Body of Work
TWO-MAN show Featuring
Mejalosa and Kashu
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In the two-man exhibition Body of work, artists Mejalosa and Kashu, paired up together for the first time, visually illustrate the internal and external conflicts of the body that manifest in various forms through their works on canvas and sketches. The show, which also refers to the totality of the creative output produced by an artist, demonstrates the contrasting notion of the body. Although sharing different views and employing various approaches, some parallelism in their thoughts and emotions are only revealed through the use of bright colors.
Mejalosa touches on physical pain which he translates into painting subjects with body parts that are away from each other, seemingly in disarray– lips out of the face– hence a more abstracted take on figuration. In some instances, he substitutes these body parts with toys; take for example a toy car in place of a heart. This gesture of substitution speaks of his conscious effort to remember a pleasant childhood memory but without disregarding the feeling of despair from having to literally take care of a body and of somebody close to him. For Mejalosa, painting is his way of recovering and regaining the self.
How does one cope up with the changes in your body? Kashu opens himself up by painting his personal struggles as he deals with inner conflicts that are invisible to the eye. Painting as a process of internalization is evident in the artist’s portrayal of his subjects and the unusual poses of their heads, titled as if insinuating a certain or judgment. These heads are placed in a cube which is the artist’s own visual metaphor for living in one’s distorted reality. Kashu’s paintings are actually inspired by social and political events and this time, he encourages the viewers to look closely instead of turning a blind eye.
The body, figured and disfigured, remains to be a favored and celebrated subject in the visual arts. Both artists become more familiar and aware of their own body and, as a result, they acknowledge how the body is actually linked to oneself, perhaps an extension of something that has no shape or no form but not until they paint it on canvas. Both bodies are a work in progress.
-James Luigi Tana
