a Solo Exhibition of Jotyl Jan Bermudez
July 27 — August 7, 2023
Artist reception
July 27 | 5 PM
Arte Bettina
3rd Level, Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center 1224 Makati, Philippines
Although time lacks a visible or tangible form, we gain awareness of its passing through things we see and touch: rust, mold, dust, and bones. Physics informs us that time and space together form spacetime: a single, all-encompassing structure that can be pictured as a fabric, capable of being warped and wrinkled.
In his solo exhibition A Ripple in Time, Jay Bermudez plays with the vast fabric of history to yield fanciful compositions. Time and reality are out of joint in collage-like paintings where opposites collapse upon one another: past and present, inanimate and living, innocence and maturity, art and commerce, rendered in a contradictory style that straddles photorealism and surrealism.
All ripples begin with disturbing a stasis, and the floating images we see can be unsettling. What do we make of the girl in an orange dress and the head of a wolf—is she a person or a creature? In Bermudez’s practice, this distinction does not matter: humans, animals, and plants coexist as a reminder that we, too, belong to nature.
These compositions evoke various stories: the progress of technology, from the first airplanes to today’s spacecraft; the flourishing of culture, traversing Ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, and the Ming dynasty; and the inevitability of growing up, when toys are discarded for lingerie. Even though time marches on, they seem to say, the ripples of history and the choices we make echo into the future.
Text by: Eldrick Los Banos
