Angela de la Cruz
Escombros
18 February–24 May 2015
Fundación Luís Seoane
San Francisco 27
15001 A Coruña
Spain
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday
11am–3pm and 5–9pm
T +34 981 216015
The Fundación Luís Seoane presents Angela de la Cruz. Escombros, which brings together 16 works made by Spanish artist Angela de la Cruz between the years 2009 and 2014, the first exhibition dedicated to the artist by an art centre in her hometown.
Angela de la Cruz. Escombros takes its title from one of the works included in the show, Debris (2012), in which the artist refers to rubbish and to the waste afloat in the oceans that finally surfaces on the seashore. The theme is closely related to one of the leitmotifs in her oeuvre, natural disasters—to be precise, the dire consequences of the tsunami that devastated the coasts of Thailand in December 2004 and the impact that the images of the subsequent debris and wreckage had on her.
References to water, remains and refuse brought in by the sea, along with what is left after the disaster, are repeated constantly throughout the exhibition. Such is the case of Battered III (Mud) (2012), an aluminium picture in which we make out numerous dents, as if it had repeatedly crashed into a static mass, as occurs with the objects that the sea crashes against the rocks. It is also true of Wet (Blue) [2012], in which the presence of water, physically absent from the work, can be made out thanks to the mark it left on the lower part of the canvas. The works included in the show establish close relations with the architectural space, in this case thanks to the exclusive use of two colours, white and brown, in an allusion to light (an element very present in the Fundación Luís Seoane building) and to mud (the stagnant water that remains after the flood, after the disaster). Over the course of her career Angela de la Cruz has developed a specific language that enables her to give her paintings a sculptural quality, blurring the limits between painting and sculpture. Her oeuvre therefore manages to establish close connections between the physical characteristics of several of its constitutive elements, the use of colour as an essential part of that language, and a painstaking choice of titles for the works.
A publication under the same title is to be published on occasion of the exhibition. Besides extensive documentation of the exhibition, it will include recent works by Angela de la Cruz and essays by the artist; the curator, Carolina Grau; and the director of the Fundación Luís Seoane, David Barro.
About the artist
Angela de la Cruz was born in 1965 in A Coruña, Spain. She moved to London at the end of 1987 where she now lives and works. De la Cruz studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and completed an MA in Sculpture and Critical Theory at the Slade School of Art in 1996. Her solo exhibitions include Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain (2014), Lisson Gallery, London (2011); Camden Arts Centre, London (2010); Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal (2006); Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain (2005); and Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo, MARCO, Spain (2004). Cruz has been included in numerous international group shows, including at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona (2012); Tate Britain, London (2010); National Gallery, Canberra, Australia (2009); Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (2007); Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, USA (2005); South London Gallery, London (2004) and in Manifesta V, San Sebastian, Spain (2004). She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2010.
Curated by Carolina Grau
