FONS AUDIO #46
Rogelio López Cuenca

‘A dotted line.’ That’s how Rogelio López Cuenca (Nerja, 1959) describes the subtle but effective disruption of the conceptual order that his works bring about. The Andalusian artist likes to mention his origins as an experimental poet precisely because many of his works use language as a catalyst of reactions, as a vehicle that can lead to paradox: visual devices and linguistic acrobatics that invite reflection, very often of a political nature.

The juxtaposition of elements from seemingly unrelated spheres and the use of formal aspects of advertising feature in these early works from the late seventies, with which López Cuenca officially landed in the visual arts world after being met with ‘uniform, total and absolute rejection’ in the world of literature.

In FONS ÀUDIO #46, López Cuenca looks back at some of the key aspects that led to the creation of three works now in the MACBA Collection: ‘No (W) here Postcards’ (1998), ‘Beaux Arts’ (1992), and ‘Musée Élan’ (1989). He also describes that transition from literature to artistic practice, to a different way of developing his conceptual, semantic, and, in part, purely pop culture interests.

Modified logos, fossil metaphors, utopian traffic signs, comments on format, reflections on the implications of the medium and on art’s capacity to generate small breaks in the everyday life of those who receive it. To ‘slow down the interpretation of signs,’ as he puts it.

His membership of the Agustín Parejo School artists’ collective, along with many others who were disillusioned with the endemic stagnation of their own political affiliation, is another example of his interest in mixing politics and poetry and in exploring what Gerard Genette calls ‘paratexts’: ‘those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher, and reader…’