The series Espejismo, of the Banco Sabadell Art Collection, forms part of the exhibition “Espejismo. Alberto Peral”, which is open to visitors at the SIS gallery in Sabadell from 24 October 2025 to 9 January 2026.

“When we build a balustrade or any other architectural element with a repeating shape, at times we start (or finish) with the sectioned element sliced vertically in half. This creates a sense of continuity; our mind’s eye needs to fill in the missing half. The same thing happens with other types of fragments: we can see a sculpture’s knee or finger and then all of a sudden we imagine the body in full. What exists in our imagination is just as important as what exists in reality; they are on the same level.

“To build on this idea, I framed a series of stainless steel cylinders sliced in half lengthways. The rabbets of the frame are fitted with mirrors, one on each side. The reflection of the sectioned elements multiplies the single image of the framed piece.

“When I typed in “mirage” into my computer’s dictionary, it gave me some interesting synonyms: illusion, hope, ideal… The reflection that we see in a mirror not only reproduces the image, but it also transforms it into something physically two-dimensional; it compresses it, turning it back into a blueprint, a drawing. The three-dimensional shape is therefore returned to the world of ideas.

“There is an architectural detail of the Pantheon in Rome that can easily go unnoticed due to the awe-inspiring impression that one first gets upon entering: the lateral columns surrounding the alcoves are reproduced in two dimensions on the temple’s wall, creating a sort of shape or reflection, a synthesised alter ego stripped of its structural function.”

Alberto Peral, 2025