Thomas Dillon, Body Work

Opera Gallery Madrid

08 May - 21 June 2025

Opera Gallery is pleased to present Body Work, the first exhibition in Spain by Thomas Dillon. Known for his gestural, psychologically charged canvases, Dillon’s work blends bold figuration with philosophical depth, offering a unique dialogue between unconscious impulse and structured observation. The exhibition features a selection of new paintings that merge expressionist technique with a metaphysical enquiry into time, identity, and creation.

Dillon’s process is rooted in what he calls “body work”—a physical and meditative act in which each canvas is approached as if the completed work already exists within it. His compositions are alive with movement and confrontation, where eyes stare out like portals, and splashes of colour erupt across the surface in vivid, chaotic harmony. Echoes of de Kooning, Pollock, and Ensor emerge not as homage, but as distant signals in a larger, nonlinear visual language.

At the heart of Body Work is the idea of painting as a retrocausal act—one that bypasses conscious authorship in favour of intuitive revelation. For Dillon, the canvas becomes a site where the self is both questioned and reimagined, where the boundaries between memory and imagination dissolve into a single, timeless gesture.

Ultimately, Body Work invites viewers into a vibrant and often disorienting world—one in which creation is both a spiritual enquiry and a return to something already known, hidden just beneath the surface.