I work with images, not as a photographer, but as a visual artist who seeks to poeticise visual matter, exploring the image as a sensitive surface, a trace, a remnant of what has been.
Lluís Estopiñan
Lluís Estopiñan
My artistic practice is rooted in an ongoing reflection on the ephemeral nature of existence, time as a process of passage, and memory as the substance that shapes who we are. I work with images, not as a photographer, but as a visual artist who seeks to poeticise visual matter, exploring the image as a sensitive surface, a trace, a remnant of what has been.
For me, art holds a transformative power. It emerges from the meeting point between idea and emotion, between what we think and what we feel. Through materials charged with sensitivity and meaning, this encounter has the potential to move us, to affect us, and to open new ways of experiencing and understanding the world.
A central aspect of my work is the use of found archival photographs: anonymous, abandoned or discarded images that I collect from flea markets and rescue from oblivion. I do not approach them as documents, but as emotional and conceptual material capable of generating new narratives and associations. The selection of each image is already a creative gesture, an act of recognition and attention. I manipulate, intervene in and recontextualise these photographs, drawn to what remains, what fades, and what resists the passage of time. Through this process, photography becomes not a record of reality but an experience in itself.
Time runs through my work in the same way as light: as erosion, revelation and transformation. In response to the overwhelming flow of digital imagery, I reclaim the materiality of analogue processes and the physical engagement with the image. Cyanotype, collage and liquid emulsion are not merely techniques but ways of thinking, ways of poeticising the past in order to look at the present differently.
I am not interested in providing answers. A work of art does not end with the artist’s gesture; it is completed in the gaze of the viewer. It is there that its meaning unfolds, within an open, intimate and plural dialogue. If memory is a construction, then reality is too. And it is within that uncertain space between what we remember and what we imagine that art finds its place.
SELECTED WORK
Memory Gap
Disclosed Memory
Kowaremono
¡Tengo ganas de verte!
BIO
Lluís Estopiñan (Mollet del Vallès, 1958) is a visual artist. He graduated in Fine Arts from Escola Massana in Barcelona in the late 1980s and has since developed a coherent practice spanning painting, digital and analogue photography, and works that expand into the exhibition space.
His work has been regularly shown in galleries, museums and art centres, both locally and internationally. Estopiñan is interested in art’s ability to bring ideas and emotions into dialogue. His main lines of research revolve around life as a field of possibilities, the shifting perception of existence, and memory as an essential part of identity.
In his work, process is not a neutral means, but a territory in which gesture, memory and time accumulate. He often begins with anonymous photographic material, negatives, old prints and found objects, which he manipulates, intervenes in and recontextualises through techniques such as cyanotype, liquid emulsion and collage. In contrast to the dematerialisation of the image in the digital age, he advocates for the physical, the fragile and the tactile as forms of resistance and presence.
He understands reality as a subjective, multiple and shifting construction, and art as a form of sensitive knowledge. Each project arises from a desire to explore poetically the tension between what is remembered and what is forgotten, what is revealed and what remains hidden.
His work has been exhibited in cities such as Paris, Osaka, Kyoto, London, New York, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Manizales, Madrid and Barcelona. He has participated in international festivals including Panoràmic, curated by Joan Fontcuberta, 20/20 Photo Festival in Philadelphia, LensCulture Discoveries in Paris, Tbilisi Art Fair in Georgia, Photopatagonia in Argentina, the International Image Festival of Manizales in Colombia, and Revela’t in Barcelona.
His series ReVers received a special mention from the jury at the LensCulture Art Photography Awards and was awarded the 2019 BIPA Prize for Best Portfolio. Disclosed Memory was selected by the Royal Photographic Society for the International Print Exhibition IPA159. Both ReVers and Disclosed Memory were finalists for the Painting and Photography Prizes, respectively, awarded by Fundació Vila Casas in Barcelona.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025
Meantime, Revela'T Festival, Barcelona, Spain
Toujours Encore, Estivales Lagorre, Seix, France
Kowaremono, Za Gallery, Hikone, Japan
2024
Unchained Memories, H10 Art Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
VincLes, Marges-U Gallery, Cadaqués, Spain
2023
Now is the Time, Galería Lucía Dueñas, Oviedo, Spain
2022
Records desfermats, Galeria Art Enllà, Barcelona, Spain
2021
Memory Gap, Revela'T Festival, Barcelona, Spain
2019
La llum que et va tocar, Centre Cultural Terrassa, Spain
2016
Disclosed Memory, Revela'T Festival, Vilassar de Dalt, Spain
Disclosed Memory, Museu Abelló, Mollet del Vallès, Spain
Disclosed Memory, Galeria Barcelona Visions, Barcelona, Spain
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS & FESTIVALS
2025
KIKA Collection, KIKA Gallery, Kyoto, Japan
Art Ohara International Exhibition, AIR Ohara Gallery, Kyoto, Japan
Amours VI, Galerie Espace Temps, Paris, France
InCadaqués Photo Festival, Cadaqués, Spain
2024
From Catalunya, Marges-U in Ohara-Kyoto, Ohara Cultural Center, Kyoto, Japan
Amours V, Remèdes Galerie, Paris, France
Bodies #2, Into.Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2023
AnalogMania XI, Timișoara, Romania
Bodies, Into.Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2022
Other Ways of Seeing, Plaxall Gallery, New York, USA
EXP22 International Festival on Experimental Photography, Barcelona, Spain
2021
Panoràmic Festival, curated by Joan Fontcuberta, Granollers, Spain
A Certain Kind of Blue, Analog Forever Magazine, USA
2020
19th International Image Festival, Manizales, Colombia
20/20 Photo Festival, Philadelphia, USA
2019
LensCulture Discoveries, Paris, France
Tbilisi Art Fair, Georgia
2017
Royal Photographic Society International Print Exhibition, United Kingdom
Belfast International Photography Festival, United Kingdom
PhotoPatagonia, Argentina
AWARDS & RECOGNITIONS
2019
Barcelona International Photography Award (BIPA), Winner
LensCulture Art Photography Awards, Juror's Pick, ReVers
2019
Fundació Vila Casas Painting Prize, Finalist (ReVers)
2017
Fundació Vila Casas Contemporary Photography Prize, Finalist (Disclosed Memory)
2016–2017
Royal Photographic Society International Print Exhibition, Selected (Disclosed Memory)
RESIDENCIES
2025
Jogon-in International Artist Residency, Shiga, Japan
2019- 2023
Roca Umbert Fàbrica de les Arts, Granollers, Spain