Angela de la Cruz's 'Larger Than Life' at Museo Cabañas

26 February 2021

From 26 February, Ángela de la Cruz's Larger Than Life (Knackered) (2004) is on view at the Museo Cabañas in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Originally created for a site-specific presentation at the Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo, this major installation is comprised of an oversized canvas painted with oil and acrylic, which appears to collapse in on itself in order to fit its surrounding space.

De la Cruz’s practice is elegantly situated between painting and sculpture, engaging with the very discourse of painting by targeting its basic anatomy – the stretcher, normally left to its job of keeping the canvas smooth and pliant – often twisted and bent out of shape. By breaking its form, de la Cruz breaks convention, quite literally, by mangling the stretcher and piercing the flat edifice of the canvas to unleash it into three-dimensional space. Slashed, twisted and reformed into something approaching sculpture, there is a dark humour at play: “The moment I cut through the canvas I get rid of the grandiosity of painting”.

Larger Than Life is on view at Museo Cabañas until June 2021.

Image courtesy Secretaría de Cultura Jalisco