Palencia, Spain, 1970
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom
Juan Cruz explores how the expanded field of translation — literally and metaphorically, culturally or linguistically, in texts or in objects — performs a central role in artistic practice, while at the same time undergirds the construction of identity that extends beyond the confines of the artistic realm.
In Cruz’s work, the translational process serves as a metaphor for visual representation, which Cruz carries further to a wide range of media, including text, performance, drawing, audio, video, sculpture, and photography. Even at its most ephemeral and de-objectified, Cruz’s work explores the relationship between narrative and physical space, demonstrating how experience can be subtly manipulated through even the slightest of means.
A central concern of Cruz’s is the construction of a means of transmission not only of the material submitted to the process of translation, but also of the resultant communication from one ‘self’ to another, whether those selves be the author, the artist, the translator or the ‘reader’ of the work.
