Captive Depth

In *Captive Depth*, Manuel Calderón constructs an illusion of infinite depth using a system of parallel mirrors, where the drawing emerges this time as something vivid and material. On sheets of glass painted black, the artist scratches the surface using the technique of sgraffito, carving into the opaque layer to let light pass through. The line does not add—it subtracts: the image appears where the darkness has been wounded, allowing light to pass, revealing the form, and multiplying within the box.

The drawings depict wire meshes: repetitive geometric patterns that evoke fences, barriers, enclosures, and borders—structures designed to contain, divide, exclude. Among them, a single circular shape stands out: a concertina wire. This spiral of blades, used in contexts of imprisonment and defense, becomes a violent symbol: a curved form designed to exclude. But within this device, the luminous repetition transforms the wire into ornament; the blade into a delicate trace. As if the amplified reflection not only distorted its original meaning, but revealed the ambiguity between threat and beauty, between shadow and radiance.

Light passes through these contained forms, but it is never released. What seems like an opening into depth is, in fact, its capture. Geometry, once the language of the divine, becomes here an instrument of control. The mirrored reflections create an illusory depth, a space that appears to expand but is closed in on itself. The image projects toward distance but remains imprisoned within the device.

*Captive Depth* becomes, then, a meditation on the notion of limit: visual, symbolic, and political. Light draws structures designed to interrupt passage. What glows in the background is not horizon or possibility. It is the endless echo of a geometry built to contain.