30/08/2026
EUGENIA CUELLAR
‘Between the Acts’
3 - 27 September
Private view Thursday 3 September 6 - 9pm1_london
Turps painter has a solo show coming up at Studio 1.1 Gallery in Shoreditch in London.
‘Cuellar’s subject is women, ranging from scandalous celebrities (Paris Hilton), film stars in and out of character (of course Marilyn), women real and imagined. And vases of flowers. Above all beauty and its complex of accoutrements laid out in fluid, confident brushstrokes that assert its artificiality, lighting the subject with a glow of wonderment just before or after transformation. Beauty in dressing rooms, applying make-up, styling themselves in the wings, waiting for the cue; to be beautiful.
Although mundane to describe - these are after all mostly women at work, even if it’s only on themselves - their handling moves us immediately into a very different world, where colour and touch call up the impassive but always subversive, sultry mood of late Bunuel.
While their roles were given by men, whether Pygmalion or Picasso, once they are brought to life (Coppelia, Galatea), beauty finally disarms the Beast. Manet gave us Olympia, the bar at the Folies Bergère, questioning the ‘male gaze’ a century before its formulation. Cuellar paints with Olympia’s brush and the anonymous bar woman’s eyes, making us scrutinise that whole judgement call, suggesting layer on layer of complicity.
From the Madonna to Madonna.’
