A late artwork by René Magritte (Lessines, Belgium, 1898 – Bruxelles, Belgium, 1967) introduces the theme of simulated reality in this exhibition. As an author near to surrealism, Magritte carried out a line of research independently from the rest of his group. He was mainly interested in human cognitive processes and his potential to build visions of reality freed from material data. In his painting, Le grand siècle, the gaze of the man in a bowler hat – the artist's alter ego – appears rigidly compressed between the sky's lozenge ceiling and the lateral planes made of thick trees. Metaphorically, the boundaries enforced by our mandatory perspective and previous knowledge of the world never cease to condition our vision. Magritte's "windows" embrace the landscape in a continuous dialogue between real and imaginary data (matter and flow), making the simulation process apparent as the basis of any attempt to build a representation of the world.
René Magritte