Congratulations to Marcel Vidal on being shortlisted for the AIB Portrait Prize 2026!

See the work at the National Gallery of Ireland from 14 November 2026 - 14 March 2027. Curated by Dr Brendan Rooney.

Marcel Vidal’s paintings are marked by their controlled brushwork, layering oil on linen with delicacy and precision, creating moments of familiar yet unsettling beauty. They are refined and restrained, incarnating brightly lit fragments of photographs, digital images. Hands move and gesticulate through the exhibition; bracing in delicate clasps, blocking identities, reaching towards the viewer. Vibrant colours punctuate the exhibition, a glossy umbrella sits in front of a blue sky, a neon hat on an elusive figure, the royal blue of a cropped shoulder. Vidal’s minimal compositions are severely cropped to reveal only a sliver of their subject, using ambiguity to frustrate interpretation, all the while inviting our curiosity.

“Drawing from personal photographs, online archives, and restaged snapshots, I work across personal and impersonal narratives, blurring the lines of authorship and subject matter. Painting offers an intimate, material engagement. Through cropping and omission, I fragment context and interrogate how images construct narrative and meaning. Gesture and posture may read as intimate, performative, or controlling, depending on their placement within the frame. 

The images hold partial figures, coded gestures, and authority, hands gripping folders, torsos framed by microphones, bodies cut by edges of clothing and light. What might otherwise register as descriptive detail becomes the primary subject of the image. These elements act as carriers of social coding, conveying information about  authority and interaction while remaining open to interpretation. The work explores how meaning is constructed, altered, and continuously negotiated through images, gesture, and composition.”