Element Art Space is pleased to present its second Filipino exhibition with works by Bembol dela Cruz, Carlo Gabuco and Wire Tuazon. It will run from 09 October to 09 November 2014.
Aptly titled “Adobo Apocalypse,” these three artists created paintings of unattainable narrative where salvation becomes a natural tableau which feeds on tensions and the borders of disputes. Dela Cruz grapples with the nervous idea of paranoia, anger and sadism present in our day-to-day. 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.
Wire Tuazon, being the most senior of these three artists, 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.
This exhibition will be the first collaboration done between the three artists. All three artist 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.
Adobo Apocalypse composes of 9 artworks. The exhibition will run until 09 November 2014.
Bembol dela Cruz was born in 1975 in Manila, Philippines, has been publicly exhibiting 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 and exhibited in the United Kingdom and in Ghent, New York.
Carlo Gabuco was born in 1981, Laguna, Philippines 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. After emerging as a finalist in the 2006 Philippine Art Awards, he completed a series of artist residencies at CASA San Miguel in Zambales (2007), Project Space Pilipinas (2008), HOM in Kuala Lumpur (2009), NEAR Dangsan in South Korea (2009) and The Artesan Gallery + Studio in Singapore (2011).
Wire Tuazon was born in 1973, Angono, Rizal, Philippines received a residency grant at the Ashiya City Museum of Art and History from the Japan Foundation Asia Center. In 2003, Tuazon was chosen one of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s annual Thirteen Artist Awardees. He served as President of the Rizal-based Neo-Angono Artists Collective in addition to participating in numerous group exhibitions and public art performance festivals across the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Korea.
Image courtesy of Element Art Space
