In Vital Line, Silvia Lerín explores the line as a metaphor for life. From it she constructs a body of works in which the pictorial, the material and the spatial intertwine to shape a journey traversed by becoming, change and experience accumulated over time. The line appears here not only as a compositional element, but as a presence that organises, divides, articulates and places each piece in tension. Sometimes it acts as a path, other times as a cut, other times as a union. In all cases it introduces the idea of trajectory, of transit, of something that does not remain still, but refers to a constant transformation.

The exhibition stems from a research that Lerín has developed over years around materials, surfaces and the expressive possibilities of painting. Her work is characterised by a very precise attention to pictorial texture, built with multiple layers and washes that generate dense, vibrant and nuanced surfaces. Inscribed within them is the time of the process, the repetition of the gesture and a way of making that reveals both the duration and the memory of the work itself. Each surface seems to have been worked from a slow temporality, in which colour is deposited, recedes, overlaps and reveals a depth that discloses itself through a sustained gaze.

On this occasion, the vertical line that runs through many of the works becomes an axis from which to think about the experience of living. It can be understood as a form of order, but also as an opening to chance. It points a direction, though it never guarantees stability. It introduces an organisation of the plane, but leaves room for ambivalence. It separates and unites at the same time. It interrupts and sustains. Much of the exhibition’s strength resides in that double condition.

The large acrylics on canvas and wood are the core of this series. In them, the vertical line crosses the plane and functions as the structural backbone of the composition. Works such as Copper Line on Dark Red, Silver Line on Light Green, Silver Line on Blue III or Brass Line on Light Blue show how the artist works with broad and restrained chromatic fields, yet ones that are deeply complex within. Far from being uniform surfaces, these zones of colour are traversed by glazes, washes, small vibrations and tonal variations that generate subtle atmospheres of great intensity. There is an evident formal restraint in them, but also an internal richness that prevents the composition from closing in on itself. The line organises, but does not shut down. It marks a centre, though without fully fixing it. It introduces a tension between equilibrium and displacement, between stability and fragility, that makes visible the possibility of deviation and transformation.

In this series, colour plays a decisive role. The reds, blues and greens are not presented as compact blocks, but as surfaces that vibrate and open up to multiple inflections. This vibration of colour, combined with the physical presence of the wood, reinforces the idea that each piece contains a tension between the stable and the mutable. Painting and structure coexist, but neither imposes itself in an absolute way. Between the two, a space is created where the line ceases to be simply a sign and becomes a form of visual thinking.

The exhibition then moves towards works on paper such as Through the Red and Through the Blue. In these, the investigation into line, surface and colour is presented in a more contained and intimate form. These works do not function as a minor appendage to the large canvases, but as a form of distillation. In them, the relationship between colour and line becomes more direct, yet retains the full intensity of the whole. The shift to paper allows one to perceive with a different closeness the pulse of the gesture and the economy of means with which the artist sustains the same investigation across different supports.

From there, the exhibition opens onto the three-dimensional. The freestanding sculptures introduce an important shift, because the line is no longer contained within the plane but acquires body in space. It is no longer merely a represented element, but a form that occupies, articulates and activates its surroundings. In this transition from two dimensions to three, one of the exhibition’s central ideas becomes visible. The line ceases to be solely a sign and becomes the work itself. In that passage, the metaphor of life intensifies. The journey is no longer conceived as a straight or predictable trajectory, but as a winding path, exposed to abrupt changes, interruptions and unexpected encounters. The line then appears as a way of thinking about existence not from fixity, but from movement.

This same idea extends into the video piece linked to the exhibition, in which a dancer enters into dialogue with the work through a choreography created by the artist herself. The body, taking verticality and rotation as its references, prolongs in space many of the tensions already present in the pieces. The performer becomes a line that draws itself, that insists, retreats, shifts and begins again. The video does not illustrate the exhibition, but expands it. It introduces the body, time and movement into an investigation that was already latent in the painting and in the sculpture.

Vital Line brings together a series of works in which Silvia Lerín addresses formal and autobiographical questions through a sensitive and deeply personal language. Through colour, texture, material and line, the artist constructs a visual metaphor of life understood as an open process in continuous change. Following the Stoic maxim “What stands in the way becomes the way”, Lerín builds her work in the same manner that she approaches her life, aware of the turns and detours, allowing herself to be carried by the momentum of a journey that is never direct and in which path and traveller become a single reality.