ANTONIO BALLESTER MORENO. SKY AND EARTH
Antonio Ballester Moreno, Sky and Earth. Collage, 2025.
Introducing a landscape into an interior space through scenography is not only an artistic practice, but also a metaphor that reflects the profound influence of the environment on our physical and political experience. This exhibition seeks to connect the exterior with the interior, exploring how landscape—as an artistic genre—has historically been understood as a construct that transcends the aesthetic and encompasses geological, anthropological and social dimensions.
With this aim, the show fosters a dialogue between the work of the artist Antonio Ballester Moreno—created in collaboration with families and students from the Federico García Lorca primary school in Móstoles—and 29 works by other artists from the collection of the Museo CA2M. Ballester Moreno thus continues to explore his interest in art as an educational tool, generating an encounter between two seemingly disparate perspectives that are nevertheless united by a common thread: creation and creativity.
The result is a setting that combines amateur productions made with humble materials, such as cardboard, with works by established artists. This strange and tense landscape invites viewers to wander through a space where high and low, sky and earth, day and night merge, generating a visual and conceptual experience that challenges museum conventions.
The aim, to paraphrase John Dewey, is to “restore the continuity between the aesthetic experience and the natural processes of life, and break with dualistic concepts such as high art versus popular art, the aesthetic versus the practical, and the artist versus 'ordinary' people”.
This exhibition suggests—and aims to make us think—that we are all, without exception, creative, and that the goal of all creation is not to attain the pure truth of knowledge, but to enhance the experience itself. Because seeing all things connected (and united) is always more enriching and satisfying.
ANTONIO BALLESTER MORENO
The artist views art as an educational gesture rather than an expression. Based on popular wisdom and on learning through experience and non-formal educational processes, his work constantly questions the role of cultural institutions, which he simultaneously conceives as meeting places.
He has held exhibitions at the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, using the pedagogical archive of the sculptor Ángel Ferrant in conjunction with his own work. At the Artium Museoa in Vitoria he explored the theme of education through play and motor skills, and at the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia in León he conducted a historical survey of the artists who took part in the regenerationist movements up to the Vallecas School. He also participated in the 33rd São Paulo Biennial as an artist and curator, where he examined all these ideas based on what unites us.
