Fixation Exhibition

                                                Convergence II, mixed media, 2014 

Fixation at KAIDA Contemporary

 Fixation gathers works that evoke the obsession of featured artists Demosthenes Campos, Noell El Farol, Jethro Jocson, Jemina Reyes and Pinggot Zulueta to express their concepts, sensibilities and life principles through abstract painting. Colors, forms and lines are interpreted in myriad renditions, visually enticing the audience to explore the depths of artistic expression.

In Noell El Farol’s Stratigraphy series, he explores the recovery process in archaeological practice in retrieving artifacts with a painstaking process involving wet sieving and flotation. El Farol manually produces handmade paper from juice and milk packages and collected papers from studio works, then marks them with natural pigments. As such, the output may be considered as field notes with its own set of recovered, then reconstructed, footprints.

Jethro Jocson, on the other hand, continues to delve into his scrutiny of value and worth as he questions "If matter is anything that occupies space and has weight, what matters most?" in Perseverance and Compatibility with process colors carefully swathed on stark white canvas.

In Demosthenes Campos’ Detached, he halves his plane of textured and unbleached Titanium White with a floating patch rendered in different colors.

Jemina Reyes, meanwhile, in Beyond, fixates on the spiritual. She closes off the center of her painting with a light border suggesting that the physical world is bound by limits, yet there are things beyond the human plane of awareness.

Pinggot Zulueta introduces a network of thin lines forming a multi-planed enclosure that seemingly captures blocked off shapes and dashes in Convergence 11, and utilizes slashes and stripes that give a visual rendering of beats and free rhythms in Straight Line from the Heart.  

Whether inspired by processes used in archaeology, valuing worth in matter, minimalist detachment, longing for the beyond, or simply celebrating bursts of lively colors and musicality in form, the paintings are exposed to one's personal signification -- interpretation fully depending on the viewers, their compulsions and inclinations, what they hold fast and what they are willing to let go of.

Fixation will be on show until November 12, 2014. Kaida Contemporary is located at 45 Scout Madriñan St., South Triangle, Quezon City. For inquiries, please contact +637090289 or +639279297129, and email kaida529@yahoo.com.ph.