ROH is pleased to present soft doubles, Maria Taniguchi’s (b. 1981, Dumaguete, Philippines) first solo exhibition with the gallery, which presents a multifaceted consideration of her practice from the perspective of painting, sculpture, drawing, and video interspersed throughout ROH’s Gallery Apple and Gallery Orange. We are equally pleased to have curator Joselina Cruz of Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Manila, speak in an in-depth conversation with Taniguchi about the show.
In this exhibition, Taniguchi builds a conversation between her works with the architecture of the space, providing the audience contemplative insights into the various layers of how her different works lay upon each other in various depths of meaning. This careful configuration of placement constructs a comprehensive series of aesthetic experiences that are difficult to explain through words. The audience are invited to carefully experience the exhibition, in its works — as well as the negative space in its direct surroundings — in its entirety.
“I think it’s easy to be tricked by this word minimalism in my practice. If you just think of that word in the context of them as paintings then you’re stuck there. It’s like quicksand, and you get sucked into a mode of interpretation that’s not very useful or generative. I’ve been working on them for such a long time, which is necessary, by the way, for them to exist in the way that they exist conceptually. It’s easy to miss out on these things.”
— Maria Taniguchi, in a conversation with Joselina Cruz.
Maria Taniguchi’s works encompass painting, sculpture, video and installation. Her practices investigate space and time along with social and historical contexts. Her series of Untitled brick paintings is an ongoing series that began in 2008. Each painting consists of seemingly countless rectangular cells, each one outlined by hand with graphite and filled with gray and black tones. The painstaking process creates a subtle yet complex pattern on the surface. These paintings develop to various extents, most of them reaching meters in size.
The constructive structure embodies architectural elements, resulting in the paintings themselves manifesting as monumental existences within the space. The artist has referred to her brick paintings as the fundamental root of her larger artistic practice, while the other artworks such as sculptures and installations are reflections, or refractions of it.
Artist
Born 1981, Dumaguete, Philippines
Lives and works in Makati, Philippines
Maria Taniguchi’s works encompass painting, sculpture, video and installation. Her practices investigate space and time along with social and historical contexts. Her series of “Untitled” brick paintings is an ongoing series that began in 2008. Each painting consists of seemingly countless rectangular cells, each one outlined by hand with graphite and filled with gray and black tones. The painstaking process creates a subtle yet complex pattern on the surface. These paintings develop to various extents, most of them reaching meters in size. The constructive structure embodies architectural elements, resulting in the paintings themselves manifesting as monumental existences within the space. The artist has referred to her brick paintings as the fundamental root of her larger artistic practice, while the other artworks such as sculptures and installations are reflection, or refractions of it.
Maria Taniguchi won the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2015 and was a LUX Associate Artist in 2009. Recent exhibitions include the 12th Gwangju Biennale: Imagined Borders, Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Centre, Gwangju, South Korea (2018); 21st Biennale of Sydney, SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2018); History of a vanishing present: A prologue, the Mistake Room, Los Angeles, United States (2016); Afterwork, Para Site, Hong Kong (2016); Globale: New Sensorium, ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany (2016); The Vexed Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, the Philippines (2015); and the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane, Australia (2015). Her work is held in a number of collections including the M+ Museum, Hong Kong; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; QAGOMA, Brisbane; and the K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai.