“The world, as we understand it, is made up as much of what exists as of what eludes us. And what eludes us is far more vast than what exists, yet no less real.”
The becoming of images is, without doubt, mysterious. Who has not at some point wondered —with genuine surprise— about the origin of a composition they love, about the first gesture of a novel that captivated them, or about the unexpected decisions behind a painting to which they return again and again? This enigma runs through artistic creation. Is there a formula? Is it the genius of someone particularly gifted? The result of tireless work, whose visual inquiry finally arrives at what we see? Is it years of training, or simply inspiration? Where did this image come from, this idea that I did not have —and likely never will?
In this sense, the world as we know it is organized in a far more enigmatic way than we usually believe. Haunted by ghosts, by fictions of our own invention, we fantasize about ourselves and about the world we perceive. We invent fabulous or painful narratives about our experiences, about the past and the future. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “In an idea of creation live thousands of forgotten nights of love, completing it with nobility and elevation.”
From the darkness of the mind emerge dazzling fictions, enigmatic worlds that do not always admit explanation. Radical decisions that, in the rhythm of sleeplessness, appear inevitable. Nights of wakefulness in which an idea returns again and again, presenting itself as a possible world: a world within the world, the promise —certain yet fictitious— of a change in direction, of an intuition that demands to be brought into practice. Or, as Maurice Blanchot writes, “the pure joy of passing from the night of possibility to the day of presence, or even the certainty that what comes into the light is nothing other than what slept in the night.”
The world, as we understand it, is composed as much of what exists as of what escapes us. And what escapes us is far more vast than what exists, yet no less real. Within this uncertain territory seems to lie the enigma that runs through the previous questions. It is possibly there that the work of art is also situated, and certainly that of these paintings: within that interval that could be called dawn, “for the work lives only if that night —and no other— becomes day,” as Blanchot reflected.
I allow myself this detour because, beyond the slogans, commitments, affiliations, or denunciations that certain art insists on proclaiming —at times with a wearying persistence— the works brought together in this exhibition operate on another plane: one that lies beyond us, invisible and yet persistently present. This is not the militant arm of denunciation. No. Rather, it is imagination in its purest state carried into action, where night finally becomes day.
Both José Cori’s and Rolankay’s works embrace this enigmatic character of creation in order to open space for possible worlds: epiphanic scenes, the presence of doubles, and subtle citations that find in art history an interlocutor with whom to converse. After all, as Rilke suggested, the idea of creating or engendering a work would be nothing other than the pleasure —indescribably beautiful and valuable— of rediscovering memories inherited from the conception and birth of millions, in a chain that connects the awakening of art in a cave hidden deep within a mountain to its contemporary developments. From there also emerges the incorporation of a horizon of darkness that rises against the pharisaical protest of moral censors.
What I seek to suggest, then, is that all these fictions —born both from the deepest love of images and from the almost elemental impulse to capture them— inhabit that vast field of the imagination. An imagination capable of producing worlds, scenes, reveries, projections, and decisions that are not outside the world; rather, they traverse it. They act like ghosts: they mediate our relationship with reality, propel our efforts, and give meaning to our thoughts.
This symbolic realm largely sustains our actions and occupies our minds. Strictly speaking, we do not constantly negotiate with things as they are in immediate reality, but with the projections we construct about them: with the fantasy of what might happen in relation to the contingencies we face.
These works present themselves as a tangent to the thing itself, to the world as we perceive it, and to its most immediate contingencies —small, pedestrian, sometimes even trivial. On the contrary, they arise from a vital necessity. As Rilke noted, the great value that art brings to its creator is that it serves as a kind of synthesis of their existence: a constant exercise of reflection that confirms their own integrity and purpose.
Yet this meaning is deeply personal. While for the artist the work may constitute a vital truth, for the outside world it is no more than an object among others: a nameless presence that exists simply out of an inner necessity.
José Tomás Fontecilla, curator
April 2026
