In keeping with its commitment to critically-acclaimed Filipino visual artists of international standing, the Ateneo Art Gallery opens this year's Zero In series with Oo: Selected Paintings and Projects by Maria Cruz 1996-2008. Maria Cruz is also famous for her installation and video work, where "reflection and personal and communal exchange play pivotal roles." Cruz refers to the 2007 painting Oo in explaining the dialogical nature of her body of work: "[R]ather than the suggestion of a solitary figure staring at the abyss as with Romantic paintings, [this image] is replaced by an abyss that speaks back to the spectator to have a conversation or dialogue of some sense…inviting the spectator to an ambiguous space and to draw out limitless conversation about anything at all…Don't we need this kind of conversation in an overly determined and over-designed world?" Ateneo Art Gallery continues to mount exhibitions that supplement and counterpoint its prime collection of Philippine modern art. The exhibition will open on October 8 and end on December 13 at the Ateneo Art Gallery.

Maria Cruz

"Paintings of landscapes, flowers, portraits, texts, the painting process exploring the borders and relations of personal narratives, art and decoration, art and the social."