The paintings by Alejandra Caballero manage to challenge us just as those by Edgar Degas or Edward Hopper do: they give us access to scenes dominated by human figures, surprised in the midst of an intimate (but not necessarily initimist) act, where we can generally see them contemplative, solitary or isolated. These are very important details for understanding what the artists is trying to formulate: what he offers us is a pictoric narrative of a moment or situation of solitude, concentration or reclusion within oneself and he moves us by drawing on the representation of characters and compositional elements which push us to question them, albeit only to satisfy our own curiosity.
What is it that the young girl sitting on the bed is looking at that so holds her attention? What thoughts are running through the mind of the contemplative woman in the night? Who can the girl with her back to the man be calling on the telephone? This is a passionate game which forces us to partake by penetrating the canvas in a voyeuristic and gossipy way. The doors and windows highlight the multiplicity of situations in which we move: our own situation as spectators, the situation that surrounds the characters and the situation that is exterior to them and to us and which demands different ways of looking to try to find an answer to our questions, given that any interpretation will depends on the details or nuances that we place at the centres of our interest (the window, the bed, the chair, the lamp, etc.). The activation of our imagination, of our capacity to guess, and of the subjectivity that the power of narration requires (in short, our involvement) makes the assured delight of contemplation possible.
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