Lot 60: ANNIE CABIGTING (Filipino, B. 1971)

ANNIE CABIGTING (Filipino, B. 1971) Five Words in White Paint (After Joseph Kosuth) signed and dated '2010' (on the reverse) oil on canvas 183 x 140 cm. (72 x 55 1/8 in.) Painted in 2010

183 x 140 cm.

Singapore, Artesan, Mutating Truths, 15-30 April 2010

Private Collection, Singapore

Annie Cabigting has won widespread recognition for her beautifully rendered canvases. Her works often employ meta-references in the word art history discourse, interrogating how art is perceived and expanding the conceptual nuances found within other artists' practices. Cabigting researches her artworks extensively and possesses a profound understanding of art history. Combined with her immaculate painterly technique, she has developed a keen ability to intelligently subvert the existing works of other artists. However she does not engage these works in their known or realized forms, but explores their intrinsic potential: what they could have been or could possibly be. Five Words in White Paint (After Joseph Kosuth) explores the text-based fluorescent tube installations produced by American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth; enacting their stark visual atmosphere and resonant textuality against a blank wall, leveraging upon Cabigting's mastery of photorealistic painting. The social relevance of language - strongly signified within Kosuth's practice - is now transferred and translated into a coherent and all-encompassing image under Cabigting's painterly intervention. Cabigting plays with Kosuth's 'tautological statements' and affirms his philosophy of isolating verbal constructs from their inferred associations, choosing to proffer a purely linguistic-based understanding. By contrast, Cabigting's canvas as a movable object is not site specific and cannot be perceived in relation to locus of site, nor subjected to social or cultural readings of its environment. With this format, Cabigting contributes a broader and unconventional interpretation of Kosuth's parameters of visual activity.