The Metamorphosis Show
By: Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
In the exhibit, the viewer is introduced to a jumble of hues, zigzag of lines, enervated fields of gray that are explosive with tonal varieties, occasionally concealing or revealing geometric details and bands of color. Familiar signage’s–such as the the sign-off theme of a TV stations–are inevitably annealed into blurs, splotches and the kinetic energy of a canvas.
Abstract in quality but conceptual in their assertions, the paintings and the installation art create an uninterrupted evocation of discordance, the lyrical outbursts manifested into gestural strokes jostling with the mathematical precision lines.
“I tried to project cliché motif and typical shapes, combining them with unordinary pictures and color combinations,” says the artist of his project.
The point, he adds, is not to evoke a notion of beauty but to seek those places that are pregnant with the possibility of change and signification: the cocoon after the butterfly. By encountering a disruption in the works, the viewer is unhinged from his usual expectations and comes into terms with how disorder serves as the readying platform for a cohesive reality.
Because the works are necessarily unyielding and not “pleasing to the eye,” the artist hopes that the viewer will negotiate the tumult of color and achieve a kind of engagement at once inevitable and ineffable.
By: Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
In the exhibit, the viewer is introduced to a jumble of hues, zigzag of lines, enervated fields of gray that are explosive with tonal varieties, occasionally concealing or revealing geometric details and bands of color. Familiar signage’s–such as the the sign-off theme of a TV stations–are inevitably annealed into blurs, splotches and the kinetic energy of a canvas.
Abstract in quality but conceptual in their assertions, the paintings and the installation art create an uninterrupted evocation of discordance, the lyrical outbursts manifested into gestural strokes jostling with the mathematical precision lines.
“I tried to project cliché motif and typical shapes, combining them with unordinary pictures and color combinations,” says the artist of his project.
The point, he adds, is not to evoke a notion of beauty but to seek those places that are pregnant with the possibility of change and signification: the cocoon after the butterfly. By encountering a disruption in the works, the viewer is unhinged from his usual expectations and comes into terms with how disorder serves as the readying platform for a cohesive reality.
Because the works are necessarily unyielding and not “pleasing to the eye,” the artist hopes that the viewer will negotiate the tumult of color and achieve a kind of engagement at once inevitable and ineffable.
By Martin Sacramento
The thing that we call Beauty is a strange and bemused creature. Like so many of our big ideas such as “art” and “truth”, “beauty” is a thing that eludes us more the more earnestly we try to tie it down. Artists from various disciplines, for ages have tried to pin it’s essence in verse, stone, pigment, and wood, and each age has had it’s incarnations of this creature. From the Renaissance, to the Impressionists, Modern Art, and the various movements in the main streams of artistic current the perception and concept of what was thought to be beautiful had evolved with ideas and changing times and fashions. Even in our own days, as art has reached a culmination of past inspirations and new knowledge to the point where it can be said to be amorphous, the pursuit of the muse of beauty is chief in many artist’s endeavors, and how we perceive it, is still constantly evolving.
This change in the concept of beauty in art is a continuous cycle that undergoes periodic stratification and revolution. Indeed, many stages in the history of art have been attributed to generations reacting against a previous one’s set of norms, often seeking out new forms of expression. The feeling of confinement, of wanting to break away from pre-existing modes of expression and seeking out something “new”, has been a major force in the development of art, and has resulted in various innovations in concept, execution, subject matter and materials. Though not always successful, and sometimes short lived, artistic “movements” have always been a major force in stirring the imagination of those who appreciate art.
Yet another side of the coin exists that tends to settle at the current state of things.People’s perception, the establishment of a certain style, cultural norms, have periodically tended to settle the concept of beauty at certain periods. Whether it be for social, economic, political or historic reasons, stratification tends to offer periodic stability and time to appreciate a certain age’s perception, but sometimes it tends to lead to stagnation as people become too accustomed to it. As such, people tend to take a certain temporal interpretation of beauty as a universal truth.
The entire pursuit of Beauty is a paradox. One so I would say because in an ordinarypursuit, one tends to expect to finally catch the object of the chase. But art is a paradox in that humanity will always pursue beauty, but will never really obtain it as it is always changing with regards to our condition, always metamorphosing, taking on new forms, so that perhaps we can only be so lucky as to catch a sliver of it’s existence, it’s transient reality during our time. It is a pursuit without end which leads to different results, and that is the end of the pursuit.
