Julius Sanvictores’ postcards from the edge
You’d think, meeting the black-clad artist Julius Sanvictores, that his demeanor would match the apocalyptic tinge of his show’s title, “Postcards Against a Collapsing World.” But dig just a few millimeters and you’ll find a hopeful person. One who believes that what the world needs now is a shoutout from our isolated perches.
The main display at The Crucible Gallery is a wall gridded with 350 postcard-size abstract canvases—14 rows of 25 in a vivid array of separate micro-statements that nevertheless draw one in for closer examination.
Small can be big these days: quiet voices pulsing against the maelstrom.
Each tiny canvas, Sanvictores says, is “like a love letter, or when you have postcards when you want to communicate with another person, perhaps in a dream, telling them ‘I’m still here, I’m still alive.’
“In spite of the collapsing world, it’s not the end of the world, more of a rebuilding from scratch. And hopefully, we still find beauty despite the destruction going on. There’s beauty in the emotion or thoughts of each postcard.”
From a distance, the tiny sleeved canvases also remind one of Polaroids: separate moments encased in a flash memory. (Think of it as single-serving abstract art.) He says he chopped up some canvases to construct the wall mosaic but then added extra pieces: “If there’s a dead space in some area, it’s good for that small piece” to fit.
An abstractionist in a distracted world, Sanvictores has been seeking the thrum-beat of monochromatic tones and vivid horror vacui arrangements on layered canvases for over a decade. The nimble drummer from bands like The Black Vomits, Shoulder State and The Executives has even channeled his abstractions through a percussive workout involving paint spattering over stretched canvas (for last year’s “Brushstrokes and Backbeats”). Jazz—Miles Davis, Thelonious, etc.—is his main infusion, but lately he’s been grooving to Canadian math rock duo Angine de Poitrine and, whenever possible, “green noise”—the sounds of the natural world. “I listen to nature, even if it’s blank.”
The larger canvases in “Postcards Against a Collapsing World” flash with heavy movements of thick acrylic, no longer using a brush: “I’m using mostly a palette knife, sometimes a squeegee.”
And lots of quiet contemplation before the storm. “While working, sometimes I just take my time. There’s a canvas, I just wait. Then something hits, and you move. It’s gestural. You’re in the zone.”
He admits his journey deeper into abstraction is a reaction to all the turmoil flipping our lives upside-down.
“What’s happening around the world, it’s collapsing. And now, with world events, the decisions of those world leaders—on a macroeconomic level—it trickles down to the people. So, in this age of destruction and collapse, the more we should create something beautiful. It’s kind of like a message of: Okay, humans, we should be resilient. We should create more.”
Okay, humans. Go.
“Postcards Against a Collapsing World” runs until April 26 at The Crucible Gallery, SM Megamall Building A, Level 4.
