SOLAZ. De Aurora

SOLAZ (Spanish noun)

From Old Occitan solaz, derived from the Latin solacium.

• n. Solace, quiet pleasure, recreation; relief from toil.
• syn.: rest, leisure, respite.

Marking the launch of Escat Projects, SOLAZ is its inaugural exhibition, featuring a solo show by Spanish artist José María De Aurora (Santander, Spain, 1988). Opening in September 2026 in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, the exhibition features a new body of work centred on the artist’s exploration of colour as a language shaped by memory, observation and the accumulation of visual experience.

De Aurora is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, engraving and fashion. Deeply influenced by the purity of line and movement, his paintings investigate the expressive potential of colour through serene compositions and a strong attention to matter. Alongside his work as founder and creative director of the Spanish couture house Ze García, he has continued to develop a consistent pictorial practice from his studio in L’Empordà, where painting has become a space for reflection and visual research.

«I have come to understand that my work is not about searching for new colours, but about continuing to discover relationships between them». This idea lies at the heart of the exhibition. Each painting begins with a slow process of observation, bringing together images, places, materials and sensations accumulated over the years by De Aurora. Drawn from nature, architecture, art, fashion and landscapes that have shaped the artist’s life, these references are not represented directly. Instead, they coexist within the same pictorial space, revealing unexpected dialogues through colour.

Throughout his career, certain colours have returned again and again, gradually becoming part of his own visual language. In this new series they no longer appear in isolation, but interact, transform one another and construct compositions that could not exist through a single colour alone. Painting becomes a way of organising a lifelong visual archive, where memories no longer belong solely to the past but are brought together to form new images. As the artist describes it, «colour ultimately ceases to be a choice and becomes a way of thinking». In SOLAZ, this way of thinking becomes an invitation to pause, to look attentively and to discover, if only for a moment, a space of calm.