Sinuós. Jan Cools

Alzueta Gallery presents Sinuós, the first solo exhibition by Belgian artist Jan Cools (Hasselt, Belgium, 1983), who lives and works in Catalonia. Following the success of his presentation at Palau de Casavells this summer, Cools now presents a new body of work at the gallery’s Barcelona Turó space. Self-taught, Cools has developed a painting practice guided by colour and an intuitive approach to the act of painting, in which the process itself becomes a way of exploring and discovering.

Working with the soak-stain technique, Cools applies heavily diluted acrylics directly onto raw, unprimed canvas, allowing the pigment to soak into the fabric and colours to spread and merge. He mixes colours directly on the canvas, responding to what emerges rather than following a predetermined composition. The paintings evolve through this process of making, with charcoal, dappled marks and strokes introducing new gestures and giving structure to forms that have taken shape almost unconsciously.

The title Sinuós evokes this sense of wandering, both in the movement of the paint across the canvas and in the artist’s own process of discovery. Rather than setting out to depict a particular landscape or image, Cools allows the paintings to find their own direction, leaving room for unexpected associations to surface.