Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Annie Cabigting has used the art viewer situated in museums and galleries as a main subject for a few years and ongoing, creating high art made accessible and earning wide following among art enthusiasts and collectors. Her works are immersive and meta, charming in overall composition, out of explorations on the traditions of presenting and viewing art. Viewers are depicted in detail as they look at paintings, from their poses to their clothes, set in highly relatable settings as shown in this specific piece. There is an inherent aura both in the subject, art work, and the space where a spectrum of art-related activities transpires, all depicted through Cabigting’s refined hyperrealism techniques. It serves as a more introspective look on how art is consumed and how viewers identify with it or scrutinize it. All in all, she questions what constitutes art. Cabigting is also known for her appropriations of worldrenowned masterpieces from artists such as Rothkho and Pollock, among others. She graduated with a major in painting at the University of the Philippines – Diliman and has exhibited in various solo and group shows in the country and abroad. Her work was included in the Prague Biennale in Czechoslovakia, and she was a finalist of the 2005 Ateneo Art Awards.