Before he started exhibiting again in the middle of 2011, Jigger Cruz, now 27, decided to stop painting for a year. He felt frustrated at his lack of commercial success. This despite earning approval from critics impressed enough with his skill to get him into the finals of competitions like Metrobank’s (2003) and Philip Morris’ (2006).
Jigger came back with a vengeance. These days, Manila’s art collectors can’t get enough of his pieces, paintings he once described to me as “wasak na talaga”, work he calls deconstructions. He enjoyed the idea of vandalizing images he carefully reconstructed from old masters’ paintings, defacing his own work with globs of pigment squeezed directly from the tube, even running some spray paint over them as his final flourish. In February, he showed five of these paintings in Milan, at the Primo Marella Gallery, where he proved a certified hit.
For Birth of the Party Bantam Paintings, at the subterranean Gallery B of Secret Fresh, Jigger exhibits a suite of small works, nothing bigger than 18 x 12 inches of canvas.
“The main idea of the show is about the size of the artworks, its really different from the past works. Party lang and spontaneous lang din. More on struggle sa pagpinta because the capacity of the canvas is limited to put those heavy textures. It’s a big challenge for me to work on different images on a small surface and detail over the layers.
Naging therapy ko yung magwork sa smaller size dahil I don’t usually paint in small canvases.
Mas naglaro lang ako sa mga works ngayon, preparation at experiment ko din for the next big works.”
When I spoke to him a few months before his Milan show, he had been debating on what to do next, on how to follow up this successful series. I, for one, am curious for his next move, on what he will do to top his winning streak. The worst thing that can happen– after all his hard work–would be for Jigger to get stuck repeating himself.
Jigger Cruz, Birth of the Party Bantam Paintings runs from 15 to 30 April 2012 at Gallery B, Basement, Ronac Art Center, Ortigas Avenue, Greenhills, San Juan. Phone (632) 570-9815 loc. 7 or visit www.facebook.com/secretfresh
Jigger Cruz, "I've Got The Revolution", 18x12 in, oil on canvas
Jigger Cruz, "Come Along, Come Along", 18x12 in, oil on canvas
Jigger Cruz, "The Call Of The Wild", 12 x 9 in., oil on canvas
Jigger Cruz, "The Ugly Rainbow", 12x9 in, oil on canvas
Jigger Cruz, "Trapped In A Pale Symbol", 12 x 9 in., oil on canvas