Jigger Cruz

The work is in good condition overall, as are both canvases which are clear and taut. There is light wear and handling around the edges of the painting, but the impastos are stable and healthy. Examination under ultraviolet light shows no sign of restoration. Unframed, on a Stretcher.
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Without reservation, the present Lot Stranded Beyond the Scream of Symmetries marks an important juncture in Jigger Cruz’s career as an artist. The diptych, measuring five by ten feet, is Cruz’s largest painting to date; the monumental size confirms the artist’s notable confidence in the medium of oil. Ridding any remnants of signs and signifiers that would point to the external world, Cruz frees his canvases from representation entirely. The artist’s transition to full abstraction does not, however, undermine the complexity of his conceptual process. In fact, the painting is in many ways, an audacious exploration of materiality (paint), scale (diptych) and language (title). Finding true clairvoyance beyond pre-existing forms, Cruz invites the viewer to a phenomenological experience of his work.

The use of alliteration in Cruz’s carefully crafted title Stranded Beyond the Scream of Symmetries reflects an underlying poetic tenor. Yet, the air of sobriety is immediately refuted by the blatant asymmetry of the work itself. Composed of two unequal halves, the left panel of the diptych appears much larger in size than its right counterpart. In the artist’s words, the piece is “suffering” from a severe “symmetrical malfunction” and “a lack of proportions.” This moment of realization becomes an entry point to the artist’s intention, where the viewer is literally ‘stranded’ amid a chaotic tangle of textures in a realm ‘beyond’ any sense of order. The sudden paralysis enables the viewer to take a step back.

Fuelled by repelling energies, the painting is Cruz’s attempt to unveil the binary dichotomy of technique/ anti-technique, order/ disorder and material/ immaterial via the method of abstraction. Oscillating between these man-made hierarchies, the artist makes visible the instability of inherent ‘meanings.’ The collapse of structures allows multiple veins of discourses to run through his canvases like a stream of consciousness. Cruz builds up his diptych with dense layers of paints in a highly expressionistic manner. The raw aesthetics of his work traces influences from artists such as Bram Boggart and Willem de Kooning, while the poetic subversion recalls the avant-garde spirit of Francis Picabia. In the encounter of Stranded Beyond the Scream of Symmetries, we are welcomed by a momentary pause. The sensorial experience brings us closer to the sublime, where the smell of oil paints still lingers in the air.