The Third of May

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 Francisco de Goya’s The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid (1814) have allowed Ballester to revisit paintings of previous centuries, to approach them without having to renounce his own period in history. Goya intensely examined the theme of war and its consequences, with regard to both the collective arena and the individual. In Ballester’s photographic reinterpretation of The Third of May, the people have disappeared from the scene; however, we can still recognize the setting Goya used to represent this dreadful historical event. There is only one trace of the tragedy—the spilled blood mixed into the soil on a piece of ground dramatically illuminated by the slanted light of a lamp. At the outskirts of the city, in the dark of night, the soldiers have already left and the bodies have been removed from the site.