Lot description
Untitled signed and dated 2014 (lower right) mixed media 51" x 63 1/4" (130 cm x 161 cm) PROVENANCE Private collection, Manila Aprime example of his signature approach of chaotic abstraction, Jigger Cruz’s featured masterpiece from 2014 presents another impasto-heavy artwork that blurs the line between creation and destruction. Layer by layer, his work presents thick, looping impasto lines that swarm across the surface, akin to tangled wires, coral growths, or graffiti marks. Intentionally blurring the surface image of the painting, making the artwork more of a hybrid sculpture. With traces of the image still present in some parts of the background, totally disrupted by thick, textured paints, Cruz successfully creates an incredible tension between chaos and creation, representation and abstraction. His interruption of conventionally painted works serves as a direct challenge to the idea that painting must preserve its refinement by defacing the old image and creating something new, and thus asks whether destruction can be creative in itself. Another interpretation could be read as a metaphor for memory and cultural inheritance, with the original image—the traditional systems—being overpainted by an amalgamation of thick impastos and graffiti— the contemporary experience—creating a visual representation of how history is never fully erased by the modern experience. Jigger Cruz created the piece that blurs the boundaries between vandalism and critique of rigid, traditional artistic conventions. In many ways, this painting—and his oeuvre—continues to ask the same question of the observer: Is creation always partly an act of destruction? (Mark John Castañeda)
