Exhibitions

‘Causal Loops’ by Bernardo Pacquing – Silverlens Galleries

Silverlens Galleries, Manila

Jun 11 - Jul 13, 2024

^{Lottery of Birth, 2023, assemblage, cement mix on panel board, 5 panels, H259.10 × W182.90 × D15cm (each)
All images by courtesy of Silverlens Galleries}

For his fifth solo exhibition at the gallery since his representation by Silverlens in 2014, Bernardo Pacquing continues to experiment with abstraction as a building activity where materials are rid of their original meaning and transformed in Causal Loops.

Perhaps the act of looking back now, from halfway across his life, has dredged up memories for Pacquing that have found themselves back in the new works. There are a total of 25 works in the show comprising four large works including an 8.5 foot tall by 30 foot wide painting composed of five panels, ten cardboard works from his ongoing Brown Study series, six new sculptures, and a new series of five small works.

The first of the large works, What I Have Learned From My Paintings, riffs on the biomorphic forms and fragments from his early works but distorts them on a massive scale where gesture overrides content. A rope is improvised and controlled on the canvas as it is centered by a line of poured cement and scattered wood chunks darkened by oxidation.

The Lottery of Birth is likewise a huge work made of five panels, a monolith harking back to his motif of gritty urban walls. This time, the walls are like remnants from an invisible whole. The work comprises layered indecipherable shapes composed as though one was walking past ruined structures.

The smaller pieces form the Brown Study and White Noise series made from discarded cardboard and weathered hardwood scraps saved from the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption. It continues to follow an adherence to form by constructing ruins upon ruins as if they were grace upon grace. In the White Noise series, Pacquing intersperses each work with the viscosity of cement by either filling in gaps or concealing parts. The new works emphasize the artist’s approach to meaning, where the process and the final object are inseparable and become a path to difference.

About the Artist

Bernardo Pacquing (b. 1967, Tarlac, Philippines; lives and works in Parañaque City, Philippines and Singapore) is an artist broadening the expressive possibilities of abstraction in painting and sculpture. Incorporating diverse found objects that challenge conventional perceptions of aesthetic representation, form, and value, his work displaces the idea of unequivocal forms, introducing possibilities for the coexistence of affirmations and denials.
 
He was twice awarded the Grand Prize for the Art Association of the Philippines Open Art Competition (Painting, Non-Representation) in 1992 and 1999. He is also a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 2000, an award given to exemplary artists in the field of contemporary visual art. Pacquing received a Freeman Fellowship Grant for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in the United States.