José Maldonado asserts the primacy of language, as the prerequisite and dwelling place of things, by quoting a verse from the Spanish poet Luis de Góngora, “Las Cenizas de la amada las que cuenten el paso de las horas” (The ashes of the beloved that mark the passage of time), which he realizes in visual images. His installation Vanitas (Vanity, 1991) appropriates space through the construction of a doorless enclosure, visible only through its windows. This allows the viewer to look into an inaccessible interior landscape where sensuously suggestive images generate an optical illusion. Some of