Jose Cháfer’s new solo exhibition marks a deepening of his sculptural research and of his understanding of the relationship between matter, gesture, and form. Far from conceiving sculpture as the imposition of the artist’s will upon a passive material, this new stage situates his work within a territory of transition: an intermediate space in which form has not yet fully emerged and matter retains part of its original identity intact.

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At the heart of this proposal are three fundamental ideas: the block as origin, the tool as mediation, and form as revelation.

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Every sculpture begins with the block. Within it coexist potential and resistance, memory and limitation. The block is not merely a physical starting point; it is both condition and language, a presence charged with history that already contains the possibilities and tensions of the future work. Before any gesture takes place, there is this initial mass, silently holding its possible directions.

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Between the block and the form stands the tool. Yet in Cháfer’s work, the tool exceeds its technical function. It is not simply an instrument of transformation, but a means of negotiation between the artist’s intention and the material’s response. Every cut entails a decision and, at the same time, an act of listening; every intervention into matter becomes a dialogue in which the material responds, imposes conditions, and provides direction.

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For this reason, form is not constructed in the strictest sense. It is revealed.

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The works that shape this exhibition do not seek to erase the material that contains them or conceal their origin. Form emerges from within matter without suppressing it. The intervened areas coexist with sections in which the block preserves its density, its primary texture, and its rawest condition. The sculpture does not deny its past; it incorporates it.

This desire for integration turns the process itself into an essential part of the sculptural language. The marks left by the tools, the transitions between polished surfaces and areas that have barely been rough-hewn, and the natural knots, grain patterns, and cracks do not appear as imperfections to be corrected, but as active records of time and transformation. The work does not aspire to a purity detached from its origin; it is precisely within this coexistence that it finds its formal and conceptual intensity.

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The works brought together in this exhibition do not present a clearly defined before and after. They inhabit a threshold.

That threshold is the moment in which the brutality of the material and the precision of the gesture remain in tension. The block continues to be a block and yet begins to become a dynamic structure, an active void, an open form. Rather than presenting a closed or final result, the sculptures invite the viewer to witness a moment of transition: the precise point at which weight appears to become lightness, mass acquires fluidity, and the interior begins to breathe.

Sculpture thus ceases to be understood as a completed object and becomes a visible process.

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In this exhibition, matter does not disappear in the service of a preconceived idea, nor does it act merely as a formal support. It is presented as a territory: a territory that resists, imposes conditions, and enters into dialogue.

Cháfer does not seek to dominate the material completely, but rather to establish a relationship of listening and response. The grain suggests paths, the knots establish boundaries, and the density introduces risks and demands specific structural decisions. Each piece emerges from this sustained conversation between intention and resistance.

The work arises from this tension.

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The new sculptures created for September 2026 deepen this investigation through a more ambitious spatial openness and a structural complexity that embraces greater formal risks. The voids take on an increasingly prominent role, the intersections generate dynamics that evoke processes of organic growth, and the contrasts between polished surfaces and carved areas become more radical.

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The void is no longer understood as absence, but as active form. It becomes an interior space that articulates the work and expands its relationship with the architecture of the gallery, generating visual paths and perceptual tensions that extend the sculpture beyond its own physical limits.

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These are processes in which transformation does not appear as an abrupt rupture, but as a transition, as the progressive revelation of a latent possibility.

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This exhibition also arises from an explicit desire to honour the material. For Cháfer, every block preserves a history that precedes the sculptural intervention: an origin inscribed in its grain, its tensions, its accidents, and in the very memory of its natural formation. Respecting that inheritance does not constitute a limitation upon the process, but rather a position taken in relation to matter. Preserving visible fragments of this original identity—allowing part of that history to remain intact within the work—means acknowledging the intrinsic value of the material and paying tribute to what came before it. Sculpture therefore appears not as the replacement of origin by form, but as a coexistence between the two.

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The decision to preserve visible sections of the block and to keep the process of transformation present responds precisely to this intention. Raw material possesses a beauty of its own, one that does not disappear through sculptural intervention and does not need to be concealed in order to legitimise the completed work. On the contrary, transformation is only possible because the raw matter that supports it and makes it imaginable already exists.

The exhibition also introduces a particularly significant dimension within the artist’s trajectory.

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Painters often say that one of the most complex decisions in their practice is knowing when to lift the brush and consider the work complete. Here, Cháfer has sought to confront a similar challenge.

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Until now, much of his work tended towards the total resolution of form, towards a sense of completion that he himself associated with the culmination of the sculptural process. On this occasion, however, he deliberately interrupts that impulse towards perfection in order to allow the material to retain a more prominent presence.

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This does not mean abandoning formal rigour, but rather shifting the point from which the end of the work is determined. It means allowing the sculpture to be shaped not only by the artist’s assertion, but also by what the material proposes and demands.

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Cháfer often says that working with natural materials involves listening to a different story within each piece. Every sound, every vibration, the temperature, the textures, and the cracks speak not only of an origin; they guide the process and suggest specific modes of intervention. In this exhibition, that dialogue, usually contained within the intimacy of the studio, becomes visible.

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The sculptures therefore reveal not only a form that has been achieved, but also the conversation that made it possible.

The exhibition also incorporates another essential aspect of Cháfer’s practice: the value of intuition as a form of knowledge and sculptural construction. Many of his processes do not respond exclusively to prior planning or to an entirely rational logic, but to decisions that emerge during the act of working and are sustained by an intuitive attentiveness to the material and its possibilities.

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Cháfer has sought to transfer this experience into the exhibition space and to invite the viewer into that same territory of uncertainty and discovery. Many of the pieces retain hidden or deliberately open areas, fragments that are not fully revealed and whose resolution remains suspended before the viewer’s gaze.

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Far from constituting an absence, this indeterminacy invites active participation. The viewer is invited to complete the work through their own intuition, projecting possible paths, tensions, and forms wherever the sculpture refuses to close itself completely. In this way, the exhibition partially opens the intimate space of the studio and shares with the viewer an experience that accompanies the artist in his daily practice: that moment in which form has not yet been fully given and must be discovered rather than imposed.