To see better, it is best to squint
2025-2026
View from Confinement, acrylic on paper, 23.4 x 31.2 in, 2026
It’s Clearing Up, acrylic on paper, 23.2 x 31.1 in, 2025
Broken Windows, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
Windows, acrylic and oil on MDF, 15.7 x 20.7 in, 2025-2026
Candles, acrylic on MDF, 15.7 x 20.7 in, 2025
Trio, acrylic on MDF, 14.3 x 15.7 in, 2025
Succession, acrylic and oil on MDF, 47.2 x 31.5 in, 2025-2026
Seesaw, acrylic on MDF, 23.6 x 31.5 in, 2025
Sun, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
Seven Rays, acrylic on MDF, 24.1 x 31.9 in, 2025
Diamonds, acrylic on canvas, 31.5 x 41.3 in, 2025
Grid, acrylic on canvas, 48.6 x 78.7 in, 2025
Inner Resplendence, acrylic on MDF, 15.7 x 20.7 in, 2025
Cluster of Planets, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
Night Landscape, acrylic on canvas, 31.5 x 41.3 in, 2025
Paisaje blanco, acrílico sobre tela, 160 x 200 cm, 2025
White Landscape, acrylic on canvas, 63.0 x 78.7 in, 2025
Eyes That Are Moons, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
Black Night, acrylic on paper, 23.3 x 31.2 in, 2025
Movement in Three Stages, acrylic on canvas, 63.8 x 78.7 in, 2025
Mount, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
My
Left Hand (Small), acrylic on MDF, 31.5 x 47.2 in, 2025
My
Left Hand, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 68.9 in, 2025
My
Right Hand, acrylic on linen, 57.1 x 74.8 in, 2025
Jellyfish in Gold, acrylic on paper, 23.2 x 31.2 in, 2025
Jellyfish, acrylic on paper, 23.1 x 31.1 in, 2025
Seascape, acrylic and oil on canvas, 31.5 x 23.6 in, 2025-2026
Seascape II, acrylic on MDF, 31.5 x 41.3 in, 2025
Moon and Sun, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
The Moon and the Sun, acrylic on canvas, 63.6 x 78.7 in, 2025
The Lion’s Den, acrylic on paper, 23.1 x 31.1 in, 2025
Illumination, acrylic on canvas, 39.4 x 39.4 in, 2025
Spiderweb Man, acrylic on canvas, 31.5 x 31.5 in, 2025
Cleft, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
Opposing Forces, acrylic on canvas, 48.4 x 78.7 in, 2025
Fringes, acrylic on MDF, 24.0 x 32.2 in, 2025
Copper Stripes, acrylic and oil on canvas, 43.3 x 55.1 in, 2025
This Is, acrylic on canvas, 42.7 x 45.9 in, 2025
Specters, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
Ascending and Descending Energies, acrylic on canvas, 36.6 x 36.6 in, 2025
The Onlooker, acrylic on paper, 23.2 x 31.2 in, 2025
Teeth, acrylic on paper, 23.3 x 31.2 in, 2025
Squares I, acrylic on canvas, 39.4 x 39.4 in, 2025
Squares II, acrylic on canvas, 39.4 x 39.4 in, 2025
Growth, acrylic on canvas, 78.7 x 63.8 in, 2025
Five Windows, acrylic on MDF, 15.7 x 20.7 in, 2025
Cinco bolas, acrílico sobre MDF, 61.3 x 81 cm, 2025
Five Balls, acrylic on MDF, 24.1 x 31.9 in, 2025
Spiky-Haired Head, acrylic on MDF, 31.5 x 23.6 in, 2025
Head (Picasso), acrylic on MDF, 31.5 x 23.6 in, 2025
Head (Child), acrylic on canvas, 41.3 x 31.5 in, 2025
Head (The Little Buddha), acrylic on MDF, 31.5 x 23.6 in, 2025
Head (The Caesar), acrylic on MDF, 31.5 x 23.6 in, 2025
Glowing Forest, acrylic on canvas, 47.2 x 63.0 in, 2025
Sunset in Yellow, acrylic on MDF, 48.2 x 36.8 in, 2025
Sunset, acrylic on canvas, 63.0 x 47.2 in, 2025
Large Opening, acrylic on canvas, 63.0 x 47.2 in, 2025
Mimesis Within the Haze:
Between the Visible, the Invisible, and the Unpredictable
By Otto Cázares
The sacred formula of the Eleusinian Mysteries to turn (outer) sight into an authentic (inner) vision stated: “To see better, it is best to close your eyes.” Twice widowed by trusting his vision less than his sight, Orpheus must have accompanied his exit from the underworld with such a formulation.
