Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Known for her highly conceptual body of work marked by meticulous figuration, Annie Cabigting usually references paintings being looked at by museum goers. A capsule retrospective of this series, titled Museum Watching, was recently staged at Finale Art File. In this particular work, however, what is depicted is a sculpture, possibly of a Greco-Roman origin. Mounted on a pedestal, the sculpture reveals the back of a goddess, her head missing.In a semi-crouchingposition, with the heel and the sole of one foot visible to the viewer, the sculpture resists full disclosure of her identity. She is, to the viewer, all divine softness and curves. Around her are other sculptures that throw their shadow on the wall, as if framing the sculpture. Possibly, by painting the roundedness of the sculpture, Cabigting is nodding at paragoné, the Renaissance idea that evaluated the hierarchy the different media of visual arts. By being able to paint a sculpture, she asserts the primacy of painting. In the light of recent theories about visual arts, the artist is probably blurring the boundary between the signified and the signifier, the original and the copy, raising questions about the nature of representation itself. Whatever the conceptual turn of the work may be, Cabigting has created a painting that demonstrates the limits of art — and its possibility.