In Painting #24, Pieter Vermeersch presents a reflection on space and time, using color as the primary tool. The work comprises seven vertical panels forming a polyptych, with subtle tonal transitions from light to dark hues, including luminous greens and muted browns. This gradient imbues the piece with an atmospheric quality, inviting the viewer into an experience that transcends mere appearance and immerses them in a deeper understanding.

Vermeersch’s artistic practice is influenced by a profound interest in Baroque illusionism, pure abstraction, and photographic realism. Consequently, his works shift between representation and informalism, often translating into large-scale spatial interventions. Within his body of work, Painting #24 is part of what the artist calls «Gradations»: monumental paintings – often exhibited together as arrangements – distinguished by an extremely precise, almost scientific, gradual blurring of colors. Vermeersch employs this chromatic gradation as a means to explore temporality in a phenomenological way. The process of creation involves meticulous application of color, resulting in an image that closely resembles that of a printed photograph. However, Vermeersch’s approach is purely pictorial, requiring a technique that rigorously analyzes and visualizes the changes produced by the light, capturing them in photographs, and finally translating them into paint. Through this method, he transforms the work into a record of time and the conditions surrounding the execution of the piece, which also remain embedded in the canvas. The result is degressive fields of color that evoke the idea of natural cycles, such as the passing of the hours, twilight, and dusk, and the changing of the seasons.

The artist’s slow and deliberate process culminates in the viewer’s experience, which requires a deliberate gaze. As one moves from panel to panel of Painting #24, the perception of color shifts, calling for prolonged contemplation and a certain physical engagement. The work cannot be fully grasped in a single glance, it demands time for observation and active participation from the viewer, situating them in a changing here and now. Observed long enough, the composition seems to metamorphose before the viewer’s eyes. Some writers have described this aesthetic experience of Vermeersch’s pieces as an “intrusive and pleasant vibration,” one that transcends the merely visual to become relational, leading to a kind of physical and emotional interaction with the painting. This particular aesthetic experience, in concert with the artist’s analytical and rational approach, centers the concept of temporality. Accordingly, Painting #24 positions the viewer within a visual framework that transforms as they move, reinforcing the idea that a work of art is a temporal and ever changing event rather than a static object.

Clara Derrac

The Banco de España Collection has two pieces by Pieter Vermeersch, a Belgian artist who has stood out in recent decades for his approach to the language of abstraction from the twofold perspective of the tradition of Baroque Enlightenment and the legacy of photography in its most absolute form: that of capturing light and its gradation effects on the paper in formats such as Polaroid. Both works reflect one of Vermeersch’s most significant hallmarks, which is his subtle gradating of fields of colour. Painting #24, a seven-piece polyptych (2007), presents from left to right and downwards, as in western reading, a careful yet ultimately expressive passage through the different gradations of green. This creates a certain atmosphere of transience, as in the rapid change of light that occurs in the peripheral hours of the day. In fact, these works emerge precisely from that time: the artist takes photos of the skies at dusk or at dawn, and the pictorial work is the result of their meticulous conversion into paint.

Carlos Martín