What is about to happen / Lo que está por acontecer

To the uninformed viewer, Alicia Leal's painting might seem naive. But that is a first impression, before discovering the implications of a speech that is by no means naive, even though it evokes a certain visuality associated with childish sensibility.

With exemplary ease and unprejudicedness, Alicia recreates a world of very bright colours, of somewhat whimsical shapes (although perfectly recognizable, a feast of figuration). But more than a world, it recreates the adventures that have that world as a stage. His is a painting of action.

Stagings. Drama. Alicia Leal almost never invites us to mere contemplation.

Theirs has been a rich process of appropiations, of intense dialogue with referents, of a determined plunge into the heritage of a people, expressed in its legends. And she gives back what she takes, giving birth to a poetics that is at the same time style and thematic vocation.

There is a lot of shared storytelling, but also very personal inventions, which go beyond a simple interpretation of the context. They are here, along with the monsters of creation and the beautiful heroines of a popular narrative, the presuppositions of a critical and incisive approach to what we call reality.

Alicia takes hold of femininity, assuming it as a symbol and as a starting point to highlight a set of more or less obvious values. And it complicates many of those constants. Someone could assume these pictures as illustrations in a children's storybook. But be careful, because these stories are usually double-edged.