Mendes Wood DM is pleased to announce Oh, If Only I Could Listen, a solo exhibition by Pol Taburet at the Pabellón de los Hexágonos in Madrid, opening on March 5, 2025. Organized by Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the exhibition marks the fifth iteration of this ongoing project, bringing contemporary art into historically significant spaces across the city.
For his first exhibition in Spain, Taburet presents a new body of work that expands his exploration of painting’s capacity to conjure mystical, psychological, and political forces. Known for his striking compositions that fuse elements of Caribbean heritage, voodoo traditions, European art history, and contemporary pop culture, Taburet creates a charged visual universe where figures seem suspended between worlds—between the seen and the unseen, the sacred and the profane, the real and the supernatural.
Inspired in part by Francisco de Goya’s Black Paintings, this new series deepens Taburet’s ongoing engagement with themes of power, judgment, and redemption. Dramatic lighting, theatrical compositions, and ominous figures recall Goya’s visions of a world haunted by specters of authority and oppression. As curator Juliette Lecorne describes, Taburet constructs abstruse tribunals, where grotesque and disjointed bodies enact enigmatic trials of fate and punishment. Meanwhile, Guillaume Blanc-Marianne situates Taburet’s work within a tradition of resistance, where fragmented figures and erratic speech serve as a form of counter-magic against institutional surveillance and control.
Installed within the Pabellón de los Hexágonos, a landmark of 20th-century Spanish architecture, Taburet’s paintings take on a spectral, floating presence. Originally designed by José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún for the 1958 Brussels World Fair, this modular structure—known as a ‘forest of umbrellas’—has been carefully restored after decades of neglect. Now, in dialogue with Taburet’s works, the space itself becomes an echo chamber for his exploration of liminality, illusion, and transformation.
Beyond painting, Oh, If Only I Could Listen extends into a multisensory experience. The exhibition includes soundscapes composed by Juan Manuel Artero, alongside drawings and a suite of lithographs produced at Madrid’s historic Imprenta Municipal - Artes del Libro. Taburet’s unique process— layering airbrush and acrylic, building up textures that blur distinctions between figure and ground—heightens the immersive nature of the exhibition. The works shift between solidity and dissolution, evoking the mystical ambiguity of religious iconography, ex-voto paintings, and the tormented allegories of historical justice.