A variation of that formula, “To see better, it is best to squint,” alluded to by the title of this exhibition, combines the Greek verb mysthos (the act of squinting while maintaining silence) and mist (haze/nebula). It is acting, in a single chord, between mysthos and mist.
Squinting the eyes to see without too much sharpness. Sight on its way to becoming vision. What matters is to never cease evoking-invoking-summoning a certain floating character within what is observed. The narrowing of the eyelids or clouded sight, in-transparency or opacity, which invite an exchange of Glance/Vision, Vision/Glance that moves, like a comet, from the outer image to the inner image, and from the inner to the outer.
In his reflective work on drawing, Memoirs of the Blind, Jacques Derrida spoke about anticipation (which is done with the hand), as opposed to precipitation (which is done with the head). With the consequence that anticipation through the hand of drawing, moving even beyond the visible and the invisible, opens the path toward the unpredictable.
The unpredictable knows time as it constructs expression.
I have the impression that the recent works of Ilán Lieberman seek a reconnection—from vibrating and chromatic filaments—to the memory of an ecstatic state. Recovering that state through the path of pictorial discipline, and seeking self-belonging within the work, unveils its content through the series. Serialization means that, although successive, each work is not chained to the next; rather, through repetition, it provides the opportunity to attempt to unveil a mimesis within the haze.
A glance within the haze. Unpredictable.
The poet Edmond Jabès wrote: “To attempt, on the fringes of tradition, to recover the paths of my sources.” Ilán Lieberman also returns to his sources as an artist along the path of the margins. He returns to his sources by the wettest, foggiest road. Sources that are in a vaporous state.
He does not even have to reach the foot of the source: upon approaching, he is already enveloped in an atmosphere. His diffuse source, scattered everywhere in thousands upon thousands of particles, ensures that, far more than just painting, Ilán Lieberman produces an unpredictable suspension.
In the beautiful attempt to return to his sources via the unpredictable path, the diffuse source persists, which reminds me that when Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the novel An Artist of the Floating World, the artist’s return was to The House. Ilán undertook the journey to the House-Source from the margins, departing from two zones where he once stood: the zone of mourning and the zone of epiphany, which, later on, and having already completed the return journey, might have led him to utter an imaginary paraphrase of Meister Eckhart for this exhibition:
«If I were not, neither would this vision be.»
Less a memory of the blind and more a memory of someone who has seen with squinted eyes, Ilán paints like one possessed, using anticipation-colors. He trusted his vision more than his sight, and Ilán, like Orpheus, accompanied his exit from the underworld with such a formulation, using the chromatic margins of the path, which wave like a hertzian wave. Colors, luminescences, iridescences. They wave with winks: Klee i-radiations, Rothko i-radiations. I-radiated colors of a certain fluorescence: a radioactive palette where chromatic i-radi-action occurs.
In the experience, Ilán Lieberman carried the imprint of the guarantee of mourning, and the process was marked by anguish: “Solace does not bring solace,” Maurice Blanchot rightly wrote.
Undertaking the path from the margins implied for Ilán Lieberman a feverish production of more than a hundred pictorial works: numerous canvases of different formats and scales, and abundant works on paper, which required a careful selection for the exhibition To see better, it is better to squint, whose i-radi-action unfolds between the visible, the invisible, and the unpredictable.