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THE CYCLE OF LIFE AS TOLD BY THE BLIND
Rafael López-Bosch (Madrid, 1980) Lives and works in Seville
Transcending the obvious—animals and nature in their rawest form—Rafael López-Bosch’s work delves into what precedes every closed shape. Here, there are no finished compositions or images for passive contemplation; we witness a process in full flow. Like someone peering through a microscope, the artist shifts the gaze toward the organic, toward what pulses before becoming definitive.
The artist’s early memories point to a direct experience with the earth: mud clinging to the skin, animals as companions rather than symbols, the instinctive practice of hunting and fishing, the open horizon as a space without intermediaries. That memory does not serve as nostalgic illustration but as an active substrate. In contrast to urban sophistication, nature is not a refuge to escape to, but an original condition that endures.
The arrival of his daughters, Emilia and Gemma, marks a turning point in his practice. Fatherhood brings a second childhood and, with it, the dissolution of hierarchies in the creative act. A sheet of paper on the table becomes shared territory, marked by spontaneous scribbles, stains, and immediate gestures. Later, the artist intervenes without imposing himself, intertwining his gaze with theirs. The result is a hybrid work in which authorship and play, control and chance, coexist without final resolution.
In these pieces, gesture has surpassed technical consciousness. The hand moves with the fluidity of someone no longer thinking about the mechanism but immersing fully in the experience itself. Time slows; observation becomes almost tactile. Nature ceases to be a represented motif and becomes a shared pulse, a rhythm that spans generations.
The works gathered in this exhibition capture a recent moment in this ongoing process. Rather than closed objects, they are surfaces in a state of transformation. The child’s mark and the adult’s intervention coexist as layers of the same breath. The accidental is not corrected: it is integrated. Chaos is not eliminated: it is listened to.
This body of work does not propose a conclusion but a threshold. It invites the viewer to participate in a state of expanded attention, to reconsider creation as a relational act and affective transmission. In that space, artistic practice asserts itself as shared experience: a conscious return to the elemental, where time expands, and the gaze becomes permeable once more.
The title The Cycle of Life as Told by the Blind serves as a dark metaphor for our collective blindness: as a society, we attempt to narrate something inherently visual and beautiful—animals and flowers—from a disconnected perspective. It calls us to reflection and to a return to a simpler life, rooted once again in direct contact with nature.
Presented by Art Hub Barceló Sevilla Renacimiento In collaboration with the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Seville
Venue Avda. Álvaro Alonso Barba, s/n Isla de la Cartuja, Sevilla
Exhibition dates: Ongoing / Exposición vigente (open 24/7 in public areas)
Curated by: Rocío Muñoz Valseca & Rafael López-Bosch
Text by: Alonso Cano