This exhibition is curated by Ricardo Forriols and involves a new opportunity to see the work of this author in Valencia, where he has not exhibited since 2011.

The exhibition presents a part of the photographic archive of Cueto Lominchar, of the more than 800.000 it could contain so far that insists in the main idea of the project: to convert the studio’s window in an open gallery to the theatre of the world. All images have been exhibited from a window of the Avenida Blasco Ibáñez since 2000.

 The idea, which gives the showing its title, is actually a citation of a comment made by Walter Benjamin regarding the bourgeois interior in the middle of the 19th century about the importance of the interior spaces as representation of universe:

A turning of practicality puts the point of attention not in the interior, but in the possibility of looking outwards from there, through a window that is theatrical and becomes that gallery from where you can attend the street show. This is why the showing starts with the picture of a window open to the exterior, which is the theatre of the world, becoming thus the red-velvet curtains, the best curtain for the performance.

All the montage tries to reproduce the horror vacui of the mental studio where the archive is treated in order to make visible its important volume, the quantity of images, evidencing on the wall that it is only a selection with a procedural disposition (nothing definitive nor framed), which is completed with a screening and manageable presentation of a dozen collections —only a small part of what would be possible—as booklets.

 On the other hand, in this exhibition it is intended to highlight one of the series, the Pure Formality collection, in which Cueto Lominchar combines details of his photographs with other images of our visual culture (painting, sculpture, cinema, photography, etc.), insisting on the possibility of a coincident echo that seems to traverse our history from the image in gestures, poses and attitudes that are repeated.

As he pointed out in the catalogue that was published on the occasion of the exhibition Gradivas: «The first photograph I took with a second-hand Voigtländer dates back to summer 1984 and was taken at the beach in my town, Puerto de Sagunto. The camera has been a loyal tool that reduced the sense of loss and the impossibility of retaining the prodigies that eyes can enjoy and are offered by life in any of its “corners”. Since that first time I have taken photographs with all sorts of cameras, from the smallest ones that allowed hiding and shooting without even looking through the viewfinder to the sophisticated and quick autofocus. First I did it at beaches, and then in the streets of the city; Valencia in most cases, but I also took some in my journeys. From the first ones, in which more explicit bodies attitudes and gestures are showed, I retroceded in that search to end assuming just a small space, the demarcation of a unique territory within my view: those things I can see from my home’s windows. This way the windows becomes a shutter and I only register what can be seen from there».

Cueto Lominchar continues: «This is a project that aims to be more than just a photographic series. Actually it describes a contemplative attitude and emphasises the look as an essential device of the codifying perception of desire. [...] Strictly speaking, this activity is the heart of the matter and, more than the selection of some photos according to their formal virtues; the important thing is the sum of all this “album” of my memory. At first, methodologies were not premeditated or proposed for their elaboration but, over time, this sum of photographs can be grouped or associated according to infinite possibilities and paying attention to many subjects.  It is a volatile “drawer”, as variable as the eyes of those who could manipulate its content».

Cueto Lominchar (Puerto de Sagunto, 1961) is graduate and holds a doctorate in Fine Arts from the Universitat Politècnica de València, of which he is a Tenured Professor, simultaneously teaching subjects such as “Painting and Photography” with management tasks; he has been Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Sant Carles and is currently Vice-Rector of Students, Culture and Sport of the UPV. Since 1986 he has maintained his artistic activity alternating in his exhibitions painting and photography (which gained more prominence), generating projects and works related to both disciplines and their qualities as manifestations of the visual discourse of the tradition, modernity and the contemporary scene. Among his individual exhibitions stand out “Agente doble”, Galería Postpos (Valencia), April 1986; “Pinturas”, Galería Postpos (Valencia), March 1987; “Cueto”, Casa de Cultura Puerto de Sagunto (Valencia), May 1987; “Algo se mueve”, Casa de Cultura de Mislata (Valencia), January 1988; “Cueto Lominchar”, Galería Comte (Valencia), February 1988; “Pinturas”, Galería Postpos (Valencia), October 1989; “Cueto Lominchar”, Galería Artual (Barcelona), January 1990; “Cueto Lominchar”, Galería Postpos (Valencia), October 1990; “Fotografías. Cueto Lominchar”, Galería Postpos (Valencia), April 1998; “Vigilia”, Galería Postpos (Valencia), April2005; “Gradivas”, Centre Cívic Antic Sanatori (Sagunt), November 2010 y Chaston (Valencia), 2011; as well as various participations in fairs such as ARCO or Interarte and collective exhibitions such as “Al Oeste. Jóvenes en el 91” (Club Diario Levante, 1991) or “El Jardín de Eros” (Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona, 1999).