Revista Gallerye Studio

November 19, 2002





Dual Pleasures in the Paintings of Cristina Ruiz
In the art of Latin America, and in Mexico in particular, graphic art and painting have always gone hand in hand and been viewed as equal partners. Among the older generation of contemporary Mexican artists, Jose Luis Cuevas and Francisco Toledo are especially exemplary in this regard, the former making drawing his primary medium, the latter devoting as much energy to printmaking as to painting.

Mexican artists of the younger generation are continuing this tradition and expanding upon it, as seen in the work of Cristina Ruiz, whose premiere New York solo exhibition comes to the Broome Street Gallery, 498 Broome Street, from November 19 through December 1. (Cocktail reception for the artist on Thursday, November 21, at 7 PM.)

In his passionate, if at times overly conservative, defense of humanist painting, "The Insiders," poet and critic Selden Rodman once wrote of spending time in Mexico searching for "any sign that the younger generation was venturing beyond the blandishments of Paris which still smother Latin-American creativity under a second hand blanket of formalism." Of course, this was in 1956, decades before Mexico had established its own post-Mural Movement voice, finally emerging from the shadow of its looming giants and taking its rightful place in the mainstream of world culture. Still, the happy conclusion to Rodman's search was that he finally discovered Cuevas and other "heirs of Orozco" who renewed his faith in the ability of Mexican artists to create modern art that projected qualities peculiar to their own heritage.

Mexican painting has come a long, long way in the intervening decades, partaking of the pluralism and multiculturalism of the post-modern era without forsaking its roots, as seen in the art of Cristina Ruiz, who lived and worked in Paris from 1984 to 1986, later studied in Florence, and continues to return to Europe each summer. Through her wide-ranging studies abroad and in her native Mexico, Ruiz has refined the technical skills that enable her to create her unique style of romantic figuration.

The most immediately impressive characteristic of her meticulously finished yet fluidly accomplished works in acrylic on canvas is how successfully she has synthesized aspects of drawing and painting. Working mainly in subtly modulated monotones, building her compositions with refined strokes in what appears to be a dry-brush technique, Ruiz creates compositions that succeed simultaneously in both figurative and abstract terms.

One of her most successful paintings in this regard is "Awakenings," in which a comely young model, her body curving graceful as she clutches her legs in a seated position, emerges from a welter of delicate strokes. Some of these brush strokes cover her legs and the lower part of her body like dappled shadows, causing the figure to merge with her surroundings and asserting the two-dimensionality of the picture-plane in a manner that intriguingly contradicts the naturalistic realism of the figure. Like the figures of Balthus, the youthful model has the qualities of a "nymphet," to use Nabokov's famous term. She glances over


her shoulder seductively, at once innocent and self-aware. She is obviously quite cognizant of her coltish charms as she sits beside the fragments of what appears to be a large egg that the artist apparently wants us to believe she has recently been hatched from! Despite the oddness of this metaphor, however, the image succeeds splendidly in aesthetic as well as symbolic terms by virtue of Ruiz's skills in integrating the various elements of the composition. These are intricately interwoven by her brush in a manner that can only be compared to certain aspects of Asian painting. (Her generous use of white space in and around her images to fill her compositions with a sense of light can also be compared to the ethereal effects achieved by the landscape painters of China and Japan, although her approach to figuration is decidedly Western).

While a work such as "Awakenings" incorporates elements of Surrealism, transforming the model into a mythic beingthe archetypical "wood nymph"- other paintings by Ruiz center on more down to earth images and succeed in another manner. One such picture is "The Rendezvous," in which we are made privyto the intimate embrace of a pair of young lovers.

Both the young woman and theyoung man are as ideally beautiful as the models in a Calvin Klein fashion spread. Indeed, they both have that fashionably disheveled look one sees everywhere, she wearing a denim jacket and jeans as they press their perfect profiles together and she wraps one lissome leg around his bare torso. While another artist might choose to treat such an image with a post-Pop irony akin to Roy Lichtenstein's images derived from love comics of the 1960s, Cristina Ruiz is adventurous enough to play it straight. Intrepid painter that she is, she does not hesitate to risk banality in pursuit of beauty. Fortunately, though, she is a strong enough painter to transcend the banal altogether, cunningly diverting the viewers' attention away from the "too pretty" subject matter to the technical finesse with which she handles the wrinkles in fabric, the textures of hair, and other details through which, by a dazzling act of creative sleight of hand, she allows the more abstract aspects of her art to take precedence.

Thus, by the skillful manipulation of tone and texture and subtle variations of "touch" and emphasis, Ruiz is able to provide sufficient visualinterest to satisfy the most sophisticated aesthetic tastes, even while indulging her own innate romanticism. Not only does she avoid betraying her unabashed love of beauty but she enables the viewer to have it both ways as well, in a painting such as "Bare Feelings," a strikingly abstract composition created from an extreme closeup of a female nude resting her head on her raised knee. While the image is ostensibly realistic, the finely modeled shadows on the figure's profile, arched shoulder, and the other body parts seen in the severely cropped composition, create formal patterns that provide an aesthetic appeal equal to the specific features of her own beauty.

Such dualities provide much of the pleasure in the paintings of Cristina Ruiz.

Lawrence Downes Nov-DEC 2002/JAN 2003