Pigments act like enzymes in Daniel Roibal’s fluid, breezy compositions, investing a fizz and gentle propulsion to both brush mark and colour that serves to segregate the artist’s soft geometry of forms from one another whilst simultaneously encouraging a sunny efflorescence of ground to seep into those very forms. Coloured cells sit side by side without forming any symbiotic relationship or unifying Roibal’s compositions; instead, each dance to a different rhythm, some floating, others stuttering; some resting as others swell and surge.

In many ways Roibal’s mark-making, and his focus on colour relationships, speaks to the fundamental building block of quantum physics – the quark. These are the individual bricks of matter; the indivisible ingredients that make up the very quintessence of our experience. Quarks are weird, functioning in a space that makes up the very space of their function. They seem to communicate but don’t necessarily coagulate with each other. They exist in splendid isolation yet serve to charge particles into connection with a force known as ‘colour charge’. Roibal possesses the lightest touch, evident in the crackle of his painterly finish and in his delicate orchestration of colour and gesture, cushioning themselves against one another as they still obviate any synergy.