Through evocative, highly expressive and boldly colorful works, Cristina de Miguel investigates the physicality of gesture and the corporeality of her medium, painting. In de Miguel’s paintings, movement strikes fields of color to create figure and reference, yet never narrative, in order to explore the materiality of the painting. Among the reeling forms, the artist incorporates vigorous brushwork and experimental fields of thinned acrylic.
In this new body of work created for Marquez Art Projects, de Miguel employs a substantial and uniform scale, and seems to zoom in on her subjects to create larger-than-life figures. Yet expanded, the figures do not come into sharper focus; instead, the bodies seem to disintegrate.
De Miguel’s painted figures are like composites, in which each section of the body seems to exist independently of the others, an effect most apparent in Your Body is Pieces (2022). In some paintings, amorphous forms devolve into mere outline; in others they melt and meld into emotive expanses. De Miguel’s figures possess speed, and in works like The Sink, Falling in Yellow, and El Viento (all 2022) seem they are on the verge of escape. Taken as a group, these sublime compositions radiate a churning energy that supplants interpretation with raw feeling, while drawing one’s attention to the vibrancy the painting’s surface. —Amanda Morgan
