[5] Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting has been noted as one of Ruiz's masterpieces that challenges the boundaries of cinema and film theory.

To achieve this, he hires models, acquires props and rigs lighting in order to bring each of the six surviving scenes to life as tableaux vivants.

The collector takes advantage of the tableaux vivants as a medium to experience aspects of the paintings that could only be materialized in three dimensions.

He can then walk around each tableau, adjust lighting, move actors to different positions, and construct narratives intertextually between the tableaux.

Some of the narratives asserted by the collector include the mythological characters of Diana and Actaeon, Knights of the Templar playing chess, a scandal among Parisian nobility, and an occult ceremony involving a sacrifice similar to that of St Sebastian.

Ruiz courteously pays tribute to Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino and the paranoid histories of Thomas Pynchon.