger died.
In this interview I welcome you to join me on a journey into the Kafkaesque world of Paco Pomet. His absurdist and masterful compositions tells us stories about our past, our history, and how it connects to the world we live in today.
Rich in symbolism that takes us out of the humdrum paradigm of reality tv, trashy pop culture and news sensationalism. We’re going back to the time when technological progress started accelerating, a time when the foundation of our modern world was laid, when people still believed in something and didn’t have cat pictures to distract them from starting revolutions.
Here’s my interview with Paco.
Paco Pomet, Nostalgia, 2011
PB: Thanks for doing this Paco, my first acquaintance with your work was symbolically around 4 years ago when I first saw your Nostalgia painting. Since then my taste have changed drastically, and almost everything I enjoyed back then - I’ve evolved past, but your work have kept my fleeting interest, I still want to explore that hole. I think the enigmatic intelligence is what keeps me interested, there’s a certain friction in your work, I view your paintings as Kafkaesque riddles. They work on multiple levels, first they capture the eye, then they capture the imagination; meanwhile you also feel them - like music. It’s also clear to me that your universe have evolved over a long period of time and gradually taken on a more conscious character. Is there a particular tipping point you can identify as to when that shift happened, or did it come naturally as a result of trying to make sense of the world and “the human condition”?
PP: First of all, excuse any possible grammatical mistakes in my writing. English is not my mother tongue language.
I consider the year 2004 very important for me in the sense you have commented. Before that year I tried, in many different ways, to convey my ideas onto the canvas without achieving a satisfying result. Since I graduated in Fine Arts it was all a “trial and error” battle, it was a “searching” period in which I concentrated my efforts on improving my technique as much as I could, trying not losing my time meanwhile I was working hard to find my own voice. It was then when I dropped some recurring prejudices I used to fall into and went straight ahead to what I really felt like doing. What happened from 2004 onwards was an open approach to photography as a rich, endless and reliable supply of motifs, a starting point from which an idea could arise and be turned into something else through painting. That dialog between photography and painting turned out to be essential in my work, mainly because I have always loved “realism”.
Between 2004 and now my work might has evolved in some ways, but I could´t exactly describe how. I guess that the “grotesque”, the kafkaesque riddles, the black humor, the jokes gave way to a more subtle or metaphysical inclination in my recent work. Let´s talk a little bit more about that tipping point you mention, that shift. It really interests me. Which paintings do you think have embodied a more conscious character, as you put it?
Paco Pomet, Ruido, 2008
PB: From what I can tell from your portfolio it seems to have happened around 2007-2008, I’m hesitant to point out specific paintings as not to alienate the readers who might not be familiar with them yet. That being said, I think there’s some themes that start to take form in this period, like alienation for instance, the resentment of violent ideologies like Stalinism, Nazism and Colonialism, the Us vs. Them mentality - meanwhile the backdrop is almost always nature, so I don’t know if this is a call to nature, or a nudge to “human nature” - our primal nature. Maybe it’s both. Either way it poses a rich juxtaposition loaded with implications. Humor have always had a presence in you work as far as I can tell, but around this period it takes on a sharper character, like a child drawing a mustach on an authority figure to disarm it, albeit a lot more sophisticated. It seems as though you found a way to distance and define yourself by taking on historical and heavy subjects with cutting wit, is it something that happend consciously or unconsciously?
PP: It it true that as time have passed and I have moved away from youth, skepticism and hopelessness have gained ground in the way I see the world. It is inevitable. I have always been (and I think I still am) a quite optimistic person. This personal predisposition can be boycotted by the stubborn presence of reality. I happen to like realism precisely because I tend to be very observant, even though I am more and more critical with reality. I think that as a result of this the humorous character in some of my works has turned somehow bitter and more caustic. It can be inferred that a misanthropic drift have imbued the themes of many of my works.
It is very interesting what you point out about alienation and “nature” as a backdrop. I am very conscious about the growing separation of mankind from our nature origins, especially in the XX Century. Civilization, thus, have become uncivilized in ecological terms, and ideologies seemed to have prevailed over natural harmony. This is something that I find really disturbing and it works as an active principle in many of my paintings. That is why I find the beginning of the XX Century a fascinating period, a time in which our civilizing progress started to create a crisis in our relation with nature and our very same coexistece.
As you have said, I couldn’t say either which paintings specifically show this changing tendency you mention, but there is a painting, precisely from 2008, called Internacional, that describes very dramatically and humorously the absurdity of our presence (as a rare species we are) in this world. That painting is, by far, the most propagated of mine in the internet.
Paco Pomet, Internacional, 2008
PB: Yeah, humans have a long history of creating their own problems and then dealing poorly with them, despite the fact that most people are basically looking for the same thing. The industrial age, with the advent of the assembly line and migration toward cities, which have only accelerated and gained momentum since then, alienates most of us from nature. I think this ties in with the ego, which also seem to be a recurring theme in your work, man’s “need” to excert dominance over his environment. The paradox here being that when you go into nature, a sense of calm comes over you. When you watch the waves of the ocean, you realize your insignificance, a small ego-death, and it feels great. All of a sudden you don’t think of yourself as the center of the univers, but just a tiny part of it. It’s liberating.
