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From these questions emerges Tanto que puede pasar.
At the beginning of 2025, Maness became a father for the first time. Alongside the profound joy brought by this event, unexpected difficulties also arise: a paralyzing fear and an obsessive contemplation of possible threatening and uncontrollable scenarios (some based on real events, others imagined). Over time, this fear intensifies, and the artist begins searching for ways to live alongside it.
During this process, through therapy, a meditative visualization exercise appears: every day, at an agreed time, the artist sits in silence to drink tea with his fear. Sometimes this fear appears as an abstract presence; other times it takes on a more concrete form.
The repetition of this daily gesture opens the possibility of thinking about tea not only conceptually, but also materially. In this exhibition, Maness uses tea as both vehicle and destination to approach a state of vulnerability.
From this premise emerges ‘Enciclopedia del miedo’, a series of eighty watercolours made with black tea. In the exhibition, these works are presented sequentially: a single frame hosts a new cup each day, activating the series over time. This display element echoes the artist’s own process, as during that period he sat down daily to paint each one as part of his practice. Eighty different designs that nonetheless always contain the same thing. Like fear itself, which may change its form, while the sensation it produces remains constant.
Thinking of tea as a residue that is usually discarded, the artist collected, over approximately nine months, the tea he drank during these exercises. Mixed with clay, this material gave rise to Dorodango de enero, the central piece of the exhibition. Inspired by a practice originating in Japanese kindergartens, dorodango consists of taking soil from the ground and patiently polishing it until it becomes a perfect, shining sphere. This process of transformation becomes a guiding thread through which the artist reflects on his own biography and on the moments in which life has transformed him.
From this same reflection emerges El sudario del ocho, a piece constructed from more than two hundred used tea bags. Flattened and assembled one by one, they form a surface on which the artist prints the image of the Eight of Swords tarot card. This card appeared during a tarot reading performed by the artist’s mother when she asked about the fate of her son, an event that would later mark his life in suggestive ways.
Parallel to the visualization exercise, Maness finds himself constantly knocking on wood, releasing the weight of his thoughts through this gesture. Within this practice an intuitive hierarchy of objects emerges: certain woods seem to have more power than others, certain objects appear to absorb superstition more effectively. From this observation, the artist develops a guide or, as he calls it, a ‘Catálogo de superstición’, exploring this personal and cultural logic.
In a world of algorithms where fear has become a constantly circulating currency, it is inevitable to recall the cry of fear:
“Tanto que puede pasar… tan poco que pasará, ya que solo se muere una vez.”
The phrase, taken from the flamenco piece El pregón del miedo by David Lagos, accompanies the gestation of this exhibition like a melodic lament.
And then the initial question returns: In which cup was the tea served?