Weather. 2006
Oil on Canvas
5.5 x 7.5 inches
Nona Garcia
Weather
7 – 30 November 2006
Mag:net Gallery ABS
It is often purported that (abstract painting or all other notions of modern painting) was borne from landscape painting, as inspired particularly by Caspar Friedrich. As a genre, landscape painting is naturally wont to be for all its philosophical, teleological statements about the world in general, about life actually – the universe, transposed to trees, to shrubs, to mountains, to the effervescent light blazing upon wee figures in the foreground. It's almost like a painter's epistle preached to the would-be converts, art becoming an act of faith. Much more if they are masterfully executed, gargantuan, and much evocative of that sublime; nature depicted as a strong force to reckon with in her necessary acts of devastation.
Nona Garcia's exhibit, entitled "Weather" and opening at Mag:net ABS on the 7th of November, reflects upon such a theme with an implicit parallelism to the practice of painting itself . The exhibit is composed of 15 postcard-sized oil paintings of devastated landscapes based on downloaded images of towns beaten by hurricanes in the 1800s. These are juxtaposed with images of Garcia's own domestic chaos ruminating from deflated balls, ransacked cabinets, turned over furniture, tattered feathers, crumpled papers. The scenarios depicted in these paintings verily evidence unwanted intrusion as to be gleaned in one painting shown in an earlier exhibit "Strange Familiarity" – that of a fallen structure pierced by a tree trunk – its graphic literalness underscores brutal violation of civil property, an aftermath shared by Garcia's past experience with actual thievery but which somehow becomes trivialized in knowing that the culprits behind some of the images of ruined interiors were that of Garcia's 2 pet puppies.
All these images are painted with a certain cool distance as though aiming for that rare ground of neutrality and exactness – splicing or dissecting the subject as a forensics detective would do so - transferring these images manually and grid per grid as opposed to tracing it from a projector – a process she likens as well to architectural construction, the photographs serving as blue prints, the final outcome already decided, the picture already gleaned from a factual trace.
Moreover their being translated into painting detaches them much from their latent history, their supposed effectual aims of sentiment is redirected to bravura of stroke and mastery of the medium, hence the terrible becoming awe-inspiring. But in this exhibit it is rather made more quaint by their smallness, their ornate frames audaciously invoking their archaic inspiration.
The exhibit title also points to a median between bipolars of representation affected by circumstantial conditions such as technology and craft through time. Whether one sort of depiction is superior than the other, between a photograph and a painting, it doesn't really matter as these all accumulate as visual data in the mounting debris of available information, relegated to forms continually dug and revived by sheer act of faith, by the continued practice of painting.
"Weather" will be on view until the 30th of November 2006.
Mag:net Gallery ABS is at the Loop, ABS-CBN Compound, Eugenio Lopez Jr. St, Quezon City. For inquiry please contact 4100995 (Genevieve) or email magnetcafekatips@yahoo.com.ph
Weather
7 – 30 November 2006
Mag:net Gallery ABS
It is often purported that (abstract painting or all other notions of modern painting) was borne from landscape painting, as inspired particularly by Caspar Friedrich. As a genre, landscape painting is naturally wont to be for all its philosophical, teleological statements about the world in general, about life actually – the universe, transposed to trees, to shrubs, to mountains, to the effervescent light blazing upon wee figures in the foreground. It's almost like a painter's epistle preached to the would-be converts, art becoming an act of faith. Much more if they are masterfully executed, gargantuan, and much evocative of that sublime; nature depicted as a strong force to reckon with in her necessary acts of devastation.
Nona Garcia's exhibit, entitled "Weather" and opening at Mag:net ABS on the 7th of November, reflects upon such a theme with an implicit parallelism to the practice of painting itself . The exhibit is composed of 15 postcard-sized oil paintings of devastated landscapes based on downloaded images of towns beaten by hurricanes in the 1800s. These are juxtaposed with images of Garcia's own domestic chaos ruminating from deflated balls, ransacked cabinets, turned over furniture, tattered feathers, crumpled papers. The scenarios depicted in these paintings verily evidence unwanted intrusion as to be gleaned in one painting shown in an earlier exhibit "Strange Familiarity" – that of a fallen structure pierced by a tree trunk – its graphic literalness underscores brutal violation of civil property, an aftermath shared by Garcia's past experience with actual thievery but which somehow becomes trivialized in knowing that the culprits behind some of the images of ruined interiors were that of Garcia's 2 pet puppies.
All these images are painted with a certain cool distance as though aiming for that rare ground of neutrality and exactness – splicing or dissecting the subject as a forensics detective would do so - transferring these images manually and grid per grid as opposed to tracing it from a projector – a process she likens as well to architectural construction, the photographs serving as blue prints, the final outcome already decided, the picture already gleaned from a factual trace.
Moreover their being translated into painting detaches them much from their latent history, their supposed effectual aims of sentiment is redirected to bravura of stroke and mastery of the medium, hence the terrible becoming awe-inspiring. But in this exhibit it is rather made more quaint by their smallness, their ornate frames audaciously invoking their archaic inspiration.
The exhibit title also points to a median between bipolars of representation affected by circumstantial conditions such as technology and craft through time. Whether one sort of depiction is superior than the other, between a photograph and a painting, it doesn't really matter as these all accumulate as visual data in the mounting debris of available information, relegated to forms continually dug and revived by sheer act of faith, by the continued practice of painting.
"Weather" will be on view until the 30th of November 2006.
Mag:net Gallery ABS is at the Loop, ABS-CBN Compound, Eugenio Lopez Jr. St, Quezon City. For inquiry please contact 4100995 (Genevieve) or email magnetcafekatips@yahoo.com.ph
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