12 june 2026, Flor Linckens
Paco Dalmau: atmospheric paintings on memory and transformation
Until 17 July, Contour Gallery presents Paco Dalmau's exhibition 'Memories of a Dune'. The exhibition features new works from the artist's ongoing series 'Evolution' (2020–). Dalmau creates abstract and atmospheric works that exist somewhere between painting and sculpture. They are not only visually layered, but physically layered as well, as if one were looking into a deep space that continues to unfold behind the surface. These spatial objects respond to light, shadow and the viewer's position, subtly shifting with every encounter. Tip: on Saturday 13 June, the artist will be present at the gallery from 3 to 5 pm to speak about his work in an informal way.
Dalmau's paintings function as a kind of palimpsest. In the Middle Ages, scribes and monks scraped texts from valuable parchment so that the material could be used again. Traces of the original writing often remained visible beneath the new layer of text, turning these documents into fascinating puzzles for later historians. Dalmau employs a similar process. He sands back existing paintings before adding transparent layers of pigment and resin, sometimes building up dozens of layers. This slow, introspective and labour-intensive process often takes several months, and he frequently works on multiple paintings simultaneously. That way, the works become witnesses to memory, transformation and the passage of time.
Paco Dalmau, Evolution _ 90_ IV, 2026, Contour Gallery
Standing in front of the works, you get the feeling that you're witnessing a memory. More a sensation than an image, a kind of inner reality. Fragments of your memories can be surprisingly vivid, while at other times only a feeling, an atmosphere or a colour lingers, long after the context has faded away. Memories are mutable, fragmented and incomplete. Dalmau's layered compositions and mist-like surfaces seem to capture that experience and render it tangible. At the same time, the works serve as a metaphor for identity and the ways in which we are constantly changing, shaped by our experiences, decisions, memories, emotions and personal growth.
The artist is particularly interested in the physical experience of looking. In a society where ready-made and instantly legible content is continuously fired at us at high speeds, filtered through algorithms designed for maximum consumption, it is both refreshing and valuable to encounter images that do not reveal themselves at once, works that ask the viewer to spend a little more time with them.
Dalmau draws inspiration from a wide range of sources, including the colour psychology of Robert Plutchik and Eva Heller, the ideas of Carl Jung and the work of artists such as Mark Rothko, Johannes Vermeer, Jackson Pollock, James Turrell and Barnett Newman.
Paco Dalmau, Evolution_ 40_XVII, 2026, Contour Gallery
Paco Dalmau was born in Vila-real, Spain, in 1978 and has lived and worked in Rotterdam since 2012. He studied at the Sanvicens Fine Arts School in Barcelona and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. His work was previously shown at institutions like the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Museum Belvédère and BRUTUS. Works from his 'Evolution' series are held in the collection of the Hortensia Herrero Art Centre in Valencia, which also includes works by artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Eduardo Chillida, Anish Kapoor and Georg Baselitz.
Paco Dalmau, Evolution_40_2026_XIX, 2026, Contour Gallery
