"We grew up in the desert surrounded by thorny bushes and cacti.

We didn't go to the desert to be tempted by the devil: we wanted to sin; we dreamed of a garden.

There was so much to experience that the tree of knowledge became a forest to us. Luis went to investigate, he went to the future to look with the eyes of a visionary and mystic and, following in the footsteps of the European painters who had documented the landscape of Latin America in the past, he recorded the catastrophe: the collision of technical progress with nature, the ruins of architecture in the post-apocalyptic landscape, the juxtaposition of optical illusion and distorted perception of reality.

It is often said that the Europeans traded us gold for mirrors, but this is a mistranslation: what they gave us were mirages.

They wanted us to believe the story that Europe was the Garden of Eden, when it was the place where we lost our unity and where nature became a deceptive projection.

And there was Luis to paint it: the garden was a bubble, a hazy and fragmented reflection; because we grew up in the desert, we are experts in mirages!"

Juan Pablo Villalobos