Alma Maestra
There is an ancient beauty that can only be seen in a foggy mirror in which we all can look at ourselves. The vaporous halo of our breath on that mirror sinks the image into infinite emptiness. For a second, we interrupt the flow of time, and with our breath, the soul returns to the body. It returns like a splinter, like a breath. It organizes its thousands of parts always with rounded contours, like every tear, like every planet. There are forces (forces beyond all will, forces that are mystery itself) like winds of stardust that move these shapeless particles in a cloud-like dance. They approach us gently, as if someone had blown on a baker, and the fluffs of fragmented desires, the swirls of mortal ashes brushed our skin. We chase them and breathe them in to rediscover them, fleeting, within ourselves. The world of the small is as infinite as what is lost in the darkness of black holes. Nothing has a defined edge because the separation between things is only apparent, as we are linked to everywhere, to every molecule of this wonder called the world. Also, to what we say in a summer conversation in a courtyard, in a mirror at the brow we call consciousness.
Consciousness tells me that the circumstantial gathering of atoms we call Ernesto Ballesteros thinks, draws, and writes outside of himself, with the part of mind, soul, and heart that is common to all. He is connected to something before knowing, something that does not belong to us, that leaves, returns, and dissolves. We can wander through his drawings as one who knows that every blade of grass, every grain of sand has a soul, traverse them, and inhabit them like the house we are. Large or small, with occupied zones and others forgotten. Folded and secret rooms, basements, attics, passageways, and windows. Hidden corners and rooms, gardens, and unknown places. Transparent and worn spaces, dark or fresh. Inside are the caves, outside the stars, or the reverse, because the farthest galaxy is as distant as our index finger.
These drawings also contain words. Sentences written in pairs, whose paradoxical interlinking forms the dialectic of immediate awakening.
From there or from here, from his non-self, the artist brings us these gifts so that we may see ourselves. So that our life, that long interval between inspiration and exhalation, may be deep and truly beautiful.
Something tells me: beings arrive, stay, and leave, but they change everything in their passing.
Silvia Gurfein
January 2020
