Footnote:
Catalog of an itinerant exhibition held at the Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, Spain, Oct. 25, 2018-Jan. 20, 2019, and at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, Feb. 22-May 19, 2019
A. de la Cruz (1965-), Spanish artist
Includes bibliographical references
Texts in Galego, Englisch und Spanisch
Description:
Galician artist Angela de la Cruz has been experimenting with the language of painting for over two decades. The artist has tried to redefine the terms and boundaries of the medium since she began, focusing on painting as an object and in terms of what it can represent. De la Cruz has developed a specific language that enables her to endow her paintings with sculptural qualities, erasing the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and using each of them without distinction depending on what she wants to express and the need of each work. As the artist has said, ‘It’s a sculpture using the language of painting and vice versa. In other words, it’s a painting and a sculpture.' Household furniture - chairs, tables and cupboards - have been present in her work, though in recent years she has broadened her pictorial vocabulary with the use of aluminium and its elasticity. Her artistic language uses humour in her titles in order to present us striking artworks which combine a stilted pressure with a deeper emotional presence. This exhibition presents a journey through the work made from 1996 to 2018, creating different associations with works from different periods. It takes its title from one of her first works breaking the stretcher, Homeless (1996). As its title indicates, it represents the homeless, who carry with them their belongings and memories. People we encounter cyclically in our society as victims of the global transit we are experiencing during these decades due to political, economic, social, cultural and bellicose conflict matters.