Art Verité Gallery

Beauty of Impernanence 

There is something about being based in Bulacan that inspires artists to create paintings more than just pretty pictures. Maybe the putty skies remain clear and unpolluted to force one to reflect the slowness of time there. Maybe there are still pristine sceneries left to rest and contemplate longing for memories. Veering on melancholy, magical, and macabre, there seems a deeper aesthetics in the visual language among its millennial art practitioners.

In Mortals, a three-man exhibition by Alexis Marga, Lawrence Cervantes and Marvin Quizon–all Bulacan State University College of Fine Arts classmates–interpret the three stages of Life, Death, and Rebirth ushered by their own gestalt three coats of paint. One aspires that these three would once in a while collectively bond together as they complement one another’s hanging on the wall like sisters and brothers from another mother.

Taking the form from a cast of his left arm, The W is Rooted in Japanese anime drawings from when she was young, Alexis Marga approaches Life in her exquisite brushstrokes even sculpted framing them with organic motifs like leaves and vines. Her Treasures series resembles one looking at a mirror asking “what is meaningful in life for you?” Highlighting three priorities such as Letters representing the old and tested through time relationships. Then there is Song adhering to skill. As everyone is blessed with the gift of talent, we can not do it for the common good of others. Lastly, Jewels refer to material things or earthly wealth. The quality of a Marga piece is how the play of positive and negative is inculcated in her illustrated-led masterpieces. She leaves it up to the viewers to decipher how one is affected by her imagery.

Lawrence Cervantes appropriates Rebirth as he continues his ongoing narrative he started in his fifth solo show, Reset. Unknown, the leading character, is in search of his own identity by traveling in lost worlds. In three frames–Check Point, Burning Soul, Transcending Sound–the whole world began again and lost civilization starts anew. The strength of Cervantes is how he stretches further his continuing creative narrative–both in every solo or group show–he emphatically executes. Cervantes has a knack for storytelling that is rooted in his own imagination, influenced by anime comics and video games he has played.

Expect Marvin Quizon to unapologetically explore the defining mood to a certain sentimentality in essaying death. In saturated colors, Quizon aims for a stained effect similar to period films. With a rustic feel, he attempts to give you an almost ethereal effect of old photos. Quizon is an old soul in a man’s body.

He favors paradox considering Pro-life Binoculars After looking long and hard, a skull has sunflower eyes as he takes a swipe using his own figurative interpretation based on one’s temporal resemblance. His Broken Wings reprises his winning painting in a national art competition. As a student, he beat other artists who do not have a one-man show. Inspired by the song Tao by Sampaguita, Quizon directly pertains to how as birds we will all perish in this existence in spite of these trying and difficult times.

Marga, Cervantes, and Quizon further dwell deeper and more emphatically in every painting, they churn out. Mortals experiments, even escapes, with temporal things and their possibilities in forms taking different metaphors. These three artists employ an ardent propensity in seeking de-familiarization of context into fresh perspectives with their new integration. Spontaneity is key in their compositions. They espouse some basic tenets of what art exhibitions could aspire for—constant acceptance of flux, repetitions, and cycles, and relinquishing all complex attachments. It is raw and visceral focusing more on the play of the real and unreal.

Mortals also happen to dwell on impermanence and vulnerability using subjects such as haunting human forms and bespoke landscapes done in bold, lyrical, and captured-in-detail execution.

Mortal’s images are enriched by their treatise on the tragedies of the human condition. It provides the viewer with the necessary pause from an overloaded art scene. It has an in-your-face effect as these artists unload their burden by eschewing human temporality. One is led to a bare essence when things are broken down and starkly simple. In the end, Art is but a preparation for that bigger art—the Art of Living.

Written by Jay Bautista