Provenance: Sotheby’s, Modern and Conemporary Southeast Asian Art, Hong Kong, 12 June 2020, Lot 3050

ABOUT THE WORK

Jigger Cruz created Raindrops Machine in 2007. Around that time, the artist was producing artworks that combined elements of abstraction, expressionism, and contemporary Filipino cultural references. His early oeuvre, painted in vibrant palettes and rendered with gestural brushstrokes, captured a sense of immediacy and unfiltered emotion, inviting viewers to engage with the instinctual and intuitive aspects of his art. From the title and its composition, this oil painting can remind a viewer of David Medalla’s Bubble Machine. The “Bubble Machine” is a sculpture that generates bubbles through a mechanical process, often involving a mixture of soap and water. It is a conceptual artwork, created in 1963, that is considered as one of the earliest examples of kinetic or interactive art. At its core, it can be seen as a symbol of transience, fragility, and the ephemeral nature of existence. Like Medalla, Cruz as well is experimental in artistic approaches. He is innovative and always pushing the boundaries, incorporating elements of interactivity, performance, and conceptualism into his own artistic practice. In 2007, Cruz graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Far Eastern University. (Isabella Romarate)