Pablo Tomek
Born in Paris and based in Brussels, Pablo Tomek approaches social systems, power structures, and collective failures through gestural painting.
Metallic surfaces, dense layers, and thick brushstrokes give the paintings a physical weight, turning social tension into matter rather than direct explanation.
Questions around the construction of power and environmental misjudgment appear as pressure, repetition, and movement across the canvas. The process is direct and bodily, guided by gesture, intuition, and the resistance of the material itself.
Tomek’s paintings remain open to interpretation. A mark can read as force, hesitation, anger, or residue; a repeated movement can suggest frustration, conflict, or a social pattern that keeps returning. In the dense rhythm of upward and downward strokes, the neglect of environmental responsibility can appear as mounting pressure, without becoming a fixed narrative.
For Pablo Tomek, the experience of painting depends on presence. The viewer has to stand in front of the surface, face its scale and texture, and form an opinion from that encounter, whether positive or negative. The image is not only seen; it is measured physically, in relation to the body.
The work also draws from techniques associated with manual labor. Tomek uses tools such as industrial sponges and a Karcher, a pressure washer often used by screen printers to clean paint-filled mesh screens. Pigment is applied, pushed, disturbed, and removed, placing painting and washing inside the same act. This movement between construction and erasure creates the rough, layered texture that defines much of the practice, while the final surface keeps the pressure of the hand, the force of the tool, and the traces left behind.
