In ‘Double Umberto’, Valdés portrays the conductor Umberto Clerici twice, as if caught in two successive frames of film. Sourced from the artist’s ongoing archive of conductor imagery, the painting began almost incidentally–realised on a fragment of canvas that happened to ‘fit’ the chosen image–yet it soon disclosed a compelling internal coherence.

The doubled figure operates as a visual crescendo, generating an upward vertical thrust that mirrors the mounting intensity of musical performance and the embodied act of conducting. For Valdés, this rising gesture also recalls the pictorial strategies of medieval painting, particularly representations of the Ascension, in which Christ’s rise was conveyed through staged illusion and theatrical artifice. Here, the conductor’s uplifted gaze and elevated posture already imply transcendence. The doubling amplifies and intensifies this implication, transforming what might have been a documentary reference into a speculative, nearly spiritual ascent.