Opera Gallery announces global representation of Thomas Dillon and Pieter Obels

26 February 2025

Opera Gallery is proud to announce the global representation of American painter Thomas Dillon and Dutch sculptor Pieter Obels. We are excited to welcome these two visionary artists to our roster, continuing our commitment to platforming leading voices in contemporary art, placing their work in conversation with important artists and artistic movements of the 20th century.

This news follows Obels’ inclusion in ‘Momentous Convergence’, a two-person exhibition with Hermann Nitsch at Opera Gallery Dubai (29 February–15 March 2024) and Dillon’s inclusion in ‘Crowds’, a group exhibition at Opera Gallery Madrid (14 November–4 January 2025).

Each through their own unique methodology and aesthetic, Dillon and Obels both explore the transformative power of abstraction. They are committed to exploring the broad physical possibilities of their respective materials. Dillon manipulates acrylic paint on canvas using tools including toothpicks, chopsticks, squeegees and syringes, whilst Obels’ technique involves bending corten steel to create fluid and impulsive forms.

Intuition is at the core of both artists’ work. Dillon actively tries to eradicate the impact of conscious intention from his work, using a meditation technique involving mantras, breathwork, and automatic movement before entering the studio. When painting, he is driven by a primordial relationship between body, paint and canvas.

This translates into images that tend strongly towards the language of Abstract Expressionism, loaded with a sense of movement and emotion that goes beyond conscious thought. It also places Dillon in conversation with a long tradition of automatism associated with a diverse range of artistic movements. Notably, André Breton’s Surrealist Manifestoencourages its adherents to draw “absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all moral or aesthetic concerns”^[1] — an instruction that finds resonances in Dillon’s approach to painting.

Similarly, Obels’s process places instinctive movement and a tactile relationship with his materials over meticulous planning. He approaches each of his sculptures with openness, ready to work in collaboration with the steel to create forms that take shape spontaneously. In the context of the physically intensive practice of metalwork, this is a particularly revolutionary approach.

In an essay written to accompany ‘Momentous Convergence’, art critic Carine Claude writes that Obels “endows his steel sculptures with an organic grace and lightness, moving, almost unreal. The robustness and austerity of steel evaporate. Metal becomes living matter, drawing in the air volutes and plant-like curves in osmosis with their environment, winding like a strand of DNA in the turn of a garden.”

We look forward to supporting and showcasing these visionary artists as their work continues to develop.