The visual poetics of Romeo Castellucci and Alberto Cortés

Romeo Castellucci is interested in the construction of the image and its manipulation with a strong aesthetic and often political component. An imaginary where the most theatrical fits, as we have seen in Bros (Temporada Alta) and the trilogy on the Divine Comedy by Dante and On the Concept of Face, in the Son of God (Festival Grec), but also in performative installations such as Il terzo Reich (Temporada Alta) or this Believing in Masks. The Italian artist creates a sequence of objects that enter and leave the pristine white space of the museum-like air of the Raval room of the CCCB, surrounded by spectators masked with different human masks. They are objects of a certain quotidian nature (a glass of milk, a bouquet of flowers, a jug, a photograph of Stan Laurel, a crucifix...) which he names with names that have nothing to do with them, exhibiting an impossible logic, since the series is designed for the final appearance of an electric chair like those used in the executions of condemned to death and which, now yes, is called by its name: chair. A chair very similar to Andy Warhol's famous screen print that may or may not provoke the reaction of the attendees. From mere observation to its use and finally its figurative destruction. Forty minutes of a visual poem very typical of contemporary art.

Many spectators responded with enthusiasm to the desperate cry of love from the Malagan Alberto Cortés in Analphabet (Grec 2025). A visual poem inhabited by a romantic and queer ghost that gives the spectators all that it is, all that it suffers, all that it feels. Now, within the programming of Grec 2026, El corazón de Ester iconically follows in the footsteps of that Analphabet. Even more mystical, it begins with the parsimony of someone who wants to tame the tempo. A very long, almost uncomfortable, silence in an absolute semi-darkness that only allows the dance of the artist's hands to be seen. Ester appears dressed as an English woman from the 19th century. The word flows, inspired by texts by Emily Dickinson and Simone Weil. A word of poetic breath that at times evokes Lorca's Andalusian rural lyricism. A word that breaks the fourth wall to turn Ester into a spectator of herself. Another poem of desperate love. The absolute love that dissolves within itself and only glimpses disappearing. A poem, three long silences and two songs, and finally the bare torso and a dance of arms and still the farewell amidst applause with diva poses. Certainly, Cortés captivates with his vulnerability, with the fragility of the body, with a playful rhapsody to which, in our opinion, a little voice is missing and darkness is in excess.