Rogelio López Cuenca graduated in Philosophy and Letters in 1983 and obtained a PhD in Fine Arts in 2016. Since the early 1980s he has been an active member of the Malaga-based art action group known as the Agustín Parejo School. He works in painting, design, photography, video and net-art, installations and art interventions in public spaces, but most of his work is based on images and icons from the media and on the play of language and poetry to subvert their meaning from a critical, ironic viewpoint. Using confrontation, appropriational interventions and the decontextualising of city signs and placards, he alters images taken from the mass media and advertising, showing them as forms that impose behaviour patterns, desires and a system of control on individuals. He dismantles the mechanisms set in place by late capitalist society, focusing on the trivialisation of culture and the spread of artificial tourism as a counterpoint to the problems of migration in Europe. A sense of documentation and archiving plays an important role in his work: he applies it in his installations as critical maps laid on official history or excised memories, for instance in his projects Paradise is for Strangers (2001), Malaga 1937 (2005-2007), Valparaíso White Noise (2012) and bibrramblabookburning (2014).
Since his first solo exhibition at the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery in Seville en 1988, his works have been shown at venues including the Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, Switzerland, 1990), the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (Tampa, USA, 1997), the Palacio de los Condes de Gabia (Granada, 2001), the Caixa Forum (Barcelona, 2005), the Patio Herreriano Museum (Valladolid, 2008), the Andalusia Contemporary Art Centre (Seville, 2011), the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia (Valencia, 2015), the Alcalá 31 Gallery (Madrid, 2016), the National Museum of Anthropology (Madrid, 2016) and the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2019). He has received several grants, including one from the Marcelino Botín Foundation for Plastic Arts (1999-2000) and one from the Spanish Academy in Rome (1995-96). In 1992 he won the Andalusian Plastic Arts Award.
Rogelio López Cuenca graduated in Philosophy and Letters in 1983 and obtained a PhD in Fine Arts in 2016. Since the early 1980s he has been an active member of the Malaga-based art action group known as the Agustín Parejo School. He works in painting, design, photography, video and net-art, installations and art interventions in public spaces, but most of his work is based on images and icons from the media and on the play of language and poetry to subvert their meaning from a critical, ironic viewpoint. Using confrontation, appropriational interventions and the decontextualising of city signs and placards, he alters images taken from the mass media and advertising, showing them as forms that impose behaviour patterns, desires and a system of control on individuals. He dismantles the mechanisms set in place by late capitalist society, focusing on the trivialisation of culture and the spread of artificial tourism as a counterpoint to the problems of migration in Europe. A sense of documentation and archiving plays an important role in his work: he applies it in his installations as critical maps laid on official history or excised memories, for instance in his projects Paradise is for Strangers (2001), Malaga 1937 (2005-2007), Valparaíso White Noise (2012) and bibrramblabookburning (2014).
Since his first solo exhibition at the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery in Seville en 1988, his works have been shown at venues including the Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, Switzerland, 1990), the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (Tampa, USA, 1997), the Palacio de los Condes de Gabia (Granada, 2001), the Caixa Forum (Barcelona, 2005), the Patio Herreriano Museum (Valladolid, 2008), the Andalusia Contemporary Art Centre (Seville, 2011), the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia (Valencia, 2015), the Alcalá 31 Gallery (Madrid, 2016), the National Museum of Anthropology (Madrid, 2016) and the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2019). He has received several grants, including one from the Marcelino Botín Foundation for Plastic Arts (1999-2000) and one from the Spanish Academy in Rome (1995-96). In 1992 he won the Andalusian Plastic Arts Award.