The piece Ref. 05/05, by Sergi Aguilar, will feature in the exhibition “El paso de la laguna Estigia: Paisaje, resiliencia y territorio” (‘Crossing the Styx: Landscape, resilience and territory’) organised by the Fundació Caixa Castelló foundation.
The exhibition takes its title from the painting by Joachim Patinir, a foundational piece in the consolidation of landscape as an autonomous genre in Western tradition. In the painting, landscape ceases to serve as a narrative backdrop and instead becomes a sensory structure: a visual construct in which the human figure is diminished and the surrounding territory takes prominence, articulated by atmospheric perspective and chromatic grading.
Sourced from the Deltoro-Vives Collection, one of the largest collections in the Valencian Autonomous Community for the study of landscapes, the exhibition brings together an extensive body of Flemish and Dutch graphic works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with pieces by artists such as Anthonie Waterloo, Herman Saftleven, Jan van de Velde II, Lucas van Uden, Jacob van Ruisdael and Hans Bol, among others. These prints come from a pivotal time in Europe in which the circulation of images played a decisive role in transforming landscape into a visual, technical and cultural system.
This historic set of artworks boasts an impressive selection of contemporary pieces from institutional collections, museums, galleries and private funds, both national and international. In this setting, contemporary artists rekindle the notion of landscape through the use of various approaches ranging from archiving to intervention, from photography to conceptual gesture, with its meaning shifting to one of reflection on the territory, its transformation and the ways in which it is represented.
The dialogue between both blocks does not follow any chronological logic, but rather a system of visual and conceptual resonances. Where Flemish and Dutch graphic artwork establishes a systematic view of the world based on the reproduction and circulation of images, contemporary practices introduce a critical interpretation of landscape as a historical, cultural and political construct. Landscape here is understood as an unstable construct in which nature and culture function as layers of visual and historical production. From the representation systems of the seventeenth century to contemporary practices, landscape appears as a middle ground between the physical world and its artistic interpretation.
“Crossing the Styx”, curated by Vicente Deltoro and Alfredo Llopico, thus presents landscape not as an inherited object for contemplation, but as a transitory regime: a space where an image does not simply represent the world, but instead constantly negotiates the conditions of its appearance.
The exhibition is open to visitors from 23 April to 4 July 2026.
