“Imagined Paradise explores symbolic landscapes shaped by meditation, travel and the dialogue between Eastern traditions and contemporary colour.”
Imagined Paradise is a collaborative exhibition by María Cortés and Jordi Mollá presented at The Blue Robin House, Madrid, in 2024, and sponsored by Manero.
For this exhibition, María Cortés presented works from her Imagined Paradise series, developed through a dialogue between the contemplative traditions of ancient Japanese and Chinese landscape painting and the vibrant chromatic experiences encountered during her travels to the Dominican Republic and Miami.
Emerging from periods of meditation and introspection, the paintings do not depict specific locations but rather imagined territories where memory, emotion and perception converge. Inspired by the spatial sensitivity and poetic stillness of Eastern landscapes, Cortés creates open pictorial environments in which colour becomes the primary vehicle of expression.
The luminous palettes drawn from Caribbean light and Miami’s urban energy introduce warmth, rhythm and vitality, balancing stillness with movement. Paradise appears not as a geographical destination but as an inner landscape — a space shaped by contemplation, travel and emotional resonance.
This series marks a pivotal moment in the artist’s practice, where landscape becomes symbolic and experiential, opening the path toward her later figurative and mythological works.