From November 12 to December 28, 2025, the exhibition "Off-Camera · Moving Image" will be on display at 3B Gallery of the CAFA Art Museum. This exhibition is co-sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, the Embassy of Spain in China, the CAFA Art Museum, and Shenzhen Wenze Chuangzhan Culture and Tourism Development Co., Ltd.
Curated by contemporary art researcher Susana Sanz, the exhibition brings together twelve Spanish artists. It aims to provide a new perspective for interpreting Spanish cinema and contemporary art.
Exhibition Site
Exhibition Site
There is an area on the screen that eludes the gaze. It is an uncertain, throbbing realm, trembling beyond the boundaries of the visible. This is where the "Off-Camera" resides: unseen yet defining meaning; invisible yet breathing within the image itself. The exhibition "Off-Site · Mobile Image" originates precisely from this vision: to regard the moving image as a constantly expanding organism—one that spreads continuously, escapes endlessly, and keeps pulsating even after the screening ends.
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2025.11.12-12.28
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Beyond the Cinema: The Genealogy of Moving Images
From a historical perspective, cinema has always excelled at expressing the "Off-Site". Since its inception, it has accidentally or thoughtfully discovered that the unseen is just as powerful as the visible. The first chapter of the exhibition features several pioneers of video art, who deconstruct cinema and its ritual nature, revealing new forms of projection and experience. The screen knows how to speak through blank spaces. However, the "Off-Site" is no longer merely a technique or narrative device in "classic" cinema; it has become an ontological condition of contemporary moving images.
Exhibition site
"Mosaic" (2025) is an introductory video installation created specifically for this exhibition. Its material is sourced from clips of renowned Spanish films, and it plays on a loop across five screens simultaneously.
List of Filmmakers
Exhibition site
Luis Buñuel
(Calanda, 1900 — Mexico City, 1983)
One of the most important figures in 20th-century Spanish and international cinema. He had a close relationship with the Surrealist movement, and his early works created in France, such as Un Chien Andalou and L'Âge d'Or, caused a public outcry with their subversive imagery. After his period of exile, he engaged in film creation in Mexico, making more commercial works. These works often blended realism with surrealist imagery, critiquing bourgeois values and hypocrisy. After returning to the European film industry in his later years, he successively released masterpieces such as Viridiana, Belle de Jour, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, further establishing his international reputation.
Exhibition site
Exhibition site
Carlos Saura
(Huesca, 1932 — Madrid, 2023)
Carlos Saura is a renowned Spanish director, cinematographer, and writer, whose works are famous for their profound interpretation of the Spanish national spirit. He is particularly skilled at presenting Spain’s historical traditions—such as Flamenco art—through theatrical forms. He embarked on his directing career in the late 1950s while teaching at the official film school. Saura’s works have always focused on social reality: they not only pioneered new forms of dance films (especially those centered on Flamenco) but also included internationally influential works in his later years. His representative masterpieces include cinematic classics such as The Hunt, Anna and the Wolves, Carmen, and Tango.
Exhibition site
Víctor Erice
(Biscay, 1940)
Víctor Erice is a renowned Spanish film director and screenwriter. He studied film directing at the Official Film School in Madrid and graduated in 1963. In the early stages of his career, he worked as a film critic, production assistant, and created short films, among other things. Later, he directed his debut feature film and masterpiece, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973). This poetic and symbolic work, set in post-war Spain, is hailed as a treasure in the history of Spanish cinema. His subsequent works include The South (1983) and Dream of Light (1992), etc.
Exhibition site
Pedro Almodóvar
(Calsadilla de Calatrava, 1949)
One of the most internationally renowned film directors in contemporary Spain. His style is characterized by intense colors, melodramatic techniques, a spirit of rebellion, and complex narratives, often exploring themes such as desire, family, and identity. He rose to prominence during the "Movida Madrileña" in the early 1980s. His representative works include Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), All About My Mother (1999), Talk to Her (2002), Volver (2006), Pain and Glory (2019), and Parallel Mothers (2021).
