Windows traditionally guide us toward the outside world; they are thresholds that allow us to perceive time, weather, and external conditions. However, London-based artist James Lomax completely suspends these familiar certainties with his new solo exhibition, “The Black Paintings,” at Sid Motion Gallery. Opening between July 17 and September 5, 2026, the exhibition brings painting and sculpture together on a hybrid plane while positioning the viewer within that uncanny void between protection and confinement.
As curator Theo Weiss highlights, in this new body of work, Lomax responds to social stagnation, polarization, and isolation with a harsh, smooth, and dark material language.
Two Centuries of Psychological Parallelism with Goya
The backbone of the exhibition consists of exactly fourteen window installations cast in dark, pigment-free concrete. This specific number is a deliberate homage to the iconic 14-piece series painted directly onto the walls of his farmhouse outside Madrid between 1819 and 1823 by Spanish master Francisco Goya, later referred to as the “Pinturas Negras” (Black Paintings).
Driven by anger and disillusionment toward the exploited and corrupt Spanish monarchy, Goya produced these nightmare-like scenes in a room isolated from the outside world, without imagining any audience. For Lomax, too, this completely introverted structure of image production—free from market anxieties—has long been a subject of investigation. Just like Goya, Lomax pushes the boundaries of the material, using painting as a space for internal psychodrama, a sort of medium for catharsis.
The Threshold of Conviction: Traces of HMP Grendon
The reason windows occupy such a central and harsh place in Lomax’s practice lies in his recent, in-depth field research. The artist’s residency at HMP Grendon—a Category B men’s prison managed with a psychodynamic therapeutic model—and his artistic projects carried out in prisons across Europe directly define the conceptual weight of the windows in the exhibition.
In a closed and confined space, a window is not only the sole ray of hope opening up to the outside world but also the sharpest and most insurmountable reminder of being on the inside. Lomax flawlessly embeds this dual register into all 14 windows in the exhibition:
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Inaccessible Landscapes: Almost all of the windows are camouflaged using different methods: newspapers plastered with thick paste, trash bags pinned end-to-end, or blinds hanging from top to bottom.
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Claustrophobic Tension: Due to these temporary coverings, the domestic and familiar window frames transform into monuments of confinement and obstruction. The blocking of the field of vision triggers tension in the viewer of being kept inside rather than being invited out.
The Permanence of Concrete and the Overton Window
In the exhibition, the sense of a safe haven brought by domestic associations is sabotaged by the brutalist weight of concrete. By using concrete—synonymous with permanence and mass—Lomax freezes each frame in time, virtually fossilizing them.
Another conceptual layer of the installations is the clever reference to the concept known in political science as the Overton Window. Coined by Joseph Overton, this term outlines the boundaries of ideas that the mainstream public finds politically acceptable at any given time. Lomax’s blocked, restricted concrete windows function as an outward-looking, political critique of the shrinking spaces of freedom, intellectual insularity, and the boundaries of acceptable thought in today’s world.
NO-26 Editor’s Final Note
“The Black Paintings” is not merely a manifesto of pessimism. That small, unblocked sliver of clean glass, which Lomax intentionally and meticulously leaves in each window, whispers that another landscape, another possibility, still exists beyond all the plastered newspapers and drawn blinds. That fragile leak of light hangs in the room as a potential for hope and revelation amidst the darkness.
Event Note: As part of the exhibition, Theo Weiss, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Government Art Collection, will hold an in-depth conversation with artist James Lomax on Saturday, July 18, at 3:00 PM. We highly recommend making room in your calendar to hear about an exhibition with such a powerful conceptual foundation directly from its creators.
