FAREWELL TO THE FLESH 2
Group Exhibition Featuring
Kiko Capile, Judeo Herrera, Dave Lock, Patsung Ramento, Michael Villagante and Jared Yokte
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And the Word was Made Flesh
In an overcrowded art scene where artists are getting younger and are excessively-visual, the lure of interpretations of the raw skin—be it in human anatomy or in the surreal and fantasy—has been a recurring theme and suits well with present-day bustling art practices. In Farewell to the Flesh gathers seven contemporary artists–a restaging of an earlier version–this time at the Vinyl on Vinyl.
Farewell to the Flesh merges visual styles to revitalize human experience influenced by identity, history, gender and religion. These evocative painters step up the plate to interrupt magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and superficial in the course of the new normal. Favoring fresh language to eschew the disregarded and the unconventional, they find replenished meanings to their acquired imaginative realizations.
Michael Villagante tries to unravel his distinct creative process and analyzes what goes on the female mind in one frame. Like a jazz musician he builds up tempo from conceptualization to creative fruition as he simplifies women in colorful composition what an artist undergoes in a very complex system. Villagante highlights the essential stages as he reflects on his painterly prowess marred with profound graphic devices.
The woman is also Kiko Capile’s offering, who is the master in the macabre and uncanny. Capile finds inspiration in women and her fallibility as man cannot decipher what goes on the inner workings on her head in congruence to her heart. Against a stark white background he morphs in blood-red ink his subject to reveal old school values we no longer hold dear–not even familiar with–and considered passe.
Dwelling deeper in women as well, vanity is Judeo Herrera’s focus as he becomes intimate with the opposite sex in his two paintings. In dark broad strokes, he discusses how we cannot fathom women and their bearings and how they exude their ways of the flesh we cannot resist.
Patsung Ramento discusses longing for love as a province of the heart. Done in almost abstract mode he captures ethereal feelings as Ramento is versed with impressions what was supposed to be heavy burden of being unrequited in emotions.
Dave Lock defends the cause of heroes while veering on his own realist techniques with the surreal. In two scenarios, he broadly discusses the tale of two heroes and their capability as mortals. Plainly seen in their moles–how in defense of their collective cause reclaims the abuse of colonialism and turns up the nationalist tirade in a powerful painterly bravura.
Inducing circumcision as a rite of passage, Jareds Yokte becomes more personal and finds his being a pessimist and over thinker suitable for the hanging. Inherent characters Yokte endows with an arcane melancholy and bespoke iconography typifying of what goes on when a boy becomes a man.
Pablo Zingapan waxes poetic as he ventures the uncharted terrains of his bottled emotions. In various emphatic proposals Zingapan untangles the piercing of his soul and artistically elopes with the differing portraits he felt during the pandemic. Sharing the same frames like contact prints, it is a typical postmodern self of what seems to be absent was there along. With this, Zingapan was utmost effective in saving his sanity and relationship with himself during these difficult times.
Farewell to the Flesh provides aesthetic promising realities in seven brushstrokes to loudly speak on canvases what were long kept taboo and hidden. Armed with youthful confidence, these revealing visual artists are tomorrow’s chroniclers of today. They tell their tales with profound allegories we can fondly relate to. Their next stories can be your own–complete with conniving images, hues and textures. They narrate how it is to live as humans in our own voices, in our present time.
-Jay Bautista
