In Madrid’s Plaza del Carmen, in front of the Thompson Hotel, Gonzalo Lebrija has installed El rumor de la discordia, a bronze horse without a rider, unveiled on 14 October 2026. The sculpture is on temporary loan to Madrid City Council as part of the square’s urban renewal, and it upsets the usual codes of the equestrian statue, where the horse’s stance, its legs and its bond with the rider once told stories of victory or defeat.
Lebrija conceived the work in 2017. Cast in bronze and set on a concrete pedestal, it rises 6.30 metres. The thoroughbred wears a bridle but has no reins, saddle or rider, and it stands at rest, shifted toward one end of the plinth. Rather than holding the solemn, central position such monuments usually give their subject, the animal appears alone and off-centre, stopped just before it would reach the middle.
The sculpture grows out of research that runs through Lebrija’s career: time, suspension and the way events are lived from the inside. Working across photography, video and sculpture, he dwells on brief moments and on the gap between what has just happened and what has not yet occurred.
With El rumor de la discordia, that research reaches a monumental scale. The missing rider removes the human figure from the composition, leaving the horse as an autonomous presence, held in time and space at a point of balance and uncertainty.
Gonzalo Lebrija has pursued the same questions in other monumental projects, among them Condición Suspendida and the works of Breve historia del tiempo, which also deal with balance and with fixing in sculpture moments that would otherwise slip past. Placed in Plaza del Carmen, the idea enters public space and meets the everyday rhythm of one of the liveliest corners of central Madrid.
Born in Mexico City in 1972, Lebrija has built his work around time and its subjective experience, mostly through video and photography, catching fleeting moments and probing the distance between past and future. His practice also looks at the traditions and social structures of his geographical context, and at fate, chance and memory.
Artist: Gonzalo Lebrija / @gonzalolebrija
Photography: Oak Taylor Smith
Location: Plaza del Carmen, Madrid
