Cristina Moroño is an artist in pursuit of constant experimentation. Merging different practices, including photography, etching, engraving, collage, paper making and painting. Cristina oscillates between the figurative and the abstract in her search to capture the passing of time and the ephemeral nature of our lives.

In the series Second Chance, Cristina deepens her interest in experimentation by making her own paper. Blithely following on the footsteps of Antoni Tapies “informal” art and use of mixed media, Cristina incorporates non-artistic materials into the work. The creation of handmade paper is crucial, with the material serving as both canvas and content. In this series, she plunges elements from the old books, paints and objects into the raw pulp. The result is a single sheet where the essence lies not in the perfect agglutination, but in the imprint, the wearing and natural perishing of the amalgamated elements. The objects’ fading colours and texts are juxtaposed with the brand new paper and sharp colours of the paint, reflecting a vanishing past and a fleeting present. Each is personal memento documenting a particular time in her life. By merging old found objects and new materials, Moroño grants them a second life, a “second chance” to express their form, substance and be crowned with new meanings.

In her latest series, Oriente, Cristina progresses her practice by applying bamboo pulp directly onto the surface of large scale canvases and returns to painting through emotive abstract marks. Immersing herself in a soft and expressive field, she works in layers of mixed media, embedding pages from old Chinese art theory books along the way. The unfamiliar scripts are infused with introspective acrylic gestures, resulting in stunning collages that merge the East and West. Here Cristina assembles a transcendental space to explore and express her personal experiences.

In past series of works, such as Lilith’s Daughters, the artist depicts anonymous female figures whose status is defined within a social framework, and where women appear as a symbol of their own era and our contemporary visual culture. Her portraits of the female body and the notion of nudity confront the changing landscapes for women constrained by social structures, expressing both a sense of beauty, freedom and pain.

Cristina Moroño majored in printmaking, graduating with honours at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, where she also obtained a Master Degree in Fine Arts. In 2003 she moved to New York and in 2016 she relocated to Hong Kong where she currently lives and works. She has received several prestigious awards, most notably from the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, a fellowship from the Joan Miro Foundation and the DeArte Fundation’s prize “Hotel Puerta America”. Her work is held by public and private collections including the National Library and the City Museum in Madrid, the FRIDE Foundation, the Joan Miró Foundation, the Gorbachev Foundation of North America and the Macy’s Art Collection in New York. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and New York, with her first exhibition in Hong Kong with Puerta Roja in 2016.