Indistintamente: espacio real, puro vacío

Throughout her career, Salomé Cuesta has focused on two essential aspects of visuality: its performance in the exhibition space and the use of light as a material. Together with María José Martínez de Pisón and Trinidad Gracia, she founded Laboratorio de Luz, participating as a member of this group and individually in the 1994 Barcelona show Anys 90. Distància zero (The
90s: Zero Distance) curated by José Luis Brea.
Salomé Cuesta’s first solo show took place in the University of Valencia’s exhibition hall in 1990, where she presented Indistintamente: espacio real, puro vacío. In this exhibition, light was concentrated on the floor, forming a large central rectangle that left the perimeter in darkness, with the sculptures positioned at the top of the wall, close to the ceiling. The fibreglass and resin reliefs interacted with the light, which either created an opaque reflection or passed through the surface.
This piece’s rectangular shape o!ers a smooth, translucent front face that allows the four rear planes to be seen, organised according to the rules of frontal perspective, revealing the artifice of construction par excellence in Western representation. José Luis Brea explained that Cuesta investigates‘the zero degree of visibility’ where ‘the naked e!ect of light meets time. The
very nature of seeing’.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio