Architecture awards often document more than just individual achievements. They also recognize the work, effort, and vision behind any architecture project, revealing the priorities, values, and trajectories of a profession at a given moment. The United Architects of the Philippines’ (UAP) Outstanding and Beyond Recognition Awards (OBRA) continues to serve as one such marker, recognizing […]
‘Black Paintings’: Shadows of Beauty in the Darkness
Miguel Lorenzo Uy’s Black Paintings, currently on display at Gravity Art Space until April 27, evokes the memories of our recent lived experiences. It portrays the sense of anxiety evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the helplessness it left in many of us.
Uy was inspired to create this project by an online art exhibit on Instagram during the pandemic, after which he started to explore the possibilities of the medium even further.
“During that time while everything outside was viewed through a screen and the overall mood of the moment seemed dark and miserable,” Uy said. “I wanted to explore the idea of how we see and perceive black on screen and black in reality, like how this faint wash of light is sensed in our eyes.”
Dreamlike Darkness
Uy’s exhibit consists of two different projects. One features multiple acrylic on canvas paintings that use the “blackest black” available on the market right now. These paintings utilize two types of black paint to create images within the darkness. It accentuates the contrast without removing the darkness of the art surrounding it.
He uses the black paints to create landscapes of the world around us. He depicts different natural phenoma, from what appears to be ocean waves to birds in flight. One painting is of a typhoon cloud from weather maps. It uses the chaotic danger of storms—its largeness and scope and power. Without having to show the people themselves in danger, the painting invokes the fearsome power of storms.
Another work portrays a gorilla hiding within what appears to be a forested area. This one is especially provocative because you can see the gorilla’s features so clearly even in the low visibility the blackness gives. It almost looks like day-for-night footage. That visibility adds a certain sort of sadness to see this realistic-looking gorilla hugging itself in a corner.
Anxiety in the Pandemic
For the actual exhibit, an interesting addition is a one-minute short that loops itself as you enter the exhibit. It depicts some of the works in a hyper-stylized way, changing and shifting as it mutates the images into something unreal.
“The scenes are of a momentary dream of a soft, cosmic hum,” the artist explains. “Within the sequence, a plane of light sears the eyes, as if images are etched on the sight of the dreamer. Outside this boundary, a faint cosmos twinkles throughout the background of the shadows.”
It certainly uses the images to summon a sense of unreality to its audience. At times, it feels like a shapeshifter unable to stabilize, falling into the uncanny valley to the viewers. And while the black paintings create anxiety through the contrasts of darkness, the video uses quick-changing iterations of one image sliding together. The work makes us question within ourselves both what we consider real and what we trust from the world.
As the world barrels forward into an uncertain future of misinformation, questions of what we should trust and how much we should trust something become more important to ponder. Miguel Lorenzo Uy’s Black Paintings echoes the strange gloominess of the times. More important, it asks how we can still find images of life in the darkness of its world.
Related reading: ‘The Greatness of Simplicity’: Finding Peace in the Pandemic
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