ROBERTO CHARTAM. 

EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS: SPEAKING WITH SPACE

PALACIO QUINTANAR, SEGOVIA.

NOVEMBER 20, 2026 - FEBRUARY 28, 2027

Curator: Alfonso de la Torre

These exhibition spaces at the Palacio Quintanar were already here; they’ve always been here.

The exhibition, carefully conceived by Roberto Chartam (Bilbao, 1977) following study through numerous sketches and models, invites viewers to explore these spaces and experience them not merely as a repository for the works housed within, but as true participants in an essential part of this event—or is it an occurrence? Dance in this interplay of the meaning between the lines and the formal spaces, the illusion of the figures that are displayed or presented on the wall, for you will feel drawn to take different paths, not only visual but also physical—a dizzying journey along the paths of woolen yarn of various colors that, by their very presence, alter both the paths and the viewer’s perception of the rooms that house both. A true weave of invisibility that, in turn, alters our perception—both of the space in question and of the very time frame in which the exhibition’s events occur, a contrast to that apparent neutrality which is so common (you know: paintings, sculptures, or photographs, accompanied by their labels and biographies). Here, the space becomes a demand: for it offers us a call and an invitation to listen; we contemplate an invented space suggested beyond our vision, lines and paths conceived using strands of wool as incandescent vortexes. The work is not so much the manifestation of a drawing in space as it is, the artist would say, the alteration brought about by the presence of his lines within space—lines that, if they can dream like Klee’s lines, also think and imagine. We might say that the work is imbued with the mysticism and liturgy of yarn.

There is less and less to see. Hence, with this exhibition—which welcomes us outside with the work “Variations V” and here next to us with "Angular Composition II_Size” (2026)—the artist proposes an adventure that is experiential and poetic, yet also intellectual. This work is followed in the galleries by "Variations," “Synergies,” “Dance,” and “Tubular Composition”—diverse compositions in space or mounted on the wall that stretch toward that threshold where a work not only catches our gaze but also unsettles it. Roberto Chartam's work has been exhibited at “White Lab” and the Cristina Enea Foundation (2026); CEART (2024); Centro Dados Negros (2023); and Palacio Los Serrano (2021). Chartam’s concept, expressing that journey between emptiness and fullness, has the power to trigger an encounter with these works as revelations, proposals of meaning—like a testimony yearning for vision: speaking with space. Thus, art engaged with the contemplation of space, true perspectives unfolding to produce a complex ceremony in which the forms created with his yarn shine brightly, but also create shadows, which, in turn, will be transformed by the light of time, like the promise of another new place where that which has not yet been expressed dwells. The Quintanar Palace was a void; now it is filled with silence.

ALFONSO DE LA TORRE—CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION

Translated into English by Patricia Martín Rivas and Adam Lischinsky