지거 크루즈

Born in 1984, Manila, Philippines, he lives and works in Manila. Jigger Cruz is a leading Filipino artist who has gained international acclaim for his tactile and sensorial paintings. Created by using techniques such as impasto, cutting, burning and spraying paint on the canvas and frames, Cruz's paintings are an investigation of the materiality of painting. At the same time, their subject matter—ranging from the burden of history to religion—addresses social and political concerns in the contemporary Philippines. Jigger’s art practice is characterized by his idea to play with defacement and vandalization, making use of the oil color, the spray paint and the rough interventions on the canvases, which he uses to burn and, in some cases, even to cut. Each artwork springs from a painted canvas, where Cruz copies the Flemish and Post-Renaissance masters. The figures of the classical paintings that transpire below, remind the viewer of the painstaking pictorial activity and the artistic historical baggage of the contemporary painter. Apparently without a rational scheme, the artist applies the dense oil colour layer by layer. Not hiding, rather mystifying the classical backdrop. The artworks made for this exhibition explore the concept of failure in the visual dialogue between utter surface and inner content, between past and present, between figuration and abstraction. The endless tension towards limitlessness from one side and the proposal for a new figurative language from the other side leads the artist to exceed the formal frame-fixed boundaries, changing the frame itself from sheer decoration into work of art. The vintage frames are burnt and treated as a continuum of the painting itself. The aesthetics of his art practice recalls the influences of artists as Bram Boggart, Willem de Kooning and the avant-garde spirit of Francis Picabia. Cruz’s layers of pastos oil and spray paint guide the viewer to a sensorial experience which brings us closer to the sublime, where the smell of oil paints still lingers in the air. The artist has been listed in international auction houses around the world, and has exhibited in both solo and group shows locally and internationally, from the Philippines to Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Austria, and the United States. His work can be found in multiple public collections, including The Dikeou Collection, Denver, CO, USA; Guggenheim Museum, NY, USA; Saatchi Collection, London, UK; and Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK.