Exhibiiton : Faceless

In his two series of faceless oil portraits, FacelessD and FacelessD.M, Pablo Diartinez paints galleries of figures whose faces remain absent, but for very different reasons.

FacelessD, where the “D” stands for desire, works the public side of that question. Painted on unfolded tea bag paper, the series is drawn from viral self-portraits of men who expose their bodies while concealing their faces, the kind that circulate by the thousands across blogs and social platforms as figures of male homoerotic desire. Each figure is then fragmented into its attributes (a sneaker, a backpack, a hand, a fold of skin) which recur across the series as the markers of a globalised, fetishised masculinity.

FacelessD.M, for “direct message”, works the private side. Small wooden boxes built as diptychs are based on real exchanges between the artist and the people he is in contact with: friends, family, flatmates, partners, occasional encounters. Outside, a single eye stands in for the contact’s avatar. Inside, a small oil portrait painted from a self-image the sender shared, set against the fragment of one of their messages. Births and deaths, illness and joy, the everyday and the most intimate share the same room. It is up to the visitor to decide which boxes to open, and to become, for the duration of a gesture, a reader, a voyeur or a confidant.

Faceless opens during Brussels Pride week, as part of the festival Panorama: Cinéma Ibérique, and remains on view until 28 June 2026.

An exhibition by Pablo Diartinez, presented by the Embassy of Spain in Belgium and SPAIN arts & culture, in the framework of Panorama: Cinéma Ibérique, hosted by Cinema Galeries.