"Flores ex Parte Series: Anniversaire" Painting

Started in 2007, Miroir Noir is an artistic cooperation between the Slovak painter and illustrator Miloš Kopták (1969) and the Catalan artist Rai Escalé (1964). Their joint paintings are truly created together in Bratislava or Barcelona, where they meet regularly.

Spring 2026 // On the verge of a 20th anniversary

Miroir Noir is approaching now its twentieth year, and we are still not entirely sure what it is.

What began as a studio experiment between Barcelona and Bratislava has survived distances, exhibitions, failures, pandemics, and more flights and emotions than either of us cares to count. At some point it stopped feeling like a temporary project and became part of the structure of our lives.

That might be what surprises us most. Not that there is still work to be done—there always is, if you look for it—but that the conditions that make it possible are still there. Work continues because the agreement to keep going still holds. We're still two, searching for that one unstable third voice, and we enjoy it whenever we can speak with it.

Those twenty years don't feel like a finish line. They feel more like a point where, finally, some things are clearer than they were at the beginning. Not that we recall that much—it's more of a metaphor. But others remain as mysterious as ever, and we still don't know exactly what lies behind the mirror. Perhaps that's why the project continues.