Exhibitions
Silverlens Galleries
Oct 14 - Nov 13, 2021
All images by courtesy of Silverlens Galleries
SILVERLENS is pleased to present Working on the Mountain, a new solo exhibition by Eric Zamuco. This marks the sixth individual presentation by the artist with the gallery; his previous shows include: Cosmic Grounds (2020), Almost Not (2017), Visible Currents (2016), Site of Marks (2013), and Out of Ordinary Spectacles (2011).
“Working on the Mountain” by Eric Zamuco is taken from the title of a book of essays by N.V.M. Gonzales. In this series of work, the mixed media artist ponders on the metaphor of geologic accretion and formation found in ancient temples and applies it to objects in the thick of instability and ruin.
Templo, 2021, mixed media, 114.30h x 113.03w x 30.48d cm
Templo 2, 2021, mixed media, 154.94h x 152.40w x 31.12d cm
Templo 3, 2021, mixed media, 121.92h x 144.78w x 33.02d cm
Templo 4, 2021, mixed media, 161.29h x 172.72w x 45.72d cm
Each assemblage called “Templo” is a self-contained compound of metal rods inserted through overlapping glass panels and wood like acupuncture points marking a body. Zamuco makes use of a collection of odds and ends stocked from his studio yet widely diverse in their material. In one work, shards of a glass bottle are encased like precious emeralds. In another, a black-and- white image of decapitated fish heads printed on a glass panel surprises, as the viewer is left to guess its connection to the other objects in the grouping.
The works link by way of the painted brushstrokes done separately per piece which are shorthand or cursive codes detailing a medical diagnosis or procedure. This is an artistic decision influenced by living in the context of the pandemic with its anxieties about health and disease.
One remembers that objects are the base signposts of a stable life: your favorite coffee mug, a kitchen rag. The arrangement of the objects found in the assemblages where accrual is concentrated at the top and tapers at the bottom speaks of a world upturned on its foundation yet holding it together.
Templo 5, 2021, mixed media, 222.25h x 154.94w x 38.10d cm
Eric Zamuco
Eric Zamuco’s (b. 1970, Manila, Philippines) body of work has been about filtering the unfamiliar, responding to circumstances from a particular time and place, through arrangement/assembly of a hybrid of ordinary objects, materials, processes and imagery. Zamuco’s themes run the gamut from ideas about dislocation, identity, post-colonial narratives, spirituality, geo/politics to the need for reclamation of space. His works, which are of a diverse range of media, including sculpture, installation, photography, drawings, video and performance, serve not only as social commentary but also as self-critique. The intention in transforming the commonplace is to pull the immaterial and possibly find knowledge for some kind of human order.
Zamuco was a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award (2003), the Ateneo Art Award (2005), holds an MFA in Sculpture (2009) from the University of Missouri- Columbia. He was an artist-in-residence at the Centre Intermondes, France in 2015. Working on the Mountain is Zamuco's 6th solo exhibition at Silverlens Gallery.
