Arts & Culture

Totems of Thought Exhibit at The Blanc Gallery

These 4 Filipino artists uniquely showcase their individuality through their masterpieces

March 23, 2022

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By

Daniel Lampa

Blanc Gallery gives art enthusiasts a peek into Mark Nativo, Julius Bagoyo, Tad Pagaduan, and Mark Turbolencia’s growth within their mental and physical surroundings through the Totems of Thought exhibit.

As the four artists explore different styles, the group exhibit similarly examines subjects chosen as a product of intent or a visual device. Of which are used as a point of creative intuition, cogitation, intention, meaning, and un-making.

Julius Bagoyo

Julius Bagoyo graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Advertising at the Far Eastern University. The works he presented in the exhibit are a mixture of his previous forms of choice: portraits and statues. His past works also aim to make statements that symbolize his ideas of eccentricity and non-conformity. Often it composes his figures with elements that serve to reflect visions of the world inside his mind.

Mark Nativo

Philippine Art Awards finalist Mark Nativo’s masterpieces revolve around modern figurative art, drawn with broad palette strokes. That is to say, this creatively shows an understanding of art from its deconstruction, stripping it back down to its essence. The artistry of Japanese animation always inspires the Iloilo-born artist, Mark. Certainly, he finds beauty even amid the chaos and welcomes to challenge the delicateness of the human figure. Like his past works, his subjects for this exhibit consist of humans poised to mingle with dream-like but familiar elements from nature, like nostalgic ruins pulled from a sepia dream.

Tad Pagaduan

Tad Pagaduan’s works manifest extreme contrasts, struggling in their dichotomies, whether figurative abstractions or landscapes. He considers his recent works as personal tributes to animals. Thus, showing efforts that try to understand them, either through poetry or observatory. His six works of art for this exhibit also examine his understanding, thoughts, and notion of how the similarities that tie us to the animals, such as birth, hunger, rage, joy, old age, and how ironically the very same things point out how different we are from them.

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Mark Turbolencia

Inspired by the subject of humanities are the works of the Catanduanes-born artist, Mark Turbolencia. These include the physical, symbolic, spiritual, and sometimes astronomical concepts. Mark unconventionally includes blood as his primary medium in his art pieces. Most of his compositions have an acrylic background with him as the subject, painted in blood with a hand-stitched thread for the head. His style is inspired by neoclassical paintings of his choosing, which were selected for their dynamic figurative subjects. Five meaningful works that feature a play on textures and patterns show the motions of having traversed and being able to emerge from a phase of having destructive habits such as addictive self-pleasure.