A Thought Is A Vast Place
SOLO EXHIBITION BY
PIN CALACAL
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Introspective of her practice and approach to connecting with the rest of the world, Pin Calacal delves deeper inside her mind to re-evaluate the present as she attends to the necessity to look beyond the self. Prominent in Calacal’s body of works are surrealist landscapes depicting dream-like scenes that hint at the complexity of the human psyche and using the body (and its physical state) as lens and symbol– heads, feet, etc. and producing pictures that evoke myth and fantasy but are drawn from the convoluted experience of reality.
Poetic and uncanny imagery that best articulates the ordeals and struggles of living as the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard suggests, “The setting is not the fairyland of the imagination…” and continues, “The setting is inwardness in existing as a human being; the concretion is the relation of the existence-categories to one another.” Everything is all anchored together by the artist’s desire to understand identity, social structure, and the feetingness of human connections. In this exhibition, a female subject is at the center of the paintings. Sometimes, she is surrounded by the subjugating hold of nature, and at times, she flls the void of an empty space.
However, both depict a sense of detachment and isolation, refections of Calacal’s reckoning with the narratives embedded in her works throughout her almost decade- long studio practice. Here, the composition in every painting is arranged like different rooms that fulfll the artist’s yearning for change. She paints scenes for a “change of scenery” while almost remaining at a standstill and disengaged and allowing herself the opportunity to assess the transformations in several aspects of her life and attempt to expand these scenes outward. Looking through the exhibition, one begins to understand the compartmentalization that happens inside the mind. Sometimes, we see ourselves at the center of everything, yet the overwhelming feeling of existing inside a flled space is as colossal as staying in an empty place. Calacal’s “Somewhere and Nowhere,” positions a strong argument as the image poses no defning center, and instead refective of the artist’s longing to be grounded in a place where she neither feels alone nor overpowered. Parts of the body seem to appear and disappear as if searching and hunting for an elusive form of peace that can no longer be contained within. Everything else points to a sign that there now exists the time to reconnect and explore the vastness of the abyss.
