Clandestine Game XI 1968

This is one of Omar Rayo's intaglio prints, and it's a game of light and shadow with a stark palette. It looks like a playful conversation between the flat picture plane and the illusion of depth. I wonder about Rayo as he carefully cuts into the plate, trying to bring a two-dimensional surface to life with three-dimensional trickery. I imagine him puzzling over how to make these ribbons weave, making marks that look like they disappear behind one another. The artist is almost like an architect—no, more like a magician—with a matrix of squares dancing in front and behind. That one shape in the center, see how it seems to float? Like a paperclip holding the whole thing together. It reminds me that all artists are having this ongoing conversation across time, borrowing and building on each other's ideas. And that's what makes looking at art so fun, seeing the echoes and the whispers of one artist in another.