The Space for a Dream: Occluded and Elusive Art of Jumalon and Hilario
Quizas is a two man exhibition by Winner Jumalon and Riel Jaramillo Hilario at the White Walls Gallery beginning September 25, 2020.
The exhibit title is expressed as a question: perhaps? or who knows? It was chosen by the artists as a foil to varied interpretations of their works. Whether deliberately occluded or suspended the artists’ intentions with their pieces are left as traces of the work in the studio. The artworks thus presented, are like Kierkegaard’s mirrors, where no monkey’s reflection can come out if an apostle peers into it. Meaning is offered as a result of aesthetic judgment on the part of the spectator and not as a puzzle of revelation, on behalf of the artists. Perhaps one means the other, who knows?
Common as the elusiveness of intentions and meanings maybe, the show describes the contrapuntal directions the two artists take on the creative process, both which ends in open-endedness in meaning-generation and completeness.
Jumalon begins with selections of images to form his subject but paints in random to produce layers of significations, albeit in mysterious performances. By painting the foreground and background in successions of painterly gestures and impressions of figures, he deliberately omits the formal relationship of form and ground, and finishes the work with a flourish and a title that is as off-tangent and oblique as the picture he has indulged working on.
In contrast Hilario carves his works with an intended reference in traditional religious art, but invests his works with codes, slips and non-sequitur references that undermine the final form of his piece. The sculptor, using as base a relatable or familiar figure as subject, allows his subconscious to take over hands-on production, often using pastiche as visual language in both addition of elements and the limitations of form. He therefore eludes orthrodox systems of symbology and evokes the nebulous and primeval volumes of animist and naive artifacts by vesting his pieces with faux patina. This he does, even as he also uses antique statuary parts as accroutement and appendages.
Both result in works that are open for interpretation; but guided in their play of images and color, towards something lyrical and also probable. The artists aim not to deny the possibility of interpretation or intention, but acknowledge the forces of chance, slips, dreams and channeling of spiritual content as essential in rendering what can be made visible.
The artists’ lives and careers have intersected in many instances. Jumalon and Hilario took up studies at the Philippine High School for the Arts and the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. Both are recipients of the CCP 13 Artists Awards (Jumalon, 2009; Hilario, 2012) and of the Asian Cultural Council Residency Grants (Jumalon, 2018; Hilario, 2013). Jumalon has had artist residencies in the US and in Israel. Hilario has done residencies in the US, Paris and Seoul.
Jumalon lives and works in Marikina City.
Hilario lives and works in Antipolo City.
