DĒ-KŌD'

dē-kōd'
Ronaldo Ruiz
Renaissance Gallery
December 1 - 10, 2010

In a world of visual codes, art is the key. Ronaldo Ruiz opens his twenty-first solo exhibition dē-kōd' in Renaissance Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, on December 1, 2010, at 6:00 pm. Ruiz uses metallics and thick applications of saturated paint to produce contemporary mandalas that mesmerize and unnerve at the same time, with scattered organic shapes serving as breaker to the otherwise smoothly shaped elements of his recent works.

As the artist layers paint, texture, body and form, he is no doubt trying to decipher the creative concerns that he has been working on in the past decade or so of his career—how does one come to terms with the high tech, fast-paced world of today without losing himself? How does one decode, decrypt and make sense of all the signs, languages and messages he encounters every single minute? It seems that everyone is drowning in information overload, with social networking invading our very lives. Today, principle may be reduced to a Facebook fan or hate page, with everyone having the freedom to write whatever it is they want to blurt out to the universe without the burden of consequence. Whether you are the attacker or the attacked, the world wide web is a flexible and ever-widening arena that saves all impressions and lets all your ideas float in cyberspace, there to be retrieved by whoever is interested. Email threads of conversations or arguments from years back may resurface at any minute, no matter how outdated they are, like a scarlet letter that refuses to be erased. An individual may be surprised at just how many hits his name searches log on Google, and find long-buried images not suitable for public viewing. Tweets serve as micro journals relaying even the tiniest bit of irrelevant information, not excluding useless facts like the author using the bathroom at that certain time.

For Ruiz, the answer seems to be focus. Almost all of his pieces in dē-kōd' involve a gathering, lines converging at a stable center point, no matter how chaotic the surroundings might be. True to his past works, his rich colors remain distinct, but there are now tints and tones of thin color applications that meld well with the raised patterns he coaxes out of the canvas. He also makes use of animal stencils that not only lend organic forms to his works, but also create interesting patterns and surprising combinations. They may be likened to thoughts exploding, yet still drawn by centrifugal force to an energy that emanates from deep within.

With pieces named as Decryption, Decode, Crack Passwords, Debug, Psych-Out, Unlock and Unriddle, the purpose of the artworks are imminent, that of breaking concepts into visual configurations that, as always, aim to communicate, and break information down into something more substantial, palatable and digestible. In dē-kōd', Ruiz makes an effort to show once more what his art is for, that is, converting abstract ideas of technology and consumption into simpler terms that anyone can understand. The receiver, his audience, can enjoy his artworks with no need to obsess with undecipherable symbols that do not add value to their lives. Life is complicated enough. Ruiz in dē-kōd' makes sure that the recipients of his messages get the point, front and center, amidst the chaos.

Kaye O’yek ©