As such, like most of the things we love, we have thoroughly used and abused the concept of beauty. We have mangled, remade, scoured, refined and blasted it beyond recognition, and in our attempts to define it we have done more to confine it. Like many of our ideals, it has become a victim to the fashions and passions of ages past, a reflection more of localized temperaments than any true qualification of what it is we truly find aesthetically pleasing and soulfully enjoyable. And what’s more, we have essentially replaced the idea of Beauty with the concepts we have accumulated over time. In place of genuine sentiment we have placed criteria, a check-boxes approach to what we should like in art. Beauty has become a cliché’, a cookie cutter formula used to skim over an object instead of staring at the core, a Barron’s booknotes approach instead of actually reading the damned novel.
The exhibit in itself is an experiment in that it seeks to find beauty in the very thingthat people may find to be the opposite of the word: forms and colors which might beconsidered common, glaring, obtuse and kitsch. By it’s namesake, it seeks another form of the pursuit. It attempts to challenge our concept and perception of beauty by placing before us images which we would tend to associate with its opposite, and removing us from any familiar grounding or frame of reference. The premise, like any other social experiment, is that there is always room for failure, regardless, every experiment has useful results, and through its kaleidoscope of familiar forms and colors the artist hopes to at least free the viewers mind of any pre-conceptions of what beauty is, and consider various unimagined possibilities of harmony within otherwise seemingly unharmonious elements.
The thing that we call Beauty is a strange and bemused creature. Like so many of our big ideas such as “art” and “truth”, “beauty” is a thing that eludes us more the more earnestly we try to tie it down. Artists from various disciplines, for ages have tried to pin it’s essence in verse, stone, pigment, and wood, and each age has had it’s incarnations of this creature. From the Renaissance, to the Impressionists, Modern Art, and the various movements in the main streams of artistic current the perception and concept of what was thought to be beautiful had evolved with ideas and changing times and fashions. Even in our own days, as art has reached a culmination of past inspirations and new knowledge to the point where it can be said to be amorphous, the pursuit of the muse of beauty is chief in many artist’s endeavors, and how we perceive it, is still constantly evolving.
This change in the concept of beauty in art is a continuous cycle that undergoes periodic stratification and revolution. Indeed, many stages in the history of art have been attributed to generations reacting against a previous one’s set of norms, often seeking out new forms of expression. The feeling of confinement, of wanting to break away from pre-existing modes of expression and seeking out something “new”, has been a major force in the development of art, and has resulted in various innovations in concept, execution, subject matter and materials. Though not always successful, and sometimes short lived, artistic “movements” have always been a major force in stirring the imagination of those who appreciate art.
Yet another side of the coin exists that tends to settle at the current state of things.People’s perception, the establishment of a certain style, cultural norms, have periodically tended to settle the concept of beauty at certain periods. Whether it be for social, economic, political or historic reasons, stratification tends to offer periodic stability and time to appreciate a certain age’s perception, but sometimes it tends to lead to stagnation as people become too accustomed to it. As such, people tend to take a certain temporal interpretation of beauty as a universal truth.
The entire pursuit of Beauty is a paradox. One so I would say because in an ordinarypursuit, one tends to expect to finally catch the object of the chase. But art is a paradox in that humanity will always pursue beauty, but will never really obtain it as it is always changing with regards to our condition, always metamorphosing, taking on new forms, so that perhaps we can only be so lucky as to catch a sliver of it’s existence, it’s transient reality during our time. It is a pursuit without end which leads to different results, and that is the end of the pursuit.
As such, like most of the things we love, we have thoroughly used and abused the concept of beauty. We have mangled, remade, scoured, refined and blasted it beyond recognition, and in our attempts to define it we have done more to confine it. Like many of our ideals, it has become a victim to the fashions and passions of ages past, a reflection more of localized temperaments than any true qualification of what it is we truly find aesthetically pleasing and soulfully enjoyable. And what’s more, we have essentially replaced the idea of Beauty with the concepts we have accumulated over time. In place of genuine sentiment we have placed criteria, a check-boxes approach to what we should like in art. Beauty has become a cliché’, a cookie cutter formula used to skim over an object instead of staring at the core, a Barron’s booknotes approach instead of actually reading the damned novel.
The exhibit in itself is an experiment in that it seeks to find beauty in the very thingthat people may find to be the opposite of the word: forms and colors which might beconsidered common, glaring, obtuse and kitsch. By it’s namesake, it seeks another form of the pursuit. It attempts to challenge our concept and perception of beauty by placing before us images which we would tend to associate with its opposite, and removing us from any familiar grounding or frame of reference. The premise, like any other social experiment, is that there is always room for failure, regardless, every experiment has useful results, and through its kaleidoscope of familiar forms and colors the artist hopes to at least free the viewers mind of any pre-conceptions of what beauty is, and consider various unimagined possibilities of harmony within otherwise seemingly unharmonious elements.
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