WHAT HAD BEEN THERE ALL ALONG

I accompanied Roberto Chartam on a Sunday in August last summer, during a car journey that began in Navarrevisca (Ávila) and ended at CEART in Fuenlabrada. That day, I was his chauffeur. We thought the place would be open, and Roberto was thrilled—he was going to take measurements for his Tautologies, a project that Fuenlabrada had embraced already but was still just an idea waiting to take shape. However, on that scorching Sunday in August 2023, CEART was closed, and Roberto, let’s put in this way, fell into quiet despair.

Because for Roberto, a space that can’t be explored is a work that can’t begin. Many have said it before: Roberto doesn’t just install his art in rooms or galleries—he intervenes in them. He studies them, understands them, and accepts them as they are, with all their quirks: the corners and columns, the fire extinguishers and staircases. Only then, as a second step, does he bring in his materials—wool, screws, hooks, and pulleys. Not to "improve" the space, but to show us—dazzled by modernity—that a single place can be a thousand of places.

Roberto never discards anything from a space but rather respects its nature as it is. He makes the most out of it. Anyone of you who happens to come round this place will feel, as I did, that he has helped us step into the space in a new way. His ancestral wool drawings create the illusion of doors and windows, entrances and exits—but, in any scenario, places through which you could wander. And if you ever get the chance to see the scale models he prepares for competitions, you’ll notice that he personally takes the trouble to recreate miniature replicas of people, as if to point at one and say: “See? That’s you. Come on, step inside—this place is waiting for you.”

One last thing: that sweltering Sunday in August 2023, CEART did, in the end, open its doors. Roberto walked in, overjoyed, like a child ready to play, eager to intervene. Who let us in? A security guard who, taking pity on us, allowed us to reveal what had been there all along.

Fernando Sánchez Calvo

Professor of Literature and Theater

Narcís Monturiol Public Institute