I visited the Palacio de Velázquez for the first time, during a quiet walk through El Retiro. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I stumbled upon an exhibition that left me in silence for quite a while: James Lee Byars: Perfect is the Question.

Everything in the show seemed to hover between the visible and the invisible. Golden spaces, minimal forms, a presence that felt almost ritualistic. As if each piece wasn’t trying to say something, but rather inviting me to pause… and simply ask. What is perfection? Can a question, even without an answer, be complete in itself?

As someone who appreciates philosophy, I felt I was standing before a kind of material meditation. Byars wasn’t offering truths, but subtle gestures toward the unknown. It reminded me that sometimes the deepest things can’t be explained only felt.

I left the palace with a strange calm, as if I had just witnessed a silent ceremony. Sometimes, art doesn’t speak it suggests. And this time, it did so with gold, with silence, and with the haunting beauty of a perfect question.