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Vinyl on Vinyl Gallery Debuts Eclectic New Exhibits for August
Makati-based gallery Vinyl on Vinyl debuted four new exhibits for their August 2024 line-up. For this month, they feature some splashy, distinctive works from Reen Barrera, Jellyfish Kisses, Leanderthal, and Teo Esguerra.
These exhibits explode in color and strangeness, using art as a way of digging through their personal experiences. They showcase an openness as the artists attempt to translate their feelings in surreal, almost psychedelic ways in order to engage their audiences.
Reen Barrera’s ‘Muscle Land’
The main gallery devoted itself to Barrera’s Muscle Land. A play on the Filipino word “maselan,” the gallery says it “highlights how strength isn’t just about muscle but also about managing and understanding one’s sensitive emotions.”
Barrera’s works utilize characters with exaggeratedly-large heads and colorful markings on their faces. His subjects are depicted in zany situations with dogs; scenes where cartoonish poses and expressions are the norm. It flirts with really hyperbolic styles that, at times, feels like the figures themselves are disintegrating into madness.
Included in the exhibit are a few figurines made by Barrera. These models use more realistic proportions in recreating the characters in the paintings. Though interestingly enough, Barrera uses a blocky, cube-based body whilst keeping the heads in the same round dimensions as before.
The opening of the exhibit attracted a large group of collectors, many of whom were buying merchandise from artist Reen Barrera. The artist ended up signing autographs on some of the collectibles being sold.
Jellyfish Kisses’ ‘Memory Vault’
Two other exhibits were mounted in the other rooms of the ground floor. One of them is Memory Vault by Jellyfish Kisses, which collates different memories shared by participants from a previous exhibit of hers, Memory Bank, to create art from it.
Jellyfish Kisses includes the responses from Memory Bank in a bound book located at the entrance of the exhibit. Decorated with colorful stickers of Hello Kitty, jelly-like wands, and Lana del Rey, it feels like it guards these memories to keep them within an innocent state.
The exhibit bursts with color; it practically shoots you down machine-gun-style in its abundance. At the center, a television screen displays animated digital images that connect with the memories recorded in Memory Bank. In front of the screen, the artist arranged trinkets on a table, each one tied to a different memory.
The walls of Memory Vault are adorned with colorful paintings, each displaying varying levels of complexity and coherence. The works seem to recreate a jumble of memories through childlike drawings.
Many of the pieces could be even described as garish and flashy, even those painted in darker tones. At times, even with the guidebook, it can be challenging to discern the artist’s intended message. However, the paintings retain that childlike innocence that feels rooted in personal memories, and their vividness offers an enjoyable experience for viewers.
Lean Reboja, a.k.a. Leanderthal’s ‘Divine Comeuppance’
Leanderthal debuts a new exhibit at Vinyl on Vinyl with Divine Comeuppance. This exhibit uses past collections of the artist to give a somewhat menacing portrait of his interactions and thoughts.
“The misadventures, concealed curdling anger, spontaneity and boisterous circumstances are all personalized and represented into whimsical creatures that are right out of Leanderthal’s psyche,” the exhibit write-up said.
Many of the paintings and sketches evoke the meaner side of a Cartoon Network show. The works use bright pastels and distorted angles to evoke a sense of discomfort for the viewers. It’s almost haunting with how Leanderthal paints their faces; the characters looking ready to fight each other and you.
“Driven by the sense of purpose to outweigh adversities, the show aims to immortalize and alleviate these sentimentalities through artmaking, utilizing the techniques and mediums of drawing and painting,” the exhibit write-up explained.
Teo Esguerra’s ‘99% Pure Nothing’
Finally, on the second floor of Vinyl on Vinyl, we have Esguerra’s 99% Pure Nothing. In contrast to the more character-driven works on the first floor, the artist leans into warped, psychedelic shapes seemingly broadcast over an endless darkness.
The fractured use of images in the exhibit creates a compelling visual experience, even if the meaning isn’t immediately clear. Esguerra’s approach, which evokes the aesthetics of prog rock album covers, plays with visual effects like the rainbow halos that resemble the light rings sometimes captured in photos. This playful yet vivid imagery provides a visually rich experience despite its elusive meaning.
Overall, the exhibit encapsulates a profound sense of alienation, reflecting the loneliness that comes with drifting into nothingness. Human faces appear throughout the works, but they are fragmented and distorted, stripping away any sense of familiarity. The shapes and images seem to lack specificity, contributing to a feeling of disconnection. Perhaps it simply speaks to the theme of 99% Pure Nothing, as the pieces collectively evoke a sense of sound and fury floating aimlessly in a vast emptiness.
Finding the Self in the Strange and Surreal
Vinyl on Vinyl’s four new exhibits this August find the artists engaging in exaggerated, almost-comic styles to express the feelings within them. It eschews literal interpretations for abstractions that defy logic and physics to better tell their stories.
At times, the unreal nature of some of the works can be overwhelming to the senses. But at the same time, it also creates transcendental images that stay with its audience long after the exhibit ends. These choices, despite being far from realistic, communicate experiences exclusively suited to the artist’s temperaments.
Related reading: ‘Rituals of Recovery’: Honing into the Practices of Self-Care
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