Biography

Maria Taniguchi works across a diverse range of media which includes painting, video, sculpture, pottery, printmaking, drawing, and writing. Her work focuses on concepts of composing, constructing, and framing, whilst referring to the craftsmanship and history of the Philippines. She works with a variety of approaches towards processing the legacies of modernism within an ambiguous cross-cultural context. In 2008, Taniguchi initiated an ongoing series of works that take the form of large-format canvases covered in a meticulous arrangement of hand-painted bricks. These labour-intensive, process-driven works may be considered the fundamental root of her artistic practice, which, at its core, explores the systems and structures of making art and the materiality and architecture of painting itself. The methodical process of creating the brick paintings is an important objective of the work for Taniguchi; time and effort dedicated to the production of each artwork requiring discipline and a singular focus. Despite the structural format of the grid and the mechanical process of production, the appearance of the paintings varies considerably from canvas to canvas, dependent on the ratio of paint and water the artist uses. Taniguchi has related the works to an external mechanisation of the body as well as a reference to the cells that make up a biological organism. Intimately connected to Taniguchi’s other works and to each other, the brick paintings represent a small part of the larger, more complete matrix of her practice. Untitled and unnumbered, the finished canvases are hybrid objects that Taniguchi views as both paintings and sculptural forms.