The memory of those lost paintings that disappeared with unrecognized view of life, is Maria Cruz’s current solo exhibition that remembers and grieves several works she had lost on a flight to Melbourne last 2022.
“I started working on these paintings thinking of the paintings deemed for an exhibit which I lost during a flight to another country. Victims of an airline reorganization after the pandemic lock down.”
Maria’s previous projects use strict parameters based on mimicry and counting. Her Tolda (tent) series comprised of tent patterns found within the public markets and street vendors of the Philippines. These patterns acted as signifiers of informal economies and, hanging within the gallery, ran parallel to a site of commerce, culture capital and exchange, and economic discourse
In her work from her project titled One Million Dollars, Maria traced coins from different currencies (dollar, euro, Philippine peso). Each tracing was meticulously counted, with the goal of reaching a million. She has painted 776,511 spheres (dollars) over 16 years (nearly 50,000 per year). Some works for the current exhibit express the number of coins traced within the painting.
With this loss, Maria shifts away from this mimicry and counting of things. Instead she paints with art reminders – paint, canvas, color, light, space, shape, weight, perception, optics, distance, ideas, architectural considerations and so on.
Maria Cruz makes use of various media, including installation and video, to explore physical and conceptual themes such as color, language and the process of painting.
