'Picture cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions', reads the text in white lettering on a blue background, painted in oils applied with a spatula, where the movements of the artist are plain to see. In this picture López Cuenca offers several alternative wordings for this text, which approves the censoring of images for market reasons and the consequent speculation involving works of art.

Some earlier works also concerned with copyright and royalties, using similar formats and wording, were presented at the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery in Madrid as part of the exhibition 'Ciudad Picasso' (2011) ['Picasso City'], in which Cuenca called into question the Picassification of the artist's home city and its shady connections with real estate speculation, gentrification and the promotion of large-scale tourism, all of which he associated with the use and abuse of images linked to Pablo Picasso. All this is in striking contrast to the strict control of the painter's legacy and the publication of photos of his work exercised by his heirs. Paradoxically, this strict observance of copyright while hundreds of merchandising items are being sold that trivialise the potential of Picasso's work means that works are often not properly reproduced or documented when they appear in prestigious publications and collections. Thus, the phrase at the heart of López Cuenca's picture frequently appears as a frustrating replacement for what viewers actually expected to see.

López Cuenca's criticism goes beyond the specific case of Picasso, which is not the only one in which there is restricted access for reproduction of images (altered by the art and popular culture of the 20th century). Something of a fetishist cult thus grows up around works of art and their reproductions (e.g. in the form of post-cards, T-shirts and fans), precisely because they are presented as 'real paintings'; even though the expected or imagined image is not shown it is made with the proper materials and textures for an oil painting on canvas, comme il faut. We have the painting (the presence, the size, the backing, the texture of the picture) but not the actual image, in a reversal of the usual logic of technical reproduction of works of art, in which we have the image but not its tangible value. Strikingly (and consistently with the content of his work), López Cuenca is a pioneer in Spanish Art of the use of creative commons licences as a mechanism for resisting the commodification of cultural products.

Carlos Martín