
Carlos Quintana
En todas direcciones, 2008Mixed media on canvas, 200 x 200 cm.

[…] Of course we are going astray. We have lost our course. No star guides us anymore. In vain we invent watches and compasses. The universe laughs gladly at our calculations, at our childish cardinal points. Our notions of space, of time, of infinitude, of eternity only entertain our ignorance, our fear. And it is scarcely probable that there has been a god on high (or in the underworld) destined to show us a better road. Why should he? We comfort ourselves thinking that he has been distracted or devoted to other matters. But the truth is that we have no privilege, no priority. The universe has not been designed to satisfy our wishes. We are there. Exactly like everything else. If we wish to dialogue with the cosmos, with nature, with the unknown, with art, with ourselves we must stand in all places at once. We must look (and be looked at) from all points, from all angles. We must abandon our rudimentary perspective. Isn’t that what you have tried to tell us? Not that the world is absurd. Or that everything is upside down. There is neither up or nor down nor on the sides. Neither before nor after. Everything is upside up. Beginning and end. And it has always been so. Bad luck if we have not understood it or have forgotten it. 1
1. Orlando Hernández, “Nibbling Buddha’s ear,” Ocho (Catalogue, Havana: Galería Habana, 2009), 27.