Angela de la Cruz: Homeless

Azkuna Zentroa presents the exhibition ‘Homeless’ by Angela de la Cruz, National Plastic Arts Prizewinner 2017, and curated by Carolina Grau, from 25th October 2018 to 20th January 2019. This exhibition presents a journey through the work done from 1996 to 2018, creating different associations with works from diverse periods, the majority of which have not been exhibited retrospectively.

The exhibition takes its title from one of the artist’s first works breaking the stretcher. ‘Homeless’ (1996) was one of her first paintings to use the surrounding space, not only to contain the work but also to dramatize its condition as a painting. This great yellowish painting with its roughly broken stretcher rises up from the ground lurking in the corner of the exhibition space.

Throughout her career over 20 years Angela de la Cruz (Coruña 1965) has experimented with the language of painting. Since she began, De la Cruz has tried to redefine the terms and boundaries of the medium, focusing both on the painting as an object and in terms of what it can represent. De la Cruz has developed a specific language which enables her to endow her paintings with sculptural quality, erasing the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and using each of them without distinction depending on what she wants to express and the need of each work. As the artist has said, “It’s a sculpture using the language of painting and vice versa. In other words, it’s a painting and a sculpture.”

A frequent topic in her work is her concern about what is going on now, social inequality, politics, effects of climate change, and images of wars or terrorist attacks. ‘Homeless’ refers to those without a roof over their heads, those who carry their belongings and memories around with them, just like the artist’s works, which are always tied to the history of painting.

For more information please visit Azkuna Zentroa.