Lo que no está, persiste at Enhorabuena Espacio, Madrid

This first exhibition, marking the opening of Enhorabuena Espacio’s new location, reflects on what is not seen, what has not yet taken full shape, or what has just disappeared—leaving behind a subtle yet persistent trace. What Is Not There, Persists brings together works by Fuentesal Arenillas, Julia Spínola, Este-ban Igartua, Italo Crovetti, and Stefano Santa María.

The show approaches the inaugural gesture not as a definitive statement, but as a partial appearance. The works do not aim to dominate the space, but instead open up areas of uncertainty and sustained attention. They act as thresholds, silences, and fragments that make what is not yet fully present perceptible.

The sculptures by Fuentesal Arenillas do not reach a final position, nor a fixed destination—only the trace of a sustained exercise remains. A carta-chaqueta or carta-pantalón are gestures of transformation that, like language, give shape over time. Their folds and stretches evolve through use, adapting their form, posture, or character. These works slide in and out of their coverings, sometimes slipping into voids or fullness, ultimately catching and gathering under their own weight.

Julia Spínola presents two enigmatic sculptures that resist immediate interpretation. Their materiality and scale place them in an ambiguous zone where the familiar becomes slightly disjointed. They occupy that unstable threshold between the recognizable and the uncanny, as if they were entities about to dissolve, reform, or acquire a new shape.

Italo Crovetti’s paintings work through the economy of gesture and the suspension of image. They are made with colored pencils on unprimed canvas, marked by folds that interrupt their surface and housed in metal frames. The images are nearly imperceptible, slowly filtering into view, requiring a patient gaze accustomed to the dim. What emerges does so slowly, as if rising from a porous memory.

Stefano Santa María operates at the edges of visibility. His drawings are interrupted scenes, fragments of something that never quite begins or ends. Also featured is a recent video where abstract images appear as beams of light drifting in a room that is not completely dark—barely visible, inviting the viewer to dwell in what remains uncertain.

Esteban Igartua, by contrast, takes us to the far end of visibility: two large oil paintings and one smaller work where nature is exalted, overflowing—as if belonging to a ruined future or a mythological past. Amid vibrant, dreamlike landscapes, ruins emerge—remnants of possible civilizations, memories of what is no longer or not yet. A mysterious figure in profile conceals its face. Its rough skin seems to merge with the natural environment, as if the body itself has fused with the landscape. His painting arises at the intersection of splendor and collapse.

Together, these works suggest rather than impose. The exhibition becomes a way of inhabiting what is just beginning to surface—like a held breath, an active pause. What is not there, indeed, persists.