Brand New Pristine Turmoils: Paco Pomet’s Playful Satire on Visual Truth

📅 18 Jan — 30 Mar 2025
📍 König Gallery, Munich, Germany

König Bergson is proud to present Brand New Pristine Turmoils, a solo exhibition by Spanish artist Paco Pomet. This marks Pomet’s first collaboration with the gallery, showcasing 14 oil-on-canvas paintings, most from 2024. The exhibition delves into the nature of visual truth by manipulating black-and-white photography—once considered the ultimate record of authenticity.

Satire, Distortion, and the Power of the Image

Pomet is known for his unique approach, blending classic satire with the comic grotesque. His work echoes the visual critiques of William Hogarth and Honoré Daumier, both of whom used imagery to challenge power structures and public narratives. By distorting historical photographs and exaggerating their elements, Pomet questions the reliability of images as conveyors of truth.

In Pssst…! (2023), a war photograph of a soldier kicking down a door is humorously interrupted by a cartoon hand tapping him on the shoulder. This surreal intrusion disrupts the so-called reality of the image, exposing its staged nature. Similarly, in The Reformist and Untitled (2024), figures are stretched and warped like elastic, breaking the illusion of photographic truth and reshaping it into an exaggerated fiction.

Blurring the Line Between Photography, Film, and Painting

Pomet’s critique extends beyond still imagery into the realm of moving pictures. In Balance (2024), he paints film control markers—pause, forward, and rewind—directly onto the image, transforming the artwork into something more fluid, as if sourced from a video or a digital screen. The result is a playful deconstruction of how we consume visual media, whether through film, YouTube, or photography.

Rewriting the Narrative of Visual Culture

Rather than offering a counter-truth, Pomet’s work disrupts the illusion of objectivity. His paintings don’t argue for an alternative reality; instead, they expose the absurdity of trusting images as pure truth. By injecting cartoons, surreal distortions, and impossible compositions into seemingly serious historical imagery, Pomet creates a new visual language that is both satirical and deeply insightful.

🖼️ Brand New Pristine Turmoils is a must-see exhibition for anyone interested in the intersection of art, satire, and media critique.