Richard Heller Gallery is proud to present Melancholia, the gallery's fourth solo exhibition with Granada, Spain-based artist, Paco Pomet.

Paco Pomet writes: "Since my childhood, the observation of different states of light in certain landscapes has been the trigger, and in many cases the condition, which fostered an intense aesthetic experience. Generally associated with dusk, at twilight, although often embodied in the vertical and oppressive light of the summer midday, this intense experience before the light and the landscape could provoke fear and anguish on some occasions or, on the contrary, an overwhelming enthusiasm. The difference between a painful experience or an enthusiastic one rested in a certain whim of the spirit that I have not always been able to control.

In the majority of occasions this experience was translated into a joy, a reverential communion before the ecstatic beauty of the spectacular unfolding of the world. A celebration of 'being in the world,' a commemoration of 'the figure and the landscape.' But, in others, this experience was tinged with hurt before the immensity of the world along with the consciousness of lightness, smallness and finitude of one's self-existence. In these cases, the landscape revealed itself as a sinister scenario where the changes of light were filled with threatening intentions, showing the disturbing vastness of the space as well as the awareness of the inevitable passage of time."

In this series of paintings, gathered under the title Melancholia, the semantic intentions of Pomet have, in this case, a marked course. Although Pomet admits that "the melancholic feeling constitutes a strictly personal and non-transferable experience," the works gathered in this exhibition treasure the aspiration ("chimerical, in any case," the artist admits) of provoking in the spectator that sensation of fear before the abyss that the German romantics called The Sublime, that nostalgia the Portuguese and Brazilians call Saudade, and that feeling that in ancient and pre-modern medicine they called Melancholia.

About the artist:

Born in 1970, Granada, Spain. Lives and works in Granada, Spain.

Pomet received a Fine Arts Degree from the University of Granada, Spain, in 1993 and graduated from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2004. Pomet's works are in the permanent collections of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Spain; Spanish Academy, Italy; Santander Museum of Fine Arts, Spain; IVAM (Valencia Institute of Modern Art), Spain; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Spain; Mariano Yera Collection, Spain; DKV Collection, Spain; and Colecciōn Solo, Spain.

Interview by Gwynned Vitello: "Paco Pomet: The Surrealist Adventurer" in Juxtapoz Magazine.