The Punky Brewster Session @ Mag:net Gallery

The Punky Brewster Session
Mag:net Gallery
Katipunan, Quezon City
May 24, 2007 to June 11, 2007

Memory, presence and the various excisions of these are explored in The Punky Brewster Session, Yasmin Sison’s latest one-woman exhibition.

Sison exhibits paintings in oil on canvas, ranging in size from 6 x 4 ft. and 3 x 4 ft., which the artist considers as a continuation of previous works that deal with memory, collective memory and the mutability of memories and thus its inherent possibilities.

In her previous show entitled Unmade (this time at Mag:net Paseo last year), Sison - covers up supposed personages - whose photographs fill the pages of found fashion magazines, rendering them anonymous, cut out and erased from the pretty picture plane. Barely a year later, her follow-up exhibition ventures beyond the confines of pictorial shoots and comfortable interiors. It features works that focus on the people either engaged in acts or located at the peripheries of sites which can be initially associated with amusement and fun: the carnival grounds, an unmade bed ready for a sleep-over session, a classroom in a state of disarray.

Whether Sison intentionally alludes to this or not, the 1980s American sitcom Punky Brewster (from which the exhibition derives its title) ironically revolves around the life of a little girl whose parents have disappeared and abandoned her while still an infant. Sison may have initially chosen the title based on the effects of colors and textures utilized in her works (defining these as more of a - pop song more than an opera if made into a song), but this whimsical and innocent juxtaposition of the works in the context of the ongoing human rights crisis make the irony of all this seem grimmer. What is being exhibited, thus, is not only a conceptual representation of a grade school project, but documentary evidences of Mutilation: a defacement of form, recollection, and presence. More than being formal exercises in visual perception, the works are indirect reminders that life outside the gallery, unlike in TV sitcoms, does not always end up with happy, picture-perfect endings.

Yasmin Sison studied Humanities and Fine Arts (majoring in Painting) at the University of the Philippines. She was a member of the artists’ group which managed the alternative art space Surrounded By Water from the late 1990s to early 2000. She was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 2006. Sison is also an art educator, having taught Fine Arts at St. Scholastica’s College, and at a Cavite-based preparatory school.

For more details on The Punky Brewster Session at the Mag:net Gallery, Katipunan, Quezon City, please call 929-3191.

The Punky Brewster Session runs from May 24, 2007 to June 11, 2007.