Maria Taniguchi’s diverse practice encompasses sculpture, painting, drawing, silkscreen, video and photography. Interested in exploring concepts of space and time, in 2008 Taniguchi initiated an ongoing series of works that take the form of large-format canvases covered in a meticulous arrangement of hand-painted bricks. The artist has referred to these labour-intensive, process-driven works as being the fundamental root of her artistic practice, which, at its core, explores the systems and structures of making art and the materiality and architecture of painting itself.

The methodical process of creating the brick paintings is an important objective of the work for Taniguchi; time and effort dedicated to the production of each artwork requiring discipline and a singular focus. When commencing a new painting, Taniguchi prepares the surface by stretching canvas onto a wooden board on the floor and priming it with a layer of grey paint. Drawing the outline of the pattern of bricks onto the monotone surface by hand, she painstakingly fills each rectangle with black acrylic paint. Despite the structural format of the grid and the mechanical process of production, the appearance of the paintings varies considerably from canvas to canvas, dependent on the ratio of paint and water the artist uses. Taniguchi has related the works to an external mechanisation of the body as well as a reference to the cells that make up a biological organism. Intimately connected to Taniguchi’s other works and to each other, the brick paintings represent a small part of the larger, more complete matrix of her practice.

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