Exhibition View
The moving image refers to a dynamic visual representation that encompasses film, video, animation, video games, and other various forms of digital media which have shaped how we see and feel the world. With selected screenings on the art, history, and new development of the moving image from Spain, CAFA Art Museum presents “OFF-CAMERA: Moving Image” in Beijing.
Exhibition View
The exhibition is co-organized by the CAFA Art Museum, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), Embassy of Spain in the P.R. of China, and Shenzhen Wenze Creative Culture and Tourism Development Co., Ltd. Curated by Susana Sanz, whose curatorial practice focuses on the intersections between moving image, cinema, and contemporary art in Asia, “OFF-CAMERA” brings together works by 12 Spanish artists, aiming to provide a new interpretative perspective on Spanish film and contemporary art.
Marta Betanzos Roig, Spanish Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China
“Drawing on the extraordinary creativity of 12 artists from diverse backgrounds, it is an exhibition that combines artistic approaches to the moving image with the versatility of digital technology beyond the realms of photography and cinematography,” stated Marta Betanzos Roig, Spanish Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. When the moving image becomes a shared language of our time, she trusted that it did not only provide a magnificent opportunity to showcase Spanish contemporary art in Beijing, but it also strengthened the cultural communication between China and Spain.
Lyu Pinjing, Vice President of CAFA
The Central Academy of Fine Arts has long been committed to exploring digital media and moving image. This exhibition is highly aligned with the teaching activities and research at CAFA. “It does not only reevaluate the boundaries and possibilities of ‘moving image’ by showcasing the innovative synergy of contemporary Spanish art, but it also serves as an academic reflection on the moving image,” said Lyu Pinjing, Vice President of CAFA. The moving image provides an important tool for perceiving the world and reflecting the reality. Like a seed in the soil of Sino-Spanish culture, “OFF-CAMERA” inspires a future discussion among countries about vision, region, and culture.
Jin Jun, Director of CAFA Art Museum hosted the opening ceremony.
The Group Photo of Honored Guests at the Opening Ceremony
“There is an area of the screen that cannot be capture by the gaze. An uncertain, pulsating territory that vibrates beyond the edges of the visible,” according to Curator Susana Sanz, that is the place of the off-camera, “What does not appear but determines meaning; what is not seen but breathes within the image.”
The moving image in the contemporary sense is no longer just about viewing, as spectators can enter the works or be enveloped by them, during the exchanges, the boundaries between cinemas and artistic installations dissolve. Through their respectively intimate expression, each artist in this exhibition explores a different dimension of the off-camera space: it is not absence, but the promise of a possible narrative.
The first section centers around film clips. From Luis Buñuel to Carlos Saura, from Víctor Erice to Pedro Almodóvar, off-camera here is no longer merely a technique of “classical” cinema or a narrative tool, but it has become an ontological condition of the contemporary moving image.
ALBERT SERRA, Bullfighting, 2025, 14’
The second section reveals to us that the moving image no longer needs to exist in any theater but it is a politics of vision: “a gesture that decides that the marginal or the ghostly should reappear.” Albert Serra conveys the vitality of poetics in Bullfighting (2025), the close-ups and slowed image “keeps secrets, like a rough fight that invites prolonged contemplation.” From the idea that the off-camera can be a dialogue of sounds incorporated into the image as counterpoints, Isaki Lacuesta unfolds a hybrid practice in Strokes (2007) with images of a fragmented and silent flamenco tableau. While in Metallic Shadow in the Dream (2018) by Lois Patiño, the moving image becomes a constant murmur that dialogues with light and shadow.
ISAKI LACUESTA, Strokes, 2007, 4’
LOIS PATIÑO, Metallic Shadow in the Dream, 2018, 22’
The third section highlights the works of Patricia Esquivias, Cabeelo/Carceller and Itziar Barrio who have interrogated the representational devices that have shaped the visual narratives of identity. Patricia Esquivias takes the archive as a living and reconstructing document in Cardinal Cactus (2020). Cabello/Carceller put forward a discussion for the normative structures of representing the body, gender, and identity in A Voice for Erauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time (2021-2022). Itziar Barrio combines performance, installation and cinema to stage the tension between the cult of the body and the machine in ROBOTA MML (2019-).
PATRICIA ESQUIVIAS, Cardinal Cactus, 2020, 38’
CABELLOCAR/CELLER, A voice for Erauso. Epilogue for a Trans Time, 2021-22, 28'15''
ITZIAR BARRIO, Robota MML, 2023, 17’16’’
“Technology does not distance us from human experience but it re-configures it,” which is exactly what the curator wants to convey in the fourth section. The hybrid coexistence of pixel and painting, of algorithm and sculpture, has transformed the way that the contemporary image is constituted. Daniel Canogar and Amparo Sard share their latest and ongoing works from this perspective. Orbital (2025) is a system of light that transforms in real time, fed by impulses and date. Daniel Canogar inherits the traditions of kinetic art, abstract expressionism and installation and his work interacts with the space and viewers. In Haptic Self-Portrait (2021), Amparo Sard brings us back to questions: can an image be touched?can it feel or be felt? In her interactive installation, each void is an echo of touching, and it reflects a vibration that turns technology into skin.
DANIELCANOGAR, Orbital, 2025
AMPARO SARD, Haptic Self-Portrait, 2021
Between the visible and the invisible, between forms and overflows, the exhibition invites viewers to experience and rethink the idea that the moving image ends with its reproduction. “Off-camera, is not a limit but a gesture of openness that leads us to re-imagine what it means to see and to belong to the visual world.” These works compose a cartography of contemporary vision, where this bold, innovative, and constantly exploratory attitude has always run through the spiritual pulse of Spanish art.
The exhibition remains on view till December 21, 2025.
Courtesy of CAFA Art Museum and Susana Sanz, Edited (EN) by Sue/CAFA ART INFO
About the Exhibition
Dates: November 14-December 21, 2025
Venue: CAFA Art Museum
Exhibition Directors: Jin Jun, Han Wenchao
Exhibition Planning: Hai Jun, Gao Gao, He Xiaobei
Exhibition Coordinator: Yi Yue
Exhibition Assistant: Wang Nianyi
Design Director: Ji Yujie
Exhibition Management: Su Shicun, Jing Peng, Lyu Zhifa
Media Team: He Yisha, Wu Jing, He Yifei, Du Yinzhu, Ding Yi
The project is supported by the Embassy of Spain in the P.R. of China and Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.
