Bembol dela Cruz, Zero Tolerance II, oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm, 2014
Aptly titled “Adobo Apocalypse,” the three Filipino artists Bembol dela Cruz, Carlo Gabuco and Wire Tuazon created paintings of unattainable narrative, where salvation becomes a natural tableau which feeds on tensions and the borders of disputes.
Dela Cruz, born in 1976, grapples with the nervous idea of paranoia, anger and sadism present in our day-to-day. He has exhibited his photorealistic paintings since 2000. Dela Cruz bagged one of the top three slots at the 8th Ateneo Art Awards and received an artist residency and exhibition grant at the Liverpool Hope University.
Carlo Gabuco, The failure in between 1 and 2, oil on canvas, 152 x 152 cm each, 2014
Carlo Gabuco’s works provide symptoms of uncertainty and conflict present in our struggle of coming to terms with our identities. Using self portraits to explain the so-called selfie generation, Gabuco’s paintings allude to the photographic process and create panoptic interpretations contained in the works themselves. Carlo Gabuco, born in 1981, has held annual one-man exhibitions of his paintings since his first one-man show at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2008 and has participated in group exhibitions across the Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea, England.
Wire Tuazon, Ambulare Series 5 – The Next Messiah (After Chris Burden), oil on canvas, 152 x 122 cm
2014
Wire Tuazon, born in 1973, juxtaposes texts with an archival, momentous period to suggest knowing and telling, enabling the circulation of meaning across time. By incorporating his ‘small town’ environment as a vantage point, he draws upon a profusion of materials, its shared history and intricate layers of mythology. He also interweaves text and image, and questions the loss of meaning or multiple valences of poetic engagement. In 2003, Tuazon was chosen one of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s annual Thirteen Artist Awardees.
This exhibition is the first collaboration between the three artists. All three artists incorporate the feeling that something is on edge, turning our gaze to the topic of endings and mortality in our own subjective post-apocalyptic grapples with collapse, settlement or some kind of rebuilding.
Exhibition: Adobo Apocalypse
Dates: Till 9 November 2014
Venue: Element Art Space, Raffles Hotel Arcade, 328 North Bridge Rd #02-13
Hours: 11am – 7pm daily (closed on Public Holidays)
