JOSÉ MANUEL BALLESTER_Lo Spazio del Silenzio
20 November 2021_ 15th January 2022

José Manuel Ballester is a master at juggling concrete and iron, light and space. Discreetly bathed in coloured light, his scenes are transformed into graphic constructions, abolishing the boundary between the photographic and the painted. Whether a theatre, a factory or an apartment block, Ballester's nascent architectural structures are reflections on absence and the passing of time. Structure, colour and lighting are thus in symbiosis with the newly defined notion of aesthetic void. The conscious fusion of the classical to the abstract modern to the extremely current trends in architecture and photography is, for this Spanish art star, nothing but a contradiction, like the creation of the romantic through cold precision. Motifs and media still appear among the most disparate. In the end, a fascinatingly closed and mostly simple picture remains. For him, the Spaces of Silence created are "like the search for paradise", and, for this reason, they always show the same merits and defects of the society, which is responsible for their production.