Art Verité Gallery

Itinerary for Insomniacs in Iloilo

Picking up where he left off in his first solo exhibition, When the Day Ends, Jason Delgado dwells deeper into his state of allegorical sleeplessness, this time, late into the night in As Midnight Blossoms, his second solo exhibition at Art Verite.

For Delgado, pillows are very much like humans—with different bespoke preferences in various personalities—the fluffy soft, the firmly hard, and old worn out. Spending prolonged periods in the same position during sleep can place certain stress on some parts of the body, such as the back and neck, thus, we need pillows in life. They are designed to minimize this stress by supporting the head at a comfortable level helping take pressure off the cervical area and straighten out the spine.

In As Midnight Blossoms, one still fails to fall asleep as it gets later and darker. Turning over both sides of the bed, our judgment is affected, memory is impaired, and there’s a deterioration in decision-making ability, as well as, our eye-hand coordination. In Invictus, Delgado scorches for the anxiety of “what-ifs” in his short life. Such as his career as a full-time artist vis-à-vis licensed architect, or his new venture into married life and starting a family. Even the things Delgado could have done for his father before his bout with cancer, he lingers with regret.

The prevalent red means internal war within–one that wages against himself. The blinking multitude of blood-tinted electric vigil candles represents his answered prayers. To be awake by midnight, your convictions are questioned either they become clear or confuse you. Invictus means unconquerable in Latin, thus it is a test of character as you lay awake unable to sleep. For Delgado, he comes immortality undefeated.

The temporal worrying continues in Waiting Game as significant events in Delgado’s life unravel. Obviously as Delgado doubts but it is in uncertainty that our faith deepens. The steel clamp is a versatile tool as they are used in many applications including carpentry, woodworking, furniture making, and construction. To have the steel clamp have a grip on your dreams means you are forced to fight it by your abiding commitment to its fulfillment.

In Iloilo, since there is a dearth of fine arts schools, the alternative route for artists is for one to take up architecture as a backup course. Instead, as it grips the softness of the pillow, Delgado had to postpone his taking the architecture exam three times since 2020 as his father was in and out of the hospital. Six months before the 2023 exams, he had to forego further the brush and palette for the T-square and AutoCAD program as needed to stay focused.

In architecture, yellow is a deceiving color. Maybe it is because it is in between feisty red and tranquil blue. Being Prudent cautions some beautiful things are deceiving in appearance. Even in the Bible, religious paintings of the Christian faith claimed that yellow is Judas Iscariot’s hue. From this affiliation with Christianity, yellow became the color of deceit and cowardice. Delgado wants us to learn from the past mistakes of others. Sometimes the most painful things are more beneficial to our existence.

Learning How to Fly immortalizes a dream that he had five days before his father died in 2017. Delgado and his father were in a burial pit. He saw a ladder which he climbed and before him presented the progressive city of our future. Then a big bird flew over him which Delgado thought was a premonition of better things to come. He has never turned back ever since.

There are a few certain times Delgado felt it. One was a day before he took the architecture board exam, and the other one was when he was about to get married to his wife, Zarlien. Silently captures the certainty when one is most alive. It is passion ignited—an explosion of emotions and possibilities. These days Delgado is fulfilling his utmost purpose. As a married man eager to start a family. As a full-time artist, he want to tell stories by mixing three coats of paint into framed parables on canvas after canvas.

For many, it is only on retreating to your pillow every night that your true self is expressed. For others, pillows are closely associated with loneliness, being away from others, and taking support from an innate object rather than the pleasures of human contact. Sometimes when we could no longer sleep deep in the night, as the long hours wear off into the wee hours of the morning, we entertain extremely positive and negative provoking thoughts. In As Midnight Blossoms, Delgado entertains both of them with an open mind. He advises we should find what is beneficial to our calling and get to know ourselves better on a critical level. It is in being comfortable with ourselves that sleep may finally come by.

hues fading away with time; they are images that endure, and remain, part of all our lives. 

–  Jay Bautista