One of the strengths of Génesis lies in its ability to make the familiar feel newly charged. Works such as those inspired by Henri Rousseau’s imagined jungles—first explored during Franco’s time in France in 2007—recast Rousseau’s lush primitivism through a contemporary lens. In La Conversación and the tribute piece Conversaciones en el tiempo Lam-Franco, Franco revisits vegetal fantasy but through a prism of hybridity and cultural dialogue.

This hybridity extends beyond mere stylistic reference. Franco’s later pieces incorporate electronic elements and industrial materials that whisper of our era’s techno-ecological anxieties. In these works the line between organic and artificial is not merely blurred; it is reimagined as a space of conflict and, paradoxically, of consolation. The juxtapositions suggest a world in which circuits pulse like veins and screens reflect the mottled hides of unseen beasts.

José Franco. Génesis

Such thematic threads recur throughout the show: the interplay of nature and technique, sacred and artificial, real and imagined. As Andrés Duprat, director of the museum, aptly notes, Franco’s jungles act as both parody and cautionary tableau, offering humor, compassion, and irony in equal measure without forsaking a luminous warning about humanity’s imprint on the natural world.

Marchesi’s curatorial framework reinforces this dialectic, inviting viewers to consider mutation itself as the central logic of Franco’s oeuvre. Rather than presenting stasis or completion, Génesis foregrounds becoming—process over product, transformation over fixity. In this sense, the exhibition does not simply recount a career; it enacts it.

José Franco. Génesis substantiates the artist’s vital place within both Latin American art histories and broader contemporary dialogues. It is a show that rewards slow looking and sustained thought, encouraging audiences to reconsider the boundaries between worlds once thought distinct—and to find, within their interstices, unexpected beauty.