La Quinta del Sordo

In Philippe Parreno’s La Quinta del Sordo, sound and light are connected to give new life to Francisco Goya’s 14 “Black Paintings”, which he made in his home near Madrid between 1819 and 1823. Unlike the cycles of dazzling religious paintings he made for the Kings of Spain and for the Church, these dark works, haunted by the ghosts of his inner world, were made in oil directly on the walls of his house, using mainly backs and shades of ochre.

In this film, Philippe Parreno made a 3-D model of Goya’s house within which he recreated the original placement of the paintings in relation to the windows and doorways and simulated the propagation of sound within the building. Using an ultra-high-definition camera, he then dove into the paintings, which were detached from the original walls, and which are now stored in the collections of the Prado Museum in Madrid. Oscillating between surface and depth, light and shadow, the film offers an immersive experience in the paintings within an imaginary space.

The Pinault Collection showed this work for the first at the Icones exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2023