The eight paintings that make up Als ich can have an evident common point: all of them depict a pre-existing work of art. Moreover, all these works seem to drink from a certain place, like the Zone in Stalker or the icons that Andrei Rublev painted in Andrei Rublev. There’s no doubt that Tarkovsky's films are beautiful. Equally, there's no doubt that his beauty is highly unconventional, one that doesn’t evoke pleasure or delight, but rather perplexity and sometimes even a bit of horror. There’s an undefined sacredness in Tarkovsky's work, which Gorka García Herrera seems to draw from in his paintings.

That Als ich can wasn’t conceived from a prior conceptual framework doesn’t mean, however, that such interpretations cannot arise. Perhaps this is the most fascinating aspect of Gorka’s work: that, by bringing us into a collision with absolute strangeness, it forces us to find explanations and answers. These answers sometimes appear to us as obvious, as considered choices, yet ultimately turn out not to have been foreseen by the author. Not, at least, from a rational discourse. But as we know well, the greatness of an artist isn’t measured by what they understand, but by what they make us understand. One might even say that for an artist to be an artist, they must be somewhat ignorant. Of the mystery, of that which remains open and cannot be explained, of radical uncertainty: all of this is the domain of art. That’s why we cannot conceive of God painting a picture or writing a novel.

What kind of picture would God paint, if God existed and also painted? What other reality would He want to peer into from His own window? Someone who had all the answers would create nothing, but would merely exist. It’s true that over time God has been conceived as a demiurge and even as an artist of the world: but God’s art cannot, does not concern the world. His work must be the world itself, as we know it, or better still, as we do not know it.

Eight paintings: eight windows, which in turn contain other windows. And in that final window, I do not see Goya, nor Jan van Eyck, nor Juan Muñoz. I do not even see Gorka García Herrera himself. What I see is a mirror in which all of us, the artist and his audience alike, are invited to gaze at ourselves.