There’s no doubt that the ecological crisis is the biggest challenge facing humanity, and yet it’s such an abstraction, very few people take responsibility to do anything about it, because it seems like if they can’t fix it all at once, they might as well not bother doing anything. I applaude what you’re doing for taking it on in the way you do, and I think you got plenty of reason to stay optimistic - because the ocean is made of drops, and we must all contribute in whichever way we can. You sneak the message in through art, which allows the viewers to make their own connections, viewers who might not be watching Al Gore speak or depressing documentaries that showcase the grim reality of rising sea levels, excessive pollution etc.
Have you ever thought about making a shift in the time period you operate in? Like a forced paradigme shift to mix things up - I think the potential of futurology could rekindle your optimism. One of the few redemptive qualties I see in the world is the fact that some of the worlds most resourceful and intelligent people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis are working overtime to solve humanity’s problems and help get us to the next stage of evolution.
Paco Pomet, Escape, 2013
PP: I would´t see myself shifting the themes and scenes of my paintings into a futuristic period. At least for the time being. I really like science-fiction, but there is a high risk of becoming tacky or tasteless when you deal with futurology. Perhaps a few exceptions can be found, mainly in movies, but most of them have not resisted the passing of time.
Maybe it’s a prejudice, but I can´t think about any nice examples in painting that contradict this assertion. By combining these two expressions: “Nothing new under the sun” (Nihil Novi) and “truth is stanger than fiction” you have my answer to this question. I have always thought that subjects and themes have remained the same over the centuries and human pursuits, aspirations and chimeras are cyclical. And Besides, there is so much to learn from the past that speculating about the future seems (to me) a futile task. Especially if you apply it to painting, a fictional task in itself.
PB: Excellent point, it reminds me of a quote by Aldous Huxley - “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach”.
The reason I asked, is because there seems to go a lot of thought into your paintings, so I suspected you might have entertained the idea. It’s interesting to think about the limitations that arise as one accumulates knowledge, going back to what you were talking about before - the inevitability of cynicism with age. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. When I was in my early twenties - ignorant to the complexity and Machavelian nature of humanity, I was the happiest I’ve ever been. Now I’m in my late twenties and it seems to impossible to get it back, realistically. It’s funny, a child is by definition stupid - they know almost nothing, and they’re free, happy and carefree. That’s why I try to be like a child sometimes and ask silly questions like that.
Anyways, now that you have “found” / developed your style over such a long period, I imagine your process have reached a certain level of mastery. How do you approach the blank canvas from an idea standpoint today, compared to 10 years ago?
Paco Pomet, The Master, 2014
PP: Yes, it is necessary to try to be like a child sometimes, to be oblivious, to behave irresponsible to taste again those sensations of innocent happiness. Art can be like this very often.
Compared to 10 years ago, today I approach the blank canvas with no fear or doubts whatsoever. I prepare the idea through photographs (found, taken by me, or both) and I pick from them what I need to construct the final image. I draw first and I paint after. Sometimes, in the middle of the painting process, I may find subtle changes that can differ from the original idea, but the general proceedings go most of the times as scheduled.
Ten years ago and backwards I was obsessed with the idea of painting from memory. The challenge of approaching the canvas in that way was very attractive but it didn´t suit me. I mostly tended to achieve a realistic rendering of the elements depicted, so not using references as photos or live models was pointless. I enjoy looking at things, I love the light, shades, perspective, textures, the way the visible is revealed in our world. Therefore, to be consistent as a painter requires, in my case, a surrender to description in spite of invention.
PB: I see, I’m always curious to know which books have influenced the artists I respect and admire. If I asked you about your “top 3”, however arbitrary that may sound, which 3 books comes to mind first, and why?
PP: Yes, as you say, it is very arbitrary and it is really difficult for me to choose only 3 books, but here they are:
The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche. This essay was very revealing for me. The major subject of this book points out the importance of the intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian not only in the particular art of the tragic form, but in the arts in general and in life. Nietzsche claims life always involves a struggle between these two elements. Since I read it, it is very difficult for me not to think about this dualism.
A compilation of my favourite short stories by Anton Chekhov. Probably the writer whose work has moved me most. His stories are just marvellous and his sensibility and knowledge of the human condition are spellbinding. Chekhov writes about the essential issues of life in the wisest and deepest way and, at the same time, the language he uses seems so simple and so clear. It is always an immense pleasure for me to re-read them.
Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. An essential and monumental work. Cervantes said about his own novel that “it is handled by children, read by youngsters, understood by adults and enjoyed by elders”. I read it three years ago, and I have to confess that I enjoyed it a lot. I hope that doesn´t mean that I am aging very quickly! ha, ha…
Paco Pomet, Shrinks, 2014
PB: Haha, hopefully not. Thank you for opening up in this interview Paco, it’s been revealing and interesting. In the spirit of keeping some of the more mysterious elements in your work alive, I think this is a fitting note to end on. Lastly I’d like to know how me and the readers can stay updated on your work, and if you got any upcoming shows we should know about?
PP: You are welcome, Price! It has been a pleasure doing this interview and answering these challenging questions. You can check out my website at http://pacopomet.es which I always keep updated.
I will be showing my work at Pulse New York Art Fair (March 5th-8th) at My Name´s Lolita Art Gallery booth. On February 2016 I will do my third solo show at Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.
[~same~, this dimly lit room in particular will stay with me forever. you could actually feel how much aura/power each of those paintings have in the room, wild.]
