JUAN CUÉLLAR

Valencia 1967

Lives and works in Valencia

Linked to the neo-metaphysical painting resulting from his participation in Muelle de Levante (Levante Pier) exhibition. Linked to the Galería My Name’s Lolita Art.

Juan Cuéllar investigates the condition of simulating pictorial representation, and his authority to question the ubiquity and power of the visible. He conceives painting as a scenario to disclose the unreal, the hidden or the minute through the use of theatrical or scientific metaphors.

His work represents an alternative and ideal world where he satirizes the idea of the future in which we live. His sly reflections mask harsh criticism on the aesthetics of power or the culture of spectacle and denounce the loss of freedoms in a society that finds within evasion a strategy to achieve freedom.

Cuéllar develops from a personal and modern interpretation of the key to Pop art, an effective conceptual mechanism where he assimilates certain images in the contemporary world. His vision, deliberately innocent and synthetic, thrives on outlined concepts weaving a web of riddles, where solutions shine in a transitional way.

His paintings question the naturalist representation by establishing complex formal and conceptual dialogue between the mechanical and the organic by using codes from the industrial aesthetic and scientific illustration representation. These abstractions, generic and interchangeable, have a great capacity to empathize with the viewer, due in large part, to the familiarity of the references used that operate as mnemonic instruments turning them into objects of contemplation.

His themes are expanded into recurring cycles where initial thoughts are transformed and rectified. His attention has focused on leisure culture from which he has developed a personal repertoire of metaphors. Highlighting the ones coming from the happiness implied in the iconography American still life, model, the liberation represented by the plasticity of multicolored pills, the ceremony conducted in the scenarios of representation, the melancholy of a future lost embodied in the classic images of science fiction, the implied adventure in poetics of travel or ironic safety of an earthly refuge.

A common strategy found in the development of his work is the realization of thematic series featuring movie versions of mythical characters, comics or literature. Emphasis is on his interpretations of Mickey or The Invisible Man and quotes of film titles of any genre.

Among the pictorial references the following painters are highlighted: Ed Ruscha, James Rosenquist or Edward Hopper.

Consulted bibliography: Jarque, Vicente, “La Neometafísica consumada”, in the exhibition catalogue Juan Cuéllar. Evasión, Valencia, Club Diario Levante / IVAJ , 1996. Lagardera, Juan, “Mechanics and organics”, in the exhibition catalogue Juan Cuéllar. Yo, Valencia, Galería My Name’s Lolita Art, 2000. Lagardera, Juan, “¿Es psicoanalizable la metafísica?”, in the exhibition catalogue Juan Cuéllar. El refugio del viajero, Alfafar, Ayuntamiento de Alfafar, 1997. Huici, Fernando, “Teatro de sombras”; Forriols, Ricardo, “Entreacto, donde se cuenta de la sombra, lo invisible y pintura de Juan Cuellar”, in the exhibition catalogue Juan Cuéllar. Acto XXI, Valencia, MUVIM, 2002.