Like monochromatic monoliths, Maria Taniguchi’s ‘Brick’ paintings occupy a silent but palpable presence in space. Each painting in this body of works is covered by a uniform grid of brick lines pencil-drawn onto the surface, and the brick lines perform simultaneously as a formal, visual schema and conceptual device that conjoins each painting to the next – and all other ‘Brick’ pieces – in this decade-long series. An impeccable surface underscores the work’s quality as a two-dimensional painting, yet the work’s objecthood is emphasized by how each ‘Brick’ is often installed leaning against the wall rather than hanging off it, such that the work oscillates between abstract painting and/or minimalist sculpture. And despite appearing like a wall against a wall, each ‘Brick’ is, in actuality, an environment or world unto itself: it does not represent anything other than itself. Each stands rather, as a record of time and pain-staking labour for Taniguchi paints each brick individually – an exercise of repetition that transforms the paintings into temporal registers of artistic process. MT_109 signals a new development in Taniguchi’s ‘Bricks’: apart from the dramatic reduction in size, the diminutive painting is also distinctive because of the shift in the structuring of the bricks. The bricks are now scaled to measure 0.33inch x 4.5cm, and in the middle of the vertically oriented painting, the lines jump-shift along an invisible vertical axis. The bricks no longer structure the painting as a continuous grid, but perform as two simultaneous interfaces in co-existence on the single surface. Maria Taniguchi (b. 1981, Dumaguete City, Philippines, in 1981) won the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award in 2015 and was a LUX Associate Artist in 2009. Recent exhibitions include History of a vanishing present: A prologue, the Mistake Room, Los Angeles (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 (2015); and the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane (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.
