Memory exists outside of time. It doesn't stay neatly arranged or fixed in place. It comes back when it wants to, shifting shape, colliding with other memories, resurfacing just when we think we've forgotten it- though, in truth, it has been there all along. This quiet understanding lies at the heart of Gemma Solà Sotos's new series, where painting becomes not a way of recording the past, but a place where memory continues to take shape.
Each canvas unfolds through abrupt shifts, fluid forms, and fragmented realities. Layers build over one another without ever settling into a single image. Faces and eyes emerge from grey and black haze, briefly recognizable before disappearing beneath the next brushstroke. Flowers, wine glasses, chessboards and pieces, cars, and fragments of the city drift in and out of view like flashes from a half-remembered scene—not a complete story, but the feeling it leaves behind. These are not memories faithfully retrieved so much as memories reconstructed. Solà Sotos does not illustrate a particular recollection; she remakes it every time she paints.
Running throughout the series is a constant tension between nature and the city, between gardens and asphalt, between the quiet and the loud—a joyride, an engine tearing through the night. These two tempos—the slow rhythm of memory and the urgency of lived experience—coexist across the exhibition. Broad, carefully painted fields of colour are interrupted by restless scribbles, drips, and scratched grids, as though someone were speeding through a landscape and could only hold on to passing glimpses.
Opening reception:
Saturday, August 1st 2026
17-20h
Hildmannplatz 1A
