HIDDEN LINES begins with a shift in scale.

Working through macro photography and focus stacking, Cueva investigates naturally formed materials that hold evidence of compressed time. At this scale, familiar objects begin to lose their identity. Fractures become lines, surfaces become planes, and small shifts in light and colour bring otherwise hidden structures into view.

Rather than documenting material as an object, Cueva uses the camera as a tool for excavation. Moving through hundreds of focal planes, he enters fractures, inclusions and growth lines formed through pressure, change and time. Each shift in focus, light and colour alters what becomes visible, creating an ongoing exchange between observation, control and chance.

Hundreds of individual captures are assembled into a single image, bringing structures from different depths into focus at once. What begins as something minute becomes increasingly difficult to place.

Across HIDDEN LINES, the minute begins to suggest the architectural and geological. Lines, planes, ruptures and voids appear at one scale yet seem capable of belonging to another, asking what becomes visible when we stop looking at what something is and begin looking at how it is formed.