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A haunting prelude to a future where the human and technological become irreversibly intertwined. All the paintings that make up this exhibition were created during the year 2024 and will be presented to the public for the first time, reflecting the artist’s commitment to build each exhibition as a unique whole, a narrative that does not admit repetitions. In Obertura each piece is a portal, and each title an enigma. Codes such as “31065004”, a reference to the occipital lobe, suggest an unsettling redesign of humankind: in the pieces, circuits and metals pass through the skull, modifying the way we process reality. The titles, drawn from a vast compilation of medical terminology such as SNOMED CT*, encapsulate this unsettling reduction: the human body becomes a list of references, a catalog of possibilities for technological intervention. In this dialogue between flesh and machine, vision itself becomes a construction, a perception altered by the invasion of devices that rewrite our sensory experience. The paintings, made in oil on wood and canvas, pay homage to traditional techniques, but their origin is in images created using artificial intelligence. This merging of the handmade and the digital strains the boundaries of art, raising questions about authorship, effort and transcendence. In some pieces, a translucent leather, inspired by the radical practices of designer Carol Christian Poell, surrounds the surfaces, distorting the view and disrupting the desire to fully grasp the details. Gabriel O’Shea has used, for years, wax to rematerialize fragments of bodies, alluding– without anecdote or documentary derivations– to contextual violence. Perhaps these “disciplines” of the flesh are linked to his religious upbringing, which introduces a trace of enigmatic spirituality. The capital visions he presents at Galería Hilario Galguera Madrid do not share the dynamics of technological futurism, even if they have a singular cyber-gothic tone. Obertura by Gabriel O’Shea “announces what is to come”; these paintings offer an unsettling and familiar reflection of who we are. When we look at them, what matters is what looks back at us. All these heads steal our gaze, yet the way in which the figures turn their backs on us is diametrically opposed to the profound promise of reconciliation that lingered in the figures of Friedrich’s wanderers, who sought meaning in a godless world, whether on a desolate beach or in the abysses of the mountains. The romantic fog has dissipated, and instead of a ruin from which to begin poeticizing what remains, we must survive in the midst of a defiled world. Excerpt from the text The Capital Visions of Gabriel O’Shea. Fernando Castro Flórez. Overture is not simply an exhibition; it is a visual essay on the fragility of humanity in a world increasingly governed by algorithms. It challenges us to consider what is left of what is human when our bodies are stripped of their autonomy and our perception is shaped by forces we barely understand. In this opening into the unknown, O’Shea does not promise us answers, but leaves us facing the unsettling reality that technology, like religion, could be both our salvation and our damnation. *SNOMED CT is the most advanced and comprehensive clinical terminology standard available today. Its widespread use, endorsement by international institutions and ability to improve interoperability make it an essential tool for modern medical care. By using standardized concepts, SNOMED CT enables consistent analysis in clinical and epidemiological studies globally.

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