“Suspend The World”
by Guenivere Toledanes Decena
Negros Occidental, with its rich culture and history, has once again produced a child dedicated to the arts. Alliance Française de Manille presents an exhibition by Negrense artist Guenivere Toledanes Decena entitled “Suspend The World” which opens on March 13th, 2012, 6:30pm and will run until 3rd of April, 2012.
“Suspend the World” concretizes one of Decena’s greatest obsessions: that of seeing herself as a traveler of the psyche. She has put safe approximations to a theory she came upon that we are not really at home in our present time-"our moment". We are all, by nature and logic, willing ourselves ahead, yet inadmissibly dreaming ourselves back to the past; treating life itself like a melody which we can sing from the top, or a fabric unwoven, woven and rewoven for an imagined better design.
“Inevitably, the mind conditions everything it encounters,” says the artist. “It is within the limits of our minds that we do not see things as they are in themselves.” For the mind presupposes a role of reaching reality through accumulated understanding. “Suspend the World” emphasizes that it is also through the mind that the unknowability of things is thoroughly questioned and examined.
Translating her presuppositions visually, Decena presents paintings in acrylic and oil that have evolved from quotations and poetry that she has written and collected over the early years of her venture into art. The artist declares that she desires to show how we envelop the world with our ideas and our thoughts. She shares questions along with their far-reaching echoed calls for answers.
We suspend the world every second with our thoughts as a consequence to this. Yet while we are also suspended in anticipation of the answers and solutions yet to be found, humankind is caught up in this on-going dance with the paradoxes. We are all seemingly treading the murky depths for answers within a minute span of existence. And so the ramifications of ideas and questions continue to multiply.
Guenivere Decena is one of the youngest emerging Negros contemporary artists. She is an only daughter of two artists who have been traveling to share their music. Her interest in visual arts and music started during her years in Beijing, China. She earned her degree in Fine Arts major in Advertising at La Consolacion College as an art and academic scholar, graduating cum laude. At 25, she is already acknowledged in art circles for her talent as well as her ideas. Her first solo exhibition was an installation entitled “Constant Point of Vanishing” in Gallery Orange, Bacolod, held last July, 2011. She has also participated in several group shows in Negros, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro and Metro Manila, and was granted an artist residency with Project Space Pilipinas from September to December, 2011. In January 2012, the artist was a finalist for AFM’s 2012 Philippine Art Residency Program (PARP) in Paris, France.
Guenivere Decena’s exhibition “Suspend The World” opens on Tuesday, March 13, 2012, at the Alliance Française Total Gallery of the Alliance Française de Manille, with cocktails at 6:30pm to 9pm. The exhibit runs until April 3, 2012. For high resolution images of the artworks and more details about the exhibit, kindly contact Mr. Earl Parco (AFM Cultural Officer) at 895 7441 / 895 7585 or email cultural@alliance.ph, or visit the AFM website at www.alliance.ph.
(Guenivere Decena’s exhibition “Suspend The World” is co-presented by Gallery Orange)
Alliance Française de Manille is located at 209 Nicanor Garcia St. formerly Reposo St.) Bel-Air 2, Makati City. Gallery days and hours: Monday to Thursday, 9am to 6pm; Friday and Saturday, 9am to 5pm; and closed on Sundays and Holidays.
