Art Verité Gallery

VANITIES. A Time to Paint. 

Aba Lluch Dalena / Eva Gorshkova

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.
-Vincent Van Gogh

I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!
-Pablo Picasso

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
-Ecclesiastes 3:1

ABA LLUCH DALENA: 

How do you paint when you have a downcast soul? Or when you’re living in a F@#-up world? Everyday you read news of violence and feel a sense of hopelessness, and you wonder why dictators and corrupt government leaders still exist and can fool millions of people despite what history teaches. There’s a heaviness inside yet there is also a sense of longing for and holding on to faith, keeping the courage and strength to do the good we ought to – this daily choice of moving on and fighting even when you’re trudging along like a zombie because you’re dead tired.

I am a Filipino visual artist who happens to be a progressive Christian believer. I believe in Jesus Christ as a compassionate human rights activist. He taught people how to treat one another in love and compassion, healing, justice and mercy, instead of judgment that produces hatred, violence and killings. Amidst all the hatred, violence and killings, and regardless of how I feel, I just keep on painting, I just keep on living.

EVA GORSHKOVA:

My paintings, mostly abstractions, represent my thoughts and feelings. For this exhibition, I painted some works spontaneously while the others were done in a more deliberate manner since it took me more time to process and express my ideas.

I have decided to live and work here in Manila. I have discovered and come to love the freedom-loving art community in the Philippines. The community inspires me to share more of my art and I look forward to collaborations with local artists I meet.

As a Russian artist, I have seen and experienced many contrasting things in this country that make me contemplate and pose more questions. Similarly I have likewise gone through extreme emotions from intense pain to overflowing love and harmony. The questions I have and the emotions I feel are in my works.

These emotions come from deep personal issues – familial relationships, memories (the good and that bad), and inner struggles – that used to haunt me. I realized I have unconsciously painted these themes based on what has happened in the last two years of my life.

As much as the external things affect me such as issues on human rights, animal rights, and fighting the evils of the world which consequently appear in my work, I am also expressing my inner world in my paintings.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sabana “Aba” Lluch Dalena is a multi-faceted Filipino artist – a visual artist, art teacher, musician, and art organizer. Dalena demonstrates her ease with wielding and spanning seemingly contradictory elements: sculpture and painting, figuration and abstraction, solitary works and collaborative pieces.

The artist obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of the Philippines – Diliman campus.  She also took a special course on Drawing at the Art Students League of New York, U.S.A.

Dalena’s latest solo art exhibition entitled Fragile was held in May 2017 at the West Gallery which reflects on the human condition.

Evangelina “Eva” Gorshkova, a Russian multi-media visual artist , model, is now based in Manila, Philippines.

She took up Design in the Sochi Institute of Fashion, Business and Law, major in painting and graphic design, in Sochi, Russia.

Gorshkova participated in the annual group art exhibitions titled Bungad, and Bloom: Works by Women at the Conspiracy Café Gallery. She was also a part of group exhibitions for the benefit of Marawi City. She co-facilitated various art workshops for children in Manila and Bohol.