Pablo Tomek new solo show "Thank You Boss"

For Tomek, the construction and building sites scattering the city are endless sources of materials and plastic inspiration, whereby the relationship between building and demolition seems like a paradigm of the modern world, an aesthetics prone to détournements and dérives.

The materials flow in, the materials come into confrontation, the colours are damaged, the accidents shape, and things are born.

The exhibition "Thank You Boss" is a homage to the unknown and undetected aesthetics and "paintings" of construction workers, to the graffiti artists who ransack palisades, to the glass cleaners, to the roadside accidents that reshape the space, to the posters paste-ups, and time, that pulls them away.

Tomek's first published monograph, "Teren Alchemia", published by Classic Paris in January 2017, will be on display in the Urban Spree shop.

The art of Pablo Tomek (b. 1988 in Paris) originates in graffiti for which he has developed a rough experimental approach, which is further refined in his studio practice. Tomek studies the relationships between graffiti and abstract expressionist painting, the techniques and aesthetics of manual street workers (whiting with sponges, use of construction materials, remix of the fluorescent marks made by architects, abandoned objects, high-pressure cleaning tools), in a way to transmute objects and mundane practices into a new purpose and meaning, against a backdrop of an ever growing gentrification process. His art stems from the hectic repetition of the gesture that drive the mechanical, anonymous practices of tagging and cleaning, which are part of the daily life of cities. By confronting the body and painting with space, between constant energy and fatigue, Pablo Tomek creates a painting which toys with its own destruction, resulting in a dance of pictorial ghosts.

Pablo Tomek’s work has been presented at several solo and group shows: at the galerie du jour agnès b. in Paris (“Etat des lieux”, 2013), the Frac Nord - Pas de Calais (“Toy”, 2014), in an illegally occupied industrial wasteland (“Expressiv Tag Painting”, Pantin, 2015), at the HLM in Marseille (“Honte”, 2015), the Bateau Lavoir (“Après Coup”, 2015), the Mini Galerie in Amsterdam (“Worker Games”, 2016), the Lasco Project #7 (Paris, 2016) where he produced a 500 sqm outdoor mural at the Palais de Tokyo, and Urban Spree Galerie in February 2017, following a 2-week in situ residency.

 

Pablo Tomek

"Thank you Boss"

Residence + Solo Show at Urban Spree Galerie

Opening: 18.02.2017 / 18:30 - 22:00

Exhibition: 21.02.2017 - 05.03.2017