Galería Hilario Galguera Madrid is pleased to present El tiempo suspendido, a solo exhibition by Belgian artist Stijn Cole, which explores the subjective perception of time and landscape.

The exhibition brings together two of his most significant series, including the debut of his new body of work, the Rococo paintings. These works capture details of the landscape; each one is an oil painting later overprinted with a UV printer. They are presented alongside his acclaimed Souvenirs series—combining photographic prints on paper with an oil color grid representing the chromatic structure of each image—and his Colorscape paintings, in which landscape is distilled into a minimal16×16 chromatic grid.

Stijn Cole approaches landscape as a protocol, a method of observation. His work emerges from a meticulous visual and material analysis of the subjective perception of time and space in specific site sand environments. His photographs, paintings, drawings, and sculptures function simultaneously as measuring instruments and emotional traces. Drawing from snapshots taken during his walks, Cole translates the passage of time into chromatic equivalents, luminous diagrams, and abstract topographies.

Through gradual processes of decomposition and reconstruction, he creates hybrid works that strikea delicate balance between abstraction and representation. In El tiempo suspendido, Cole brings together two series that explore this tension: the Colorscape paintings—more analytical, capturing the fleeting colors of a transient gaze—and the Rococo series—more figurative, seeking to grasp and, at the same time, challenge that very ephemerality.

In Cole’s practice, conceptual rigor never excludes sensory resonance: the density of the air, the slant of light, the way a place imprints itself on the retina and the body. The encounter with his work unfolds both poetically and rationally. As Merleau-Ponty wrote, “the landscape is not before me; it surrounds me.” This is precisely what Cole captures: an art of positioning, where seeing becomes an act and the body becomes the measure of the world.