The Valley of the Butterflies

Where longing drifts between the valley and the sky

Casa Serra is pleased to present The Valley of the Butterflies, a new exhibition by R.SERRA opening 3 June 2026. The exhibition unfolds as a poetic meditation on longing, transformation, and the fragile distance between desire and possession.

Set within a dreamlike landscape inhabited by symbolic creatures, wandering spirits, and fragile forms, the works explore the tension between freedom and inevitability, flight and grounding, beauty and disappearance. Butterflies emerge throughout the exhibition not simply as images, but as omens of change, longing, and unattainable desire. They drift through valleys, desert winds, and imagined terrains where nature carries memory, silence, and emotion within it.

Through paintings, sculpture, textiles, and collected objects, R.SERRA constructs a world suspended between myth and reality. Horses, stones, insects, flowers, and scorched earth become recurring presences that speak to instinct, transformation, and the emotional landscapes that shape human experience. Nature is treated not as backdrop, but as a living force with its own spiritual and emotional language.

Across the exhibition, delicate gestures coexist beside raw materials and weathered surfaces. Fragile wings emerge against mineral textures and darkened landscapes. The works move between intimacy and scale, stillness and movement, carrying a quiet sense of melancholy beneath their beauty. Throughout, the butterfly becomes a symbol of all that is deeply desired yet impossible to hold.

Valley of the Butterflies reflects upon the beauty and tragedy of longing, and the solitude often carried by those who exist outside of the expected order of the world. The exhibition considers what it means to seek freedom whilst remaining tethered to the earth, and whether beauty itself always contains the shadow of its own disappearance.