Art Camp Gallery in Makati City opened two new exhibitions this November from artists Janice Liuson-Young and Frank Alexi Nobleza.
Both exhibits explore nature and environmental themes from different perspectives, with Liuson-Young portraying the greatness of nature while Nobleza portrays its current disintegration in the hands of man.
While each artist’s styles differ from each other significantly, both have a unique sense of playfulness in how they utilize their medium to create unique textures in their works.
The first exhibition at Art Camp, Everything is Blooming Most Recklessly, features paintings made by artist Janice Liuson-Young. It continues her path of exploring the revelry of nature’s forces through color and abstraction.
Past exhibits captured a sort of peaceful majesticness in the world around her. For this exhibit, however, an intensity exists in the works, reflecting a stormier reimagining of the energies surrounding her environment.
“They capture the intensity and chaos of nature’s vitality, a force that feels both unrelenting and transformative,” the exhibit write-up by John Paul Diciembre said. “[They] reflect a longing to reconnect with the vibrant hues of the Philippine landscape.”
Compared to previous exhibits, Liuson-Young’s brushstrokes and color choices feel more rough and impassioned. Some of the works have a clipped disposition to them that feels different from the longer, fluid strokeworks of the past. There’s a whole series of dark paintings on white canvases that contain overlapping brush strokes that engineer a feeling of briskness in the works.
Other paintings lean towards the brighter fare of Janice Liuson-Young’s past works. They have different energies, however, with the artist appearing to seek a more experimental evolution from their typical template. One work cuts through different colors and strokes of the artist in one painting, in contrast to the elongated strokes of the past.
It feels like an evolution of how Janice Liuson-Young depicts nature—there’s more of a primality to it that depicts the tensions which exist even in nature.
“These works challenge viewers to move beyond surface-level interpretations and embrace the essence of creation—its raw, uncontainable beauty intertwined with imperfection,” the write-up said. “The gestural abstractions in this exhibition bring ‘truth real,’ presenting the world in its full complexity and revealing the mysteries of existence through art.”
Architect and visual artist Frank Alexi Nobleza helms their fifth solo exhibition at Art Camp Gallery with Imo Kalag, Imo Bakero (Your Soul Is Yours To Tend). They based the title of the exhibit from an old Hiligaynon phrase that reads, “Your head is yours to carry; your soul is yours to tend.”
Frank Nobleza’s artworks evoke decay and disintegration. Here, the artist fills the paintings with small craters and lines within the painting that suggest organic decay.
They paint vast landscapes of land and sea, and yet it exists as a rocky environment seemingly-deserted by others. If figures appear on the work, they appear integrated with the environment, or as fossils and bones well-decayed by time.
“Through tactile, texture surfaces that evoke organic forms, Nobleza’s compositions offer an exploration of human impact on a world increasingly marked by ecological distress,” John Balaguer wrote in the exhibit write-up. “His paintings reach beyond mere preservation, extending a call to care for the soul of the land itself.”
It feels post-apocalyptic at times in its depiction of the world, its occupants miniscule within the scale of the universe. The paintings show less of the surface and more of the underground, crafting tunneling circuits of vastness underneath the dirt.
At times, these tunnels even feel essential; Frank Nobleza depicts the surface in different colors that suggest radioactivity and destruction. It showcases a humanity cut off from our surroundings, lacking responsibility in its treatment of the world around us.
“In the end, we alone are responsible for our life’s direction,” the write-up said. “As the bakeros of this earth, tending to it is akin to saving our souls.”
For these two Art Camp exhibits, an interesting common theme is how nature is an extension of a person’s soul. One cannot live without nature, regardless of what our minds say. We live interconnected with the trees, the air, the soil, and the animals and bacteria that engage within.
These two artists ponder nature and humanity, giving their audience a chance to think on our relationship as well. Whether it’s the recklessness of the universe or the darkness of our treatment of the world, they give audiences something to chew on in regards to everything around us.
Photos by Elle Yap.
Related reading: ‘Clouds Come Floating’: Exploration of Skill and Creativity as Worship
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