Press Release

Cati Bestard Rotger

To Avoid an Infinite Loop

Act I: Shifted

15.01- 21.02.2026

 

Shifted inaugurates the first act of To Avoid an Infinite Loop. In this initial act, the gallery space is subtly altered by a modest wooden structure that does not replicate the architecture of the room, but instead proposes an alternative way of moving through it—more distorted and less functional—forcing the body to slow down and continuously renegotiate its position in space.

 

The structure houses a selection of photographic works from the series decrease (2018). These photograms depict the remnants of a wooden sculpture previously made by the artist which, once fragmented into multiple parts, became the very subject of the images. Outside the structure, four works from the series form (2019) are presented, a body of work that reflects on the potential embedded in material failure.

 

The exhibition also includes a selection of images from structure (2025–26), a new series of lumen prints that directly reference the wooden construction itself. These works were produced using the architectural model created by the artist as a tool for planning the exhibition.

 

In Shifted, no linear chronology exists: very recent works coexist with others produced in previous years, continuing and further developing the investigation of the photographic image that runs throughout Bestard Rotger’s practice. When observing these abstract image prints—created through markedly different techniques—a question may arise: what is an image before it becomes an image? Does it exist prior to its form?

It is common to believe that a painting could exist in the artist’s mind before manifesting as a pigment-based image. With photography, however, there is a widespread assumption that the photographic image exists only at the moment of its creation—an instant frozen in time, a fragment of linear experience, a “still” extracted from the flow of events. Yet the nature of photography is far more mysterious and complex than this belief suggests, and it is precisely within this complexity that the work of Cati Bestard Rotger is situated.

 

Regardless of whether a camera is used or not, the images produced by the artist return photography to its very essence: pure light. As László Moholy-Nagy reminds us, the true medium of photography is light. Within this radical use of the medium lie possibilities far broader than those offered by conventional in-camera photography. Here, images may emerge as abstract luminous experiences from the pure encounter between light and chemistry (form), or become direct material traces of concrete objects, establishing a genuine indexical relationship with reality (decrease). In doing so, they move away from the illusory mirroring of the real often associated with traditional photography.

 

This relationship is further constructed through the spectator’s body, which in Shifted is compelled to move, contract, and lean, continuously renegotiating its position within the space reconfigured by the central wooden structure. The images do not present themselves as reassuring representations of familiar objects, but rather as a visual landscape of questions—one that does not seek answers, but instead calls for careful, attentive, and active engagement. Shifted thus unfolds as a perceptual and physical experience in which the viewer is not asked to recognize images, but to dwell within the field of tension they generate.