Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore, in partnership with Tin-Aw Art Management Inc, is pleased to present Exodus, a solo exhibition by Filipino artist, Alfredo Esquillo, Jr.

Alfredo Esquillo’s exhibition is a rendition of the journey of the Filipino people from a dark past to a possible beginning in the light. Esquillo’s paintings of a stormy sea and the tranquil sea are contrasts and points of destination. The painting of the stormy sea represents the past that is to be cast aside and the painting of the tranquil sea represents where the exodus is to come to its realization. Amidst storms and seas, points of departure and arrival are declared. And where arrivals may transpire, the hope of ideals and visions being realized are echoed. Across silhouettes, a prefiguring of fulfilled presences engendered by amulets and relentless struggle.

Esquillo attempts a restoration of identity through paintings and sculptures that evoke the many meanings of the people’s exodus from slavery to freedom, from deprivation to fullness, from night to light. Esquillo also contrasts stormy and tranquil seas as indications of a past that is to be cast aside and a tomorrow that is to be embraced. The vehicles of this passage are rendered through wheelchairs with baggages and on these wheelchairs are human forms representing the people approaching their own sphere of identity.

How can amulets be bridges of destiny? Here, Esquillo knocks on esoteric doors and realms of fantasy. The viewer is sometimes asked to perform a “suspension of disbelief”. But amulets have always been a constant weapon and motif in the history of people. Amulets are supposed to break the limits and prisons of reality. Reality is so forbiddingly restrictive and dictatorial that it provokes in those who would imagine and create an overwhelming desire to violate its statutes and regulations. Thus, the artist and the rebel with their amulets. In the case of one, his so many forms of art: colors, sculptures, words, melodies, dances and acts and performances, cameras and films, and the human person himself/herself. Where art and rebellion begin, reality is ruptured to welcome the rapture of creation and beauty.