RANDOM PURPOSE

About the exhibition:

Can one find order in chaos, or meaning in the stochastic machinations of an arbitrary universe? Random Purpose brings together three established contemporary Filipino artists, who orchestrate beauty in different artistic directions from the slings and arrows of a desultory world.

The bubble wrap painting is now synonymous with the name Crispin S. Villanueva Jr. since he bagged the Grand Prize at the 2005 Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards and again the Jurors’ Choice (Top 5) Award in 2006. After giving a more than recreational dose of utilizing the hand painted bubbles as a veneer that covers his paintings, he has now accumulated dozens of reasons for giving his paintings a partly concealed, yet partly disclosed treatment. The most likely purpose has been lost in transit and yet the bubbles re-surface intermittently through the years. Inordinately ordinary, these paintings are transformed by the bubble wrap and as Cris puts it – “same as it never was”. Cris is a member of the Grupong Salingpusa and is a founding member of the group Madrugada.

Demetrio dela Cruz’s paintings are about the effects of modern computerization and the tremendous influences we get from the world wide web - the infinite benefits and also the alarming negative inputs that could alter mind of an individual. Together with human figures, Dems also uses letters merging with other objects in his paintings, being the textual representations of viruses and antiviruses online. The Grand Prize Winner of the 2006 Daler-Rowney competition and the 2007 Art Association of the Philippines National Art Competition, Dems also received the 2006 Jurors’ Choice (Top 5) Award for the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards.

Whenever Anthony E. Palomo travels overseas, he gets to meet fellow Filipinos almost everywhere as contract workers. Somehow they facilitate the acquaintance easily by an exchange of stories on the prospects of a better future despite the homesickness of being away from the mother country. This series is a paean to these foreign workers, and are allegorical introspections in retrospect of Anthony’s own personal experiences as a graphic designer in Petaling Jaya, West Malaysia, way back in the 90s. A member of the historic Salingpusa art group, Anthony was a Grand Prize Winner in the Watercolour Category of the 11th Metrobank National Painting Competition (1994) and the 24th Shell National Students Arts Competition (1991). In 1999, he was a finalist in the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards.