/ Home
/ Exhibitions
/ Fairs
/ Artists
/ Lenta Artist Residency
/ Press
/ About
Opening Hours
Mon - Fri: 17 — 20
Sat: 11 — 14
Private appointments
at hello@betacontemporary.com
C/ Monistrol 21, 08012, Barcelona
hello@betacontemporary.com
+34 722 745 291
PIM PAM PUM
Zac Craig
09.09.2026 - 15.10.2026
Carrer Monistrol 21, 08012 Barcelona
For purchase inquiries & catalogue requests,
contact us at hello@betacontemporary.com
PIM PAM PUM begins with sound: three short beats suggesting movement, impact and succession. Like many of Zac Craig’s titles: Brrrr, Buzz, Plop, Pitter Patter or Rinkle Dinkle, the phrase does not describe an image or offer an explanation. Instead, it gives the painting a rhythm. These noises and fragments of invented language act as extensions of the works themselves: immediate, playful and resistant to fixed meaning.
At the centre of Craig’s practice is an ongoing process of learning how to paint, and of learning what paint itself can do. Working without preliminary sketches or predetermined compositions, he responds to the behaviour of his materials, allowing colour, transparency, viscosity and texture to guide the direction of each work. A stain prompts a line; a dense passage is interruptedby a sharply defined form; an accident becomes the beginning of another decision.
Across the exhibition, atmospheric fields and translucent washes coexist with areas of dense texture, delicate contours and graphic motifs. Forms emerge, collide and recede without settling into recognisable figures or coherent narratives. At times they appear organic, microscopic or bodily; elsewhere they resemble sparks, creatures or traces of movement. Just as they begin to suggest something familiar, they shift into something else.
This spontaneity is grounded in Craig’s sustained study of painting as a material and historical language. His knowledge of hand-mixed pigments, glazing and Old Master techniques meets the immediacy of automatic drawing and gestural abstraction. Technical precision and instinctive action continually unsettle and transform one another.
PIM PAM PUM embraces painting as an experience before it becomes an explanation. These works invite us to follow a line, absorb a colour, register a collision and remain open to whatever appears next.