Galería Cayón is immensely pleased to present the sixth solo exhibition of Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, Venezuela, 1923-Paris, France, 2019) at the gallery. The exhibition in Manila is the artist's first in the Philippines, also being the first to be held after the centennial of the artist's birth last August 17th 1923.
The show presents 8 works created between 2011 and 2019, a period considered by Cruz-Diez as his most fertile one after half a century researching and adding technical advances, finally achieving a chromatic subtlety he had been looking for with determination since 1959.
Carlos Cruz-Diez behind a Transchromie in his artist's studio, Paris, France, 2017. © Carlos Cruz-Diez / Bridgeman Images 2023
Presenting works in various formats and techniques, the exhibition, therefore, may well be considered a compendium of the lines of work that define his artistic oeuvre. Cruz-Diez was clear that demonstrating the “autonomy of color” could only be done, with the didactic and scientific zeal that always characterized him, by various ways of working – all equally valid and important, in fact, all essential.
We will find works form the series Physichromies (Physichromies) that invite the viewer to move in order to complete the work´s visual spectrum ; Chromointerférences (Chromointerferences) that examine the chromatic variations through color combinations; as well as Inductions Chromatiques (Chromatic Inductions) that achieve an emergence of colors that are not physically present on the plane surface.
All these exhibited works have an exclusive purpose which, ambitious as it is, can only be one. In the words of the artist in his last interview given a few months before his death:
“[At the beginning of my research] I understood that color is never a certainty, it is always circumstantial. Then the chromatic phenomenon revealed itself to me as an autonomous reality that continually evolves in time and space. My works transcend them, because in them color becomes a present moment, without past or future”.
Carlos Cruz-Diez in front of his Cromoestructura at Edificio Kenex, Panama. © Carlos Cruz-Diez / Bridgeman Images 2023
With this exhibition, Carlos Cruz-Diez manages to show us that color is an autonomous entity that we have to not only see (because we rarely pay attention to it properly), but with which we must learn to live together and which we must feel.
"The year 1959 was a true turning point, a decisive moment that marked a radical change in his concept of color. Since 1954, Cruz-Diez had been conducting a series of studies, research and experiments that led him to conclude that the use of color in painting had not changed, or hardly at all, over time. This had always been seen as a filler for form, a sort of inseparable companion, when his experiments showed him that color is an unstable phenomenon that constantly evolves and that it is a key subject in our perception of the world. An element to which the great majority of painters had given a minor importance compared to the greater interest given to the form or the conceptual content of the painting.
From 1959, with the dissociation of the form-color combination, Cruz-Diez makes the latter the center and axis of his work. Color is no longer a material that fills the form or the plane. Instead, color is now an autonomous reality capable of existing without the help of form and even without the help of the support. The artist initiates the second stage of color in his work when instead of painting light, he paints with light. He succeeded in surprising color while floating in space."
Silviana Cruz
Painting with light, 1959
Paris, March 2023
Physichromie Trinity, 2017/2020 Tour Trinity, Paris (La Défense), France. © Carlos Cruz-Diez / Bridgeman Images 2023
In recent years, Carlos Cruz-Diez received the National Order of the Legion of Honor (2012), participated in the 2014 Liverpool Biennial and was awarded the Turner Medal (2015) and the International Trebbia Prize (2016). His work has been recognized in numerous exhibitions around the world, with the latest exhibitions of him in China (held between 2010 and 2014) being the most visited.
His work is part of the collection of prestigious museums such as The Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Georges Pompidou Art Center, Paris; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris or The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among many others. Carlos Cruz-Diez represented France at the 2020 Dubai World Expo.
His legacy of color and his famous Physichromies are still present in the pavements and structures of singular buildings across the globe, such as the Marlins Ballpark Stadium, Miami – s installed in 2012- or in the wonderful facades of the “Prada” boutiques in Singapore and Beijing, among other locations.