Untitled (crystal palace + gauguin), 2009
Maria Taniguchi’s work, Untitled (crystal palace + gauguin) (2009) is composed of a slideshow of images taken at the Crystal Palace Dinosaur Court in London combined with a dialogue that describes an unnamed painting (which we know to be Gauguin’s Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, 1897).
The sometimes humorous juxtapositions make use of both image and text to describe two fictional worlds which reflect on the conflation of ideas about the past and that of progress. The monologue in the video are from descriptions given by four different individuals describing the Gauguin painting.
As the work proceeds, the dialogue creates the provocative collusion that there are multiple errors in the recording of art history, as well as with scientific, evolutionary theory. Taniguchi describes the work as ‘taking what already has an archetypal meaning or a historicized existence, to put it in a situation with another, and to derive a productive equation of this meeting.”
About the Artist
Maria Taniguchi (b. 1981, Philippines) works across several media but is principally known for her long-running series of quasi-abstract paintings featuring a stylized brick wall device. Full of subtle gradations and low-key modulations, these are her trademark: a sustained, reiterative practice, steeped in repetition but carefully attuned to the economies and the sculptural presence of painting. Her approach to painting is conceptual. Her point of departure for the series is individual, subjective time. The unified visual grid of the black monochrome acrylic paintings is based on the simplest repeating pattern in masonry, yet when viewed more closely their stark surfaces veer more towards the personal and poetic: glistening patches of irregular shapes and sizes reveal the limits of a day’s work.
Throughout her paintings, sculptures, and videos, Maria Taniguchi unpacks knowledge and experience— connecting material culture, technology, and natural evolution—and investigates space and time, along with social and historical contexts. Whether with her quasi-abstract brick paintings or with the moving images of plain and everyday objects, Taniguchi enforces the action of viewing upon our senses. The consequence is the reinterpretation of the objects, and the attainment of sensorial and cognitive experiences.
Born and raised in Dumaguete City in the Philippines, Maria Taniguchi received an MFA in Art Practice at Goldsmiths in London in 2009 and a BFA in Sculpture at the University of the Philippines previously. Taniguchi was selected for “Art Statements” (2013), a section of solo presentations by emerging artists at Art Basel 44. Other recent projects include “HIWAR: Conversations in Amman” in 2013, a residency and exhibition program curated by Adriano Pedrosa at the Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amman; and “Without a Murmur” in 2012, a group exhibition curated by Joselina Cruz at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) in Manila; and “The Philippine Contemporary: To Scale the Past and the Possible”, an exhibition curated by Patrick D. Flores at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.
Taniguchi was awarded the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2015 at the Rockbund Art Museum. She received the Ateneo Art Award for her solo exhibition “Echo Studies” in 2011 at the Jorge Vargas Museum and in 2012, she reaped the same award for her video Untitled (Celestial Motors), shown at Silverlens.
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Constructions of Truths is presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila in partnership with the Han Nefkens Foundation and in collaboration with Edouard Malingue Gallery, Kurimanzutto, Ruya Foundation and Silverlens.
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Read about the exhibition here.
Source: http://www.miaca.org/english/list/045/index.html
Artwork: Untitled (crystal palace + gauguin), 2019
Second Image courtesy of www.rockbundartmuseum.org
