ABOUT CRUZ ORTIZ

Cruz Ortiz makes oil paintings inextricable from his relationship to the land and engages in the complicated politics of the Texan landscape. Combining traditional studio techniques like painting and sculpture with contemporary video and performance, Ortiz began his practice as a romantic art historical form of documentation. His natural paintings come partly from direct observation and partly from visions of the future, a future built on art’s recontextualization of social-political issues that the settler state tries to erase from collective memory.

Based in Texas, Ortiz has committed himself to creatively collaborating with cultural arts organizations and social justice organizations for most of his career. He was also a public high school instructor for 15 years, working with diverse urban students. Cruz Ortiz has had solo exhibitions at ARTPACE in San Antonio, Texas; the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, Texas; the University of Texas in Austin; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Barbara, in Santa Barbara, California; and the Judd Foundation, in Marfa, Texas. He has been invited to participate in many major international exhibitions and institutions such as the Louvre in Paris, France; EV-A in Limerick, Ireland; the traveling exhibition Phantom Sightings with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the San Juan Triennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and at The Blue Coat Museum, in Liverpool, England. His work is in the permanent collections of Ruby City, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the University of Texas at San Antonio Library Special Collections, the Arizona State University Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.