Placebo, the exhibition by artists Raúl Cordero (Havana, 1971) and Omar Barquet (Chetumal, 1979), hosted in the Medicine School Palace, formerly Palace of Inquisition, brings together a set of pictorial, graphic and sculptural work that feeds from history of art, both from the loss of visual representation as well as from its junction with disease. Although the works are not illustrative, in the double meaning of literalness and pedagogy, of disorders or clinical cases, they do are works that consent diverse readings in which the wide semantics of medicine take place: body, pain, science, and even faith and artistic creation itself. In addition, the exhibition operates under the trompe l’oeil of the false promise announced by its title, as an invading agent that installs in a foreign body and grows within it, altering not only its appearance but, above all, its system and function. Within the corridors of the old palace a subtle vibration has modified its regular rhythm, each picture reclined on its walls adds an accent, an unprecedented melody that slow the hastened walk of the visitor, unexpectedly fostering a new relationship with space. Thus, each line and object arranged by Barquet and Cordero echoes circular, intermittently, within the labyrinth of rooms, arches, courtyards and showcases from the old palace, establishing its inevitable presence through a body and a voice coded within the margins of a frame. At the same time, Placebo is not, nor aspires to be, a cure to quench our thirst for knowledge around the body and its intrinsic wonder and rot, but instead an opportunity to purge our intuition within the uncertainty of the world.

Christian Barragán

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