In Manila, Filipino Artist Maria Taniguchi Explores Repetition & Darkness for Vast ‘Brick’ Paintings

Why It Matters

Taniguchi’s brick series reframes painting as a collective, iterative act, influencing contemporary discourse on materiality and expanding opportunities for artists who blend personal narrative with minimalist abstraction.

Key Takeaways

• Taniguchi uses brick motifs to unify multiple canvases
• Darkness from childhood informs her monochrome, repetitive painting approach
• She questions whether each work is new or a continuation
• Borders are artificial; paintings connect in an invisible shared space
• Chance and surface interaction shape each piece’s final appearance

Summary

Filipino artist Maria Taniguchi, born in Tumagete City, uses large-scale brick paintings to investigate repetition and darkness, positioning her work within a dialogue between personal memory and contemporary abstraction.

The series stems from Taniguchi’s childhood experience of studying by candlelight, which forged a relationship with black and the absence of light. She treats each canvas as a ‘brick’ in a larger wall, asking whether each piece is a new painting or a continuation of the same work. The brick pattern, initially drawn with pencil, becomes a structural unit that links the canvases.

Taniguchi emphasizes that the borders between paintings are artificial, noting, “they run into and connect with each other in a type of invisible space.” She also embraces chance, allowing paint‑surface interaction and unpredictability to dictate the final texture, which she describes as the work’s beauty.

By framing painting as an accumulative, almost architectural process, Taniguchi challenges traditional notions of authorship and singularity, offering a model of renewal that resonates with global minimalist trends and expands the market’s appetite for concept‑driven, large‑format works.

Original Description

From a quiet studio in Manila, Filipino visual artist Maria Taniguchi works across sculpture, video, and painting, reflecting her upbringing in the Philippines, as well as wider cultural and conceptual contexts. Emphasizing materiality and construction, Taniguchi channels structure and discipline into expansive compositions that record time, labor, and attention for her ongoing ‘brick’ series – with each painting comprising a grid of hand-painted rectangles, carefully drawn in pencil then filled by hand, one by one.

Inviting Art Basel and director Karl King to her studio for the profile series Meet the artists, Taniguchi expands conversation about her ever-evolving brick project two decades on, and the process of repetition and renewal, exploring infrastructure as a symbol of physical development and cultural expansion, mirroring the nuances of her landscape and community... read more at nowness.com

_______________________________________

Subscribe to NOWNESS here: http://bit.ly/youtube-nowness

Like NOWNESS on Facebook: http://bit.ly/facebook-nowness

Follow NOWNESS on Twitter: http://bit.ly/twitter-nowness

Daily exclusives for the culturally curious: http://bit.ly/nowness-com

Behind the scenes on Instagram: http://bit.ly/instagram-nowness

Staff Picks on Vimeo: http://bit.ly/vimeo-nowness