Drills are meant to serve as instructions to new skills or knowledge. The drills we are most familiar with are for safety – fire, earthquake and disaster drills. For his latest exhibition entitled Homemade Drill, Gene Paul Martin mapped out an isolation drill for himself and his art in order to be exposed to an untried experience and come out of it bearing a new perspective. His conscious decision to lessen connections led him to find psychological comfort in the space he made for himself.
He created new creatures with no backstory to them. This lack of a past and no future makes them the perfect companion in isolation because they do not demand nor take anything from Martin. “The ideas just materialized on the canvas,” he puts it quite simply. The interaction between the works and the viewer is left personal. Were the creatures in Martin’s pieces his friends or foe? We don’t know. And neither does Martin but if he would put a label on them, he’d gladly call them outsiders. They are around us every day but fail to see as we get caught up in other unimportant details of our daily lives.
When asked if his works would come out differently sans the isolation, Martin gave a definitive “yes.” His process of creating always has mental involvement and when he was free of all the thinking, free from the burden to make human interactions, it was then that he understood the discovery he made in his isolation – that man, devoid of any interaction, could be likened to aliens seeking to make contact.
About the Artist
Gene Paul Martin (b. 1989, Manila PH) received his B.F.A. in Painting from the Far Eastern University. Selected exhibitions include: Remains, Secret Fresh Gallery; TutoK: Soena, Manila Contemporary, Tutok: Ano Bayan!?, CCP; iD 2, Blanc Gallery; and, Secrets, Dreams and What-ifs, Secret Fresh Gallery.
