The Sleep of Reason is an exhibition that brings together works of contemporary art from three major collections: the ”la Caixa” Collection of Contemporary Art, the Banco de la República Art Collection (Bogotá, Colombia) and the Museo de Antioquía Collection (Medellín, Colombia).

The show’s evocative title is taken from Goya’s best-known print from his disturbing series ‘Los caprichos’ (Caprices, 1799), in which he took a satirical swipe at late-18th-century Spain. This small black-and-white etching shows a man sprawled across his desk, deep in slumber, as he is unexpectedly visited by a host of various eerie animals hovering behind his back. If, as Goya claims, the sleep of reason produces monsters—an idea very much in keeping with Romanic thought—then the three curators of the show (one from each of the participating collections) have decided to pay tribute to the world of Goya’s imagination by applying it to contemporary issues in our own age: the crisis of modernity and urge to question notions of reason, order and control.

Exhibition curators Nimfa Bisbe (”la Caixa” Collection of Contemporary Art), Nicolás Gómez (Banco de la República Art Collection) and Nydia Guitérrez (Museo de Antioquía Collection) blur the role of reason and instead embrace more unstable and flexible approaches that are distinctly sensorial in nature. They have put together a set of works defined by their serial or reticular working practices, geometries and symmetries but which, intriguingly, incorporate new meanings from outside the rational order. Although in form the pieces reflect the principles of modern discourse—minimalism, rationalist architecture, etc.—they free themselves from this conceptual straightjacket in favour of more organic, corporeal ideas which even include religious or ideological beliefs. These interlinked geometries connect symbolically with Goya’s spectres and invite us to reflect on whatever might be out there beyond our control.

The show features work by leading names from each collection, both internationally renowned artists and key figures from the world of contemporary art in Colombia: Absalon, Magdalena Fernández, Fernanda Fragateiro, Katharina Fritsch, Rodney Graham, Juan Fernando Herrán, María Teresa Hincapié, Richard Long, Allan McCollum, Asier Mendizabal, Delcy Morelos, Rogelio Polesello, Liliana Porter, Andrés Ramírez Gaviria, Miguel Ángel Ríos, Daniel Iregui Rozo, Rosemarie Trockel, James Turrell, Juan Camilo Uribe, Juan Uslé, Franz Erhard Walther and Rachel Whiteread.

An accompanying catalogue offers key insights by exhibition curators Nimfa Bisbe, Nicolás Gómez and Nydia Guitérrez, together with a text by Anna María Brigante, philosophy lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá.