Art existing outside the frame
The two artists do have a connection; they’ve shown in group shows together before. They’re both dads. But there’s not much else obvious that links the styles of Demi Padua and AR Manalo, in their two-man show Wonder Wander at Art Underground, San Juan until July 28. Perhaps there’s a common emphasis on linear hyperrealism with shades of surrealism. But go beyond the surface, and there are other themes: covering, and cloaking, and allowing something else to poke through from beneath. A curiosity. A sense of wonder.
Art Underground gallery manager Deseree Mapandi says Wonder Wander began with no clear theme for the artists: “We didn’t want to disrupt any creative direction of the artists. They both work in multifaceted layers, and at a certain point their works just gel.” The show’s title came afterward. Somehow their styles overlapped, synchronized.
Both artists have a tendency to break through the fourth wall of physical presentation. Demi’s canvases are framed in canny overlapping layers, collages made up baroque gilded edges in seemingly random patterns; AR came up with his technique of imbedding layered canvases with visual information during lockdown, experimenting with carving up books to make his sculptures.
Demi, born in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, pursued painting and sculpting at Far Eastern University, enabling him to develop his trompe l'oeil style—using his exposure to theatrical production and design with visual art. His canvases are collage-like images that conceal and reveal their subjects underneath layers of photo-realistic materials. “I love framing,” Demi says in an email chat. “One day when I was in a frame shop, I saw lots of beautiful frames hanging on the wall. I didn't know what to buy so instead of buying one or two, I bought a lot—including their scraps. I loved combining so I combined different designs and the result, to me, was amazing.”
Like many artists, Demi’s technique was born of necessity. “I've always had a habit of combining, whether things or ideas. I used to collect things from trash. I took parts that were still useful and could be restored, combine it with other parts so they became new creations.” He says it’s “fun” to develop new ways of seeing from recycling. The emphasis on trompe l'oeil is his own play on perception and reality: “I want to trick my viewer’s eyes. I just want to prove that not everything we see is real.”
Beneath the elaborate, almost formal cubist assemblages are women’s faces staring out, mostly black and white, wearing wimples, further transformed by layers of text, transparent geometric patterns and shapes, dabs of color.
AR’s journey was also driven by necessity: His approach to art during lockdown, when there was no way to roam about but still a need to create, was to convert old books, gut their insides, turn the interior into a hidden world of images.
Among the images borrowed from old books and photographs are indigenous Filipinos, and his work incorporates layers of Filipino history.
The impetus for this show’s whimsical assemblages—a girl sitting atop an elephant, balanced on a toy ball, or in the gentle embrace of a large bear, surrounded by silvery balloons—was his daughter, now entering college.
“I would imagine my daughter in her dream, as she wanders,” AR muses. “The things she will encounter, say in a hot air balloon. But also the technical aspects in life that she will have to learn, especially going to college.”
There’s a mix of nature and the mechanical that’s evident in both AR and Demi’s work. It’s an unavoidable collision in this day of AI and urban reality.
And also common is the need to explore life outside the frame. “It's always been my dream, my need to work outside of the canvas,” AR says.
* * *
Wonder Wander is at Art Underground, 2nd floor, Mabini180, 180 Mabini St., San Juan.