Pieter Obels at Museo Lázaro Galdiano
Madrid, Spain
04 September 2025
As part of the sixteenth edition of Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend, taking place from September 11 to 14, the gardens of the Museo Lázaro Galdiano will host a selection of sculptural works, including a piece by Dutch artist Pieter Obels, represented by Opera Gallery. Known for his distinctive approach to form and material, Obels brings to Madrid a work that plays with notions of movement, balance, and space.
His sculptures are typically made from Corten steel, a material often used in industrial settings for its strength and weathered surface. In Obels’s practice, however, this rigid medium is reimagined—bent and shaped into soft, organic curves that seem almost weightless. There’s a quiet tension in his work between the raw material and the delicate, often fluid forms it takes.
For this edition of Apertura, Obels presents A Foolish Arrangement (2024), a work that engages in a kind of spatial conversation. It invites viewers to move around it, observing the shifting lines and evolving perspectives as they do. Rather than imposing itself, the piece reveals its form gradually, unfolding through the viewer’s movement and attention.
Installed outdoors in the museum’s garden, A Foolish Arrangement becomes part of the surrounding environment, neither dominating it nor disappearing into it. It’s a gentle interruption—a form that stands quietly, but purposefully, in dialogue with nature and space. This presentation offers an opportunity to experience Obels’s work outside the traditional gallery context, allowing the sculpture to interact directly with an open, living landscape. It highlights how sculpture can extend beyond the object itself, shaping the experience of the place in which it stands.
Pieter Obels has been featured in several exhibitions with Opera Gallery in recent years, including 'On Form' in Singapore (2023), 'Momentous Convergence' alongside Hermann Nitsch in Dubai (2024), and group shows such as 'Lines in Motion' in New York (2025) and 'Summer Vibes' in Dubai (2025). This autumn, he returns to Madrid for a new exhibition titled 'Obels – Rubat: A Dialogue', on view from 11 September to 18 October 2025.
In this upcoming exhibition, you will discover Pieter Obels in dialogue with French artist Julien Rubat. While Rubat works with paper, collage, and pigment to build layered surfaces shaped by repetition and erasure, Obels brings a more physical, three-dimensional presence. Though their materials and techniques are very different, both artists explore process, balance, and transformation. ‘Obels – Rubat: A Dialogue’ focuses on how two distinct practices can intersect—inviting viewers to observe the tension and harmony that emerge when mass meets texture, and structure meets spontaneity. Rather than forcing a connection, the exhibition allows space for contrast, showing how painting and sculpture can speak to each other in quiet, unexpected ways.
