The brand of high-mountain landscape art practised by Irene Sánchez belongs less to the realm of the sublime than to the sphere of the emotional, sustained by a thoughtful subjectivity that occasionally borders on the spiritual. There is no sense of terror or fearful exposure to the infinite in her alpine landscapes, but there is a sort of fascinated awe before a reality that is quite beyond us and invites us to reflect on what we have lost. There is an undercurrent of profound respect for a still-pristine nature, perhaps because of the mind-boggling distance between the mountain and human aspirations, between the imperturbable, silent stillness of the rock and the frantic and often futile activity of humanity in the world.

Irene performs a spiritual exercise of extraversion. Mountain Breviary is a particularly apt choice of title, for we must try to read this exhibition as a prayer book. One by one, these landscapes of silent heights and deep voids, demanding and prone to sacrifice and loss, paradoxically force us to confront our own solitude.

Anyone who has had the radical experience of being alone before the immensity of a mountain knows that it inevitably gives us a clearer awareness of our own limitations. There is no better way to truly know yourself than facing the unknown. High on the mountaintop, if the wind is favourable and your ear is well-tuned, sometimes you can hear the divinum silentium that explains so much. Irene appears to have heard it.

The exhibition catalogue features an essay by Francisco L. González-Camaño.

Openning: December 21, to 7pm.

Guided tour: December 21, to 1pm.

Educational workshop: December 22, 11am to 1pm and December 28, 11.30am to 1.30pm.