Obra seleccionada (Selected Work) was a solo exhibition in Solaris, San José, Costa Rica, hosted by Kamalio Gallery in 2022.

I selected 23 of my paintings  from different periods to have a retrospective look that would help me draw new connections and questions. In 2019 I began to work with Operaciones Editorial (San José, Costa Rica) in a  book about my work. I invited Carlos Segura (Operaciones editor in chief) to reflect upon the selection of paintings and together we discussed the nature of this exhibition and saw it as an extension of our book project.

1. This place is full of paintings that don’t exist yet.

2. A sample of paintings does not always coincide with those that are there, mounted; On some occasions, one finds oneself surrounded by phantasmagorias that have not yet been painted, but that we can already perceive swirling somewhere else beyond the present grace of the works.

3.  As soon as we abandon the very close relationship between montage and exhibition, we enter a horribly unknown field in which who knows how many images – appearing, not from the middle of a state of pure potency, but as actors and accelerators of positive feedback loops, whose traces are pulled towards the foot that has printed them in the future, dispute the space of the same painting.

4. The exhibition – fortunately imprecisely titled as Selected Work – is both an opportunity to interrogate Roberto Carter’s recent figures and landscapes and to do so with those that he has not yet painted, but that do present themselves to us, populating the space, suffering from hyperstitions.

5. …anyone who sees a wall today is seeing a riddle.”

6. Selected work perceives things that are approaching.

Text by Carlos A. Segura.