BILBAO: ÁNGELA DE LA CRUZ AT AZKUNA ZENTROA
At Azkuna Zentroa art space, in Bilbao (Spain), tomorrow inaugurates an extensive solo exhibition by Angela de la Cruz (Coruña, 1965). Taking its name from the Homeless (1996) artworks, the exhibition takes a journey through 1996-2018 production period, illustrating, thus, Spanish artist diversity of styles and themes.
Altogether, the works that constitute Homeless, form a kind of Creole dialect that Ángela de la Cruz manipulates through the forms to represent the human presence or absence.
Throughout her career, the Spanish artist has explored the different ways of delimiting the terms of painting as a medium. Thus, focusing on painting as an object and what it is capable of representing. Characterized by developing a specific language that allowed her to endow her works with a multidisciplinary aesthetic - where there are no limits between the sculptural and the pictorial. In this way, each discipline is used by de la Cruz as a specific language that meets their specific needs.
Referring to some of her works, Ángela de la Cruz explained: "They are sculptures that use the language of painting and vice versa, so they are paintings and sculptures simultaneously".
A frequent element repeated in Angela’s artworks is the stretcher. Much of her work revolves around this figure. Focused on minimalist painting, her paintings incorporate "accidental amputations" occupying random places in the exhibition spaces, like a stretcher that breaks and falls apart. Homeless, the first of his Daily Paintings, is an example of these works: a large yellow painting with its broken stretcher that rises from the ground, as if threatening the exhibition space. As its title indicates, it represents the homeless, who carry their belongings and memories with them; individuals who are victims of immense waves of migration, product of the political-economic conflicts that we suffer daily.
The exhibition also covers the paintings of his series Still Life. In this series, the works appropriate - in their representations - everyday ornamental objects, on the one hand; and the idea of recycling from the use of works that incorporate other works inside bags or containers.
Undoubtedly, the exhibition that will take place tomorrow at the Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao until January 20th, is a perfect opportunity to get to know the work of one of the most influential artists in the contemporary scene.
