The new sublime

 

This piece invites reflection on two possible attitudes toward life. The first subordinates our capacity for understanding to the act of perception, compensating for its limitations through idealization. The second entails a commitment to grasping the meaning of our existence via observation and verification. In this interactive video, Pablo Rodes draws upon Juan Ramón Jiménez to transform semantic ambiguity into a wondrous reverie tinged with reality.

In harmony with Gaston Bachelard, this artist incorporates the notion that perception, guided by the human inclination toward poetry, shapes our relationship with the environment by adopting a transcendent quality. Creativity thus expands the boundaries of the visible, projecting the soul’s unfathomable concerns onto the universe. This imaginative process, oscillating between the tangible and the immaterial, establishes a reciprocity that encompasses both the ephemeral and the eternal. In a sense, this work sketches an interpretive framework which allows us to decipher hidden meanings.

This approach navigates between rational lucidity and dreamlike evocation, orchestrating a delicate balance that seeks not to impose definitive answers but rather to uncover new and fascinating enigmas. Rodes celebrates humanity’s desire to comprehend the cosmos as an anthropological endeavour in which knowledge reveals the sublime beauty of the everyday. In this light, entelechy emerges where contemplative insight, the realm of symbolism, and the spirit’s connection delineate the course of our existence.

De noche, el oro
es plata.
Plata muda el silencio
de oro de mi alma.

(Juan Ramón Jiménez)