Juan Cuenca, A Story of Many Dimensions

Juan Cuenca, Equipo 57

from September 8, 2022 to October 29, 2022

In 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott published under the pseudonym A Square, the novel Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions. In it, he spoke of a world in which only two dimensions existed, a two-dimensional world where its protagonist, a square, narrates in first person a dream in which he escapes from his flat, two-dimensional world to a more complex three-dimensional world.

This exhibition addresses the artistic practice of Juan Cuenca in which, just as in the story we mentioned, his works try to escape from two-dimensionality to three-dimensionality, using small subtle gestures that somehow completely transform the character of these pieces, their essence, to make them shift from their formative two-dimensionality, to a new objectual and factual three-dimensionality. In addition -just as in the story- they are traversed by a fourth dimension: time, which in turn is transformed into memory.

Although it is not a dimension, there is an element that runs through all the works in this exhibition, which rests on their surface and provides a series of complex and hybrid qualities that are difficult to interpret until we come across the work that is possibly the main piece that articulates the exhibition: AYZ. A typographic alphabet that emerges from plane to space through a small arching of its surface and is covered by a complex code of colors related to the phonetics of each letter.

With this exhibition we want to show recently created works together with projects and pieces in many other dimensions and disciplines, as well as works by Equipo 57, delving into the complexity and diversity of his work throughout his professional and vital trajectory without which it is not possible to understand his work, in its full dimension.

Text by Ramón Mateos (curator), 2022

Press release

Exhibition overview

Document, part of the "Abecedario" work

Article by Miguel Cereceda in ABC Cultural

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