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2025.11.12-12.28
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Reconstructing Narratives: Exploring New Grammars of Mobile Images
In the creations of the three artists in Chapter Two, contemporary images have become fluid and permeable, no longer confined to mere viewing—viewers enter the works, and the works surround the viewers. In this interaction, the boundaries between film and art installations gradually dissolve. Each of the artists, through their unique language, explores different dimensions of the "off-site" space—not an absence, but a prefiguration of potential narratives.
Albert Serra, "Bullfighting", 2025, 14’, duration 00:53
Albert Serra transforms time into a dense substance. In Bullfighting (2025), he deliberately slows down the pace. The camera is positioned and waits, allowing scenes to unfold at their own rhythm. Slowness is not merely a delay but a device for contemplation. His extreme close-ups of bullfighting dissolve the ritualistic nature of the sport into the mundane; the imagery of death reflected in the bull's eyes brings the contained emotions to an extreme. History seems like a murmur coming from that generous "off-stage" space, faintly resurfacing through the quiet conversations of the bullfighting team. In the persistent filming of bullfighting, time and again, lies the vitality of Serra's poetics: images hold secrets, like unrefined gifts, inviting viewers to gaze at them for a long time. The camera does not explain, yet it continues to convey.
Isaki Lacuesta, "Pinceladas", 2007, 4'
In brush stroke (2007), Isaki Lacuesta unfolds a hybrid practice: the film multiplies itself here and interpenetrates with artistic forms such as flamenco. Through fragmented and silent flamenco images, he presents an idea: the "off-screen" can be a dialogue of sounds, embedded in and echoing with the images, forming an unconventional harmony. The singer's voice is completed in the viewer's imagination. The images do not pursue completeness; they are willing to become a field of interpretation.
Lois Patinho, "Metallic Shadows in Dreams", 2018, 22', duration 01:44
If Sierra pushes images to the intensity of myth, and Lacuesta leads them into the realm of essays, then Lois Patiño proposes another way of dealing with marginal things—where nature becomes a conversational partner. In Metallic Shadows in Dreams (2018), the "off-screen" is geological, with a rhythm as slow as erosion. His images dance with such substances as water, mist, and the traces of time on sand. In this installation, the images transform into endless whispers, conversing with light and shadow, flickering and changing. To view his work is to immerse oneself in a patient listening to the breathing of the visual landscape.
The experience of this exhibition invites us to rethink that moving images are not confined to their replication. The artists gathered in the exhibition guide us to trace their tracks. The "off-Camera" is therefore not a boundary, but an open attitude that leads us to reimagine what it means to see and what the visual world is. To see in the present is to accept that every visual field has a reverse side: images will always leave blank spaces, whispers, and a promise of continuing existence beyond ourselves.
Curator.
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Susanna Sanz
She holds a PhD in Contemporary Art History from Complutense University of Madrid and a Master's degree in Art Theory from Tsinghua University in Beijing. She has worked at the Louvre Museum in Paris. In 2010, she received a scholarship from the ICO Foundation to pursue further studies at Peking University, which marked the beginning of her ten-year professional career in Beijing. During her time in Beijing, she served as the Cultural Coordinator at the Cervantes Institute and also worked as a visiting lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, teaching the history of Spanish art. Since 2016, she has been the Artistic Director of the Spanish Moving Image Festival in Madrid. In 2020, she returned to Spain and joined the Reina Sofía National Art Centre Museum as a Cultural Activities Coordinator. Currently, she is a member of the curatorial team for museums under the Spanish Ministry of Culture.
Off-Camera · Moving Images
Exhibition Time: November 12 - December 28, 2025
Exhibition Venue: 3B Gallery, CAFA Art Museum
Organizers:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain
Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation
Embassy of Spain in China
CAFA Art Museum
Shenzhen Wenze Chuangzhan Culture, Tourism and Development Co., Ltd
Chief Editor / He Yisha
Responsible Editor / Du Yinzhu
Editor / Yan Yuxi
