Political art remains a risky endeavor even in the democratic institutions of the Philippines today. Activism and provocation in art, raising a fist against the status quo, tends to get an outsized reaction from the government. History of Censorship We saw this recently in the attempted censorship of Alipato at Muog, a documentary about the […]
Erwin Teves Pascual’s New Exhibit “Washing Machine” Debuts at Super Duper Gallery
Erwin Teves Pascual’s newest collection Washing Machine provides us with works that vary in size, intensity, and focus. These abstract creations, exhibiting at Super Duper Gallery until August 28, use small works as references to larger works, recreating them in a bigger canvas for everyone to see. The artist attempts capturing intense chaos with precision and focus.
Pascual named the exhibit Washing Machine due to the works being done “in between loads of laundry and school runs, around the ebb and flow of domestic life.” The frenzied, chaotic feel of many of the paintings reflect the similarly-turbulent day-to-day existence of many households.
“To view these works is to listen to a kind of beautiful noise,” the exhibit write-up said. “Languid and fuzzy, a hum, a whirr. A swirling chaos that keeps going and going, then, for whatever reason—a stroke of the brush, a shift in color—wrestles its way back to coherence, like a wink before mayhem takes over.”
A Rollercoaster of Swirls and Squiggles
Erwin Teves Pascual’s exhibit opens with seventeen small acrylic artworks entitled “Rollercoaster.” These small pieces, barely a foot long in length, use a wild series of strokes and drippings to get its frenetic feel.
Its brush strokes are wriggly and aggressive, taking on circular curves that break as suddenly as they started. Some of the paintings let the paint drip downwards, embodying a feeling reminiscent of graffiti on the streets. Even as faces and figures emerge from the piece, Pascual lets them hover in the background, putting the focus on the chaos of these colors and shapes.
There’s a playfulness with what the artist attempts within the confines of these pieces, as well as a knowledgeability in how to execute the chaotic abstractness in a visually-interesting way. He varies the heaviness of his strokes and the mixture of colors in each area of the canvas.
Pascual uses a lot of contrast with the color usage for the smaller works. He pairs it with the atypical squiggles and shapes of the paintings. That methodology gives the eyes something to focus on when looking at the images.
Recreating the Chaos Wholesale
The smaller paintings became the “blueprint,” so to speak, for many of the bigger works shown in Super Duper Gallery. Some of them, like “The Boy Who Waited,” adapts the ideas of “Rollercoaster” into a larger canvas to showcase more of the details of the piece. Works like “Maybe Merry Go Round” combine two of the abstract pieces into a larger whole.
The exhibit calls these works “a reflection of a reflection, a painting of a painting.” The brushstrokes in the larger paintings showcase Erwin Teves Pascual’s care for details as he manages, stroke by stroke, to recreate some of the paintings on a larger scale. He translates these ideas in ways that don’t betray his original intent for them, clarifying them to show the audience its purpose.
Washing Machine displays the artistry which can exist even in the mundanity of everyday life. Whether the smaller paintings or larger works, it represents the craft of the artist and the way that translates into precise ideas overall.
Related reading: Abstracting the countryside: Andrew de Guzman depicts Filipino sensibilities in ‘Melange’
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