Installation diary: three days before the opening
Notes from inside the exhibition preparation process. What is seen, what remains hidden, and what changes at the last minute.
Day 1 — Tuesday
We arrive at nine. The room smells of fresh paint. The walls are white again, with no visible history. There is something strange about this moment before: the space is pure potential, having not yet decided what it wants to be.
We unpack the crates with extreme care. Each piece has its protocol: gloves, temperature, controlled lighting. Ramón, the artist, hasn’t slept well. You can tell by the way he looks at each work: as if it were about to tell him something it hasn’t said yet.
Day 2 — Wednesday
The lighting issue arises at noon. The lamp in the east corner casts a shadow that cuts the large painting exactly in half. It’s not what we wanted. We spend three hours testing angles. In the end, the solution is ridiculously simple: rotate the work fifteen degrees.
Ramón smiles. “Sometimes the work knows better than you where it wants to be,” he says.
Day 3 — Thursday
The day before is always the strangest. Everything is almost ready, yet nothing is finished. We change the order of two pieces. We add one we had previously discarded. We remove the wall text we had written so carefully: suddenly, it feels like too much.
At eight in the evening, we close the room. Tomorrow, this will no longer belong only to us.