The Most Beautiful of the Illusions

In this first 20th anniversary of the opening of Faena Buenos Aires, the Alchemist, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker, tells us about that dreamlike landscape in distant lands where magic was born.

 ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN FAENA JOURNAL ISSUE #57 • SUMMER 2024

In a world where everything is illusion, where the individual imagination faces dreams that range from unspeakable hells to paradisiacal realms, there are those who give in to nightmares, which they call crises. Others seek the most beautiful illusion. Most human beings aspire to find ‘happiness’: the Alchemists embodied it in the ‘philosopher’s stone’; Plato saw it in the world of ‘pure ideas’; the Zen Buddhists called it ‘enlightenment’; the Surrealists revered it as amour fou—‘wild love’. Every religion, every political doctrine, and even all of the sciences pursue the most beautiful illusion. And of all the arts, it is the art of hospitality that has tried to present it to us.

In Christianity, ever since Mary and Joseph were denied a room at the inn and had to give birth to Jesus in a manger, the act of providing shelter for the traveler has been a sacred duty. However, having become merely a commercial activity—and to say commercial is to say having forgotten the most beautiful illusion—most hotels do not step out of the norm. They provide indifferent services, harmful products, and constraints of all kinds, nurturing the presumed poor taste of the traveler and immersing guests in a childish environment. Then suddenly, from among the hoards of money-makers, like a fish swimming upstream, there emerges an idealist who aspires to build a hotel that embodies this most beautiful of illusions. I am talking about Alan Faena. This man, always dressed in white, feeling in the depths of his heart that an approximation was not the thing itself, took the leap beyond the limits of the industry. With absolute honesty, he succeeded in his quest to provide the wandering traveler with a shelter where the best in himself could see the light.

And that’s what happened to me. Weary from so much traveling, feeling like a citizen of a world I found painful—a world of illusion without beauty—barely had I set foot in Faena Buenos Aires than my stress vanished, as if by magic. Emerging from the past while becoming a space of the future, the building immediately offered me the illusion of the most beautiful of homes.

Faena Buenos Aires is not a hotel in the strict sense of the term, but an experience that lifts us up towards beauty the moment we set foot in its spectacular, theatrical, artistically refined space. Dwelling there for a time immerses us in a clearly intelligent world, created in the heart of Buenos Aires, where styles from both classical and modern periods intermingle—much like they do in the rest of the city—evidence of a culture that is at once traditional and ultra-modern, historical and timeless. Far removed from the impersonal luxury of international hotels, Faena Buenos Aires stands out for its personality, its aura, its perfection writ large and in the smallest of details. It is like a living entity: a huge, affectionate animal and at the same time a delicate master.

Walking through the corridors illuminated with the utmost sensitivity, entering the bedroom where every corner, bedspread, object, piece of furniture, light fixture, and curtain made me feel that the most beautiful illusion had been consolidated in one space, as close to my ideal home as I could imagine—where I felt both protected and exalted—totally removed from the world of ugly illusions. In Kafka’s novel *The Castle*, the traveler, however hard he looks, never finds the castle’s mysterious owner. He is a creator who does not dwell in his work. On the contrary, at Faena Buenos Aires, the creator who has given his name to his unique territory actually lives within its walls, his presence lending it the alchemical harmony of well-being and extreme refinement, where luxury is transformed into the sweetness of living.

My friend Alan’s ambition is a generous one. Seeking the most beautiful illusion, he has built an expanding universe, overcoming the perpetual impermanence of the world with his ceaseless creation, alive with art and beauty, without ever losing his deep sense of hospitality, his elegance and courtesy—authentic through and through—qualities all the more precious in a world that is ever more losing reverence for the most beautiful illusions.