Just as the conversations between Critilo and Andreino, the works presented in Desengaño engage in an exchange of thoughts that extend beyond interpersonal relationships. Exhausted by excess and violence inherent in class, nature or language, the invited artists twist symbols of power through materialities that they decompose, merge or temporarily capture.Their process is timid, slow, and silent, and serves as a contrast to common (mis)conceptions of progress and growth. When faced with a bleak future, we might not aim forward but shift our focus towards other directions. Is it possible to move backwards without regressing?

 

Starting from small yet significant gestures, the works of the six invited artists all embody a will to (re)vitalise vernacular stories and narratives related to materialities. We delve into different crevices, tangible absences that speak of neglected or peripheral areas of knowledge production. What we encounter is robust but fragile, just as the materials of the works of the exhibition – from rosin, that can survive a million years, to espejuelo (specular stone) that despite its appearance will crack under gentle pressure.

In their works, Mónica Mays and Víctor Santamarina embrace cracks and decompositions as tactical tools. They both use discarded domestic objects, silent witnesses of class and decadent social rituals, turned into shape shifting hybrids. Retracing histories that affirm places of absence is equally relevant to the works of Sergio Pradana and Paula García-Masedo. Here, materials specific to areas near Madrid are transformed by intimate gestures of foraging and accumulating as a way to revisit childhood landscapes, marked by the passage of time. Similarly, an awareness but also reconsideration of our relationship with the natural realm is specific to the practice of Gabriel Alonso. His work aims to demystify and emancipate the natural world from the connotations given by humans through language. This interest is shared by Álvaro Chior, who questions linguistic excess and constant textualization of life, bypassing one-directional storytelling. He redirects our focus towards whispers, soft and slippery sounds that liberate desires.
    
Collectively, the works in the exhibition offer a polyphony directed towards given truths, while remaining attentive to their porous nature. In this manner they, like Gracian’s novel, offer us a detour, or a retour, an invitation to think beyond the immediate; not only criticize the unfairness we perceive, but also to affirm the potentiality of uncertainty. 



 

— LUM