Richard Heller Gallery is pleased to present, Planet Circus, a new exhibition of paintings by Granada, Spain-based artist, Paco Pomet. The show brings together recent works that reaffirm the artist’s distinctive approach to contemporary figuration, combining technical precision with humor, irony, and subtle narrative disruption.
Pomet’s paintings are grounded in a realist language that feels almost immediately accessible. Carefully constructed scenes, convincingly rendered figures, and controlled compositions establish a sense of familiarity that is quickly undermined by unexpected visual twists. Transformation, anthropomorphism, and narrative slippage introduce a playful yet unsettling tone, using humor as a critical tool rather than a decorative gesture.
Several key works exemplify this approach. In Ring a Ring o’ Roses, trees in a forest clearing hold hands in a circular formation. The image evokes the innocence of a children’s game, yet its stillness carries an uncanny weight. The forest becomes a collective body, bound together in a ritual whose purpose remains ambiguous. As in many of Pomet’s previous works, nature is not a neutral backdrop but an active agent, endowed with intentions and emotions that mirror human fragility and complicity. Cease-fire presents two soldiers facing one another, their heads replaced by those of a cat and a dog—an image that reads at once as visual wit and pointed allegory, addressing conflict, instinct, and fragile diplomacy. In The Dinner, four seated figures gather around a table as their arms dissolve into strands of spaghetti that coil and spread across the tabletop. The figures appear poised to consume what is, in fact, themselves. The scene oscillates between the grotesque and the darkly comic, echoing earlier works in which Pomet explored self-devouring systems, closed circuits of desire, and the subtle violence embedded in everyday rituals.
Often associated with disruptive realism or critical figuration, Pomet uses realism to question, rather than affirm, contemporary experience. References to art history, popular culture, and our collective memory are seamlessly integrated, producing images that are engaging, visually seductive, and resistant to fixed interpretation.
In the context of Los Angeles—a city attuned to image-making and visual storytelling—this new exhibition highlights Pomet’s ability to use humor as a critical strategy. These paintings invite close looking, reward repeated viewing, and offer collectors and audiences alike a compelling example of contemporary figurative painting that is both intellectually sharp and disarmingly playful.
