The Raft of the Medusa

Ballester’s search for the poetics of empty space has led to the series Espacios ocultos (Hidden spaces), comprising reinterpretations of masterpieces from art history, which he reworks by digitally altering photographic images of these earlier paintings to produce disquieting absences. Works such as Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (Le radeau de la Méduse, 1818–19) have allowed Ballester to revisit paintings of previous centuries, to approach them without having to renounce his own period in history. Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, an icon of French Romanticism, depicts the aftermath of the 1816 wreck of a French naval frigate off the coast of Mauritania, when more than a hundred people floated for several days on a hastily built raft and only fifteen survived. Ballester’s photographic reinterpretation shows the remains of the raft itself, absent of people, after the survivors have been rescued and the bodies of the dead have disappeared. Much like his reinterpretation of Francisco de Goya's The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid (1814), Ballester’s The Raft of the Medusa evokes a historical event that remains alive in the public imagination.