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Galleria Continua presents Vibraciones, the first solo exhibition by Cuban artist José Yaque at its Paris Marais space, on view from January 16 – March 10, 2026. Conceived as a multisensory journey, the art exhibition brings together works in diverse formats and media. “It brings together pieces from different stages of the artist’s creative process and, at the same time, signals a transition towards new formal experiments,” notes Galleria Continua in a press release.
Vibraciones unfolds across three distinct spaces that guide the visitor from a mysterious atmosphere to one filled with light and colour, eventually opening into an explosion of lumiosity and movement. Installed on the gallery’s first floor, the ascent up the staircase—suggestive of emerging from the earth—serves as a symbolic threshold. “To reach it, the viewer must ascend the stairs, as if one emerges from the earth. This action introduces the first significant sensation of the exhibition: upon arrival, the viewer encounters a mound of earth from which buried bottles emerge,” elaborates the art gallery.
Upon entering, visitors first encounter Maduración (2018), a sculptural installation composed of eighteen large jars of aliñao, a traditional liqueur from eastern Cuba, buried partially or completely in earth. “The piece originates from a Cuban tradition linked to birth: when a baby is about to be born, this liqueur is prepared and stored for nine months. After the birth, it is shared with family and friends, and then the bottle is buried for fifteen years, until it is unearthed and shared again on that anniversary. There is no single recipe: each bottle is unique, as an individual,” explains the gallery.
This first space also features a series of charcoal drawings made in 2020 during a period of introspection for the contemporary artist. Nearby, nestled within a niche, Ámbar (begun in 2023) introduces the exhibition’s first intense luminosity. Comprising nearly 200 glass jars containing vegetation from the mountains of Madrid, encapsulated in natural pine resin. “Ámbar emits a light that seems to emerge from within: it is the first intense and luminous vibration that the viewer encounters in the exhibition,” notes Continua.
The second space establishes a zone of dialogue through works from Yaque’s ongoing series dedicated to minerals. Drawing on geological processes and the origin of colour from mineral pigments, these canvases evoke the deep energy of the earth. “This fascination with geology translates into pictorial techniques where paint flows freely, mixes and settles autonomously, allowing chance and gravity to play a crucial role in the construction of the image,” elaborates the contemporary art gallery.
The final section is devoted to movement and expansion. The large-scale installation Río occupies the gallery floor as a chromatic field in constant flux. Wall-mounted paintings act as tributaries, cascading visually into the central river of pigment. Immersive and enveloping, Río transforms painting into a living, flowing entity—a pictorial spring that spreads through space, generating colour combinations with apparent autonomy. “The space is occupied by a river of pigment that seems to arise from a subjective distillation of the colours generated by the works hanging on the walls. A pictorial spring that gushes forth, expands, and freely appropriates the space, generating chromatic combinations almost autonomously,” the gallery describes.
Vibraciones is presented as an experiential landscape in which matter, time and energy converge through earth, pigment, light and movement. It “invites the viewer to inhabit this flow, to be carried away by its rhythms and to perceive art as a living field of resonances”, concludes Continua.
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