VINCENT PADILLA
PILIER
30 April – 12 May 2008
e galerie
2F The Shops @ Serendra
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Pilier is a continuation of my long-held fascination with the constrictive / redemptive duality of space and the weight of its symbolic force in visual art. The pilier, or pillar, is an ingenious architectural technology of Greco-Roman origin that simultaneously creates, defines, and challenges spatial boundaries with the inherent functionality on one hand and its profound semiotic evocation of strength, force, power, balance, and control on the other.
In socio-political discourse, we often speak in figurative parlance of the so-called “pillars of society,” those men, women or institutions upon which the efficient functioning of civilization rests. Valorized as such, these pillars become larger than life, and, consumed by delusions of grandeur, they stand precariously upon feeble pedestals, eternally oblivious and doomed to their own ignominious isolation.
These two images of the pilier – as technology and as stature – intersect and collide in my own works. Here, I re-imagine the pillar as a weighing scale, or, if you will, a microscope that can pierce through the hypnotic effect of hegemonic discourse and practice.
Indeed, if all art is necessarily political then every artist’s canvas is inevitably a powerful manifesto where hypocrisy, greed, and gluttony for wealth, power, beauty and adulation can be scrutinized and exposed.
In the end, after all, the glutton who stands tall on a web of deceit is no more than a fool who builds his house upon a deck of cards.
PILIER
30 April – 12 May 2008
e galerie
2F The Shops @ Serendra
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Pilier is a continuation of my long-held fascination with the constrictive / redemptive duality of space and the weight of its symbolic force in visual art. The pilier, or pillar, is an ingenious architectural technology of Greco-Roman origin that simultaneously creates, defines, and challenges spatial boundaries with the inherent functionality on one hand and its profound semiotic evocation of strength, force, power, balance, and control on the other.
In socio-political discourse, we often speak in figurative parlance of the so-called “pillars of society,” those men, women or institutions upon which the efficient functioning of civilization rests. Valorized as such, these pillars become larger than life, and, consumed by delusions of grandeur, they stand precariously upon feeble pedestals, eternally oblivious and doomed to their own ignominious isolation.
These two images of the pilier – as technology and as stature – intersect and collide in my own works. Here, I re-imagine the pillar as a weighing scale, or, if you will, a microscope that can pierce through the hypnotic effect of hegemonic discourse and practice.
Indeed, if all art is necessarily political then every artist’s canvas is inevitably a powerful manifesto where hypocrisy, greed, and gluttony for wealth, power, beauty and adulation can be scrutinized and exposed.
In the end, after all, the glutton who stands tall on a web of deceit is no more than a fool who builds his house upon a deck of cards.
- Vincent Padilla
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