According to studies on the human attention span, it is widely believed that the average maximum time devoted to consuming a “piece of content” today is no more than six seconds. Without venturing to question the kind of cultural regression implied by labeling everything simply as “content” — from a GIF to a film or a literary work — Raúl Cordero’s practice has, over the past twenty years, explored what it means to create art for the contemporary human being: one who lacks full attentional capacity and lives in a permanent state of distraction, constantly looking at something while thinking about something else. To find beauty within this condition and return it, transformed into fine art, to the very human who inhabits it, constitutes the central theme of his work.

Pinturas para bater o recorde de 6 segundos is the title of Raúl Cordero’s first exhibition at Fernando Santos Gallery, Porto. In these paintings, created between 2019 and 2024, one can observe the layering of elements such as text, images, and geometric forms, all painstakingly executed by hand using traditional painting techniques. The result is a body of work that provokes a powerful social reflection, while preserving beauty as an essential value — a necessary condition for the survival of our civilization.