Opening on Friday March 13, from 6 to 9 pm

The second Hermetic principle, which establishes a relationship between opposite extremes, is the most popular formula in the book The Kybalion. This important esoteric publication, which presents knowledge, doctrines or rituals reserved for initiates or secret groups, was published in Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century and gathers the teachings of the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, related to both the classical and modern Hermetic tradition.

This secret aphorism, which has transcended the passage of time, reminds us in its moral that opposites are connected through a deep dependence that keeps them closely united. The exhibition Heaven and Earth does not seek to materialize or disseminate through a selection of works by contemporary artists any type of esoteric thought; rather, it seeks to project the sensation of a concordance between what is different or distinct, something that the poetic image of the correspondence between heaven and earth seems to perfectly embody.

In this sense, the relationship between heaven (that which is above) and earth (that which is below) serves as a poetic platform to present a series of artists diverse in their projects, discourses, strategies, forms and materialities, who in some way are interested in these two elements so different yet intimately connected.

We understand earth as the planet we inhabit, but the word also designates a material substance or, according to Empedocles in classical tradition, one of the four roots, or one of the five elements according to Aristotle. Later, this classification was used in the medicine of Hippocrates, as well as in esotericism and astrology. Likewise, heaven, which could be related to the element or root of air, is projected as its perfect opposite: if earth is hard and dark, heaven is light and transparent. However, from a scientific point of view, the holistic dimension between these opposites is evident, since what we call heaven is defined by the atmosphere, that is, the layer of gases (generically called air) that surrounds our planet and makes possible, thanks to its protective action, the existence and development of life on it.

In this sense, the relationship between this system of gases and its dynamics, which constitute the atmosphere, directly influence nature and human life in its multiple cultural aspects such as the economy and politics.