Kashu, Dave Lock, A73
21 January – 18 February 2023
Altro Mondo Creative Space | Espace Celine
1159 Chino Roces Avenue, San Antonio Village, 1203 Makati
To enter a state of delirium is to experience a transient, acute intoxication and disturbed consciousness. But it can also mean the reverse, wherein one does not lack the certainty of their situation–rather, they’re consumed by a rapturous passion, enveloped by ecstasy, euphoria, and elation.
It’s with these extreme conditions in mind that one can plumb the depths of Delirium, a three-man exhibit featuring the works of experimental artists Kashu, Dave Lock, and Mel “A73” Araneta. Each piece embodies the Grotesque style of art, showcasing the strange, magnificent, and incongruous.
This collection seeks to invoke in viewers a feeling of discomfort, but also empathy and even pity. Each artist demonstrates their fascination with the bizarre, manifesting itself in hypnotic and alluring pieces of art.
Kashu (Bryan Casio) is a self-taught artist who draws inspiration from the different realities that humans deny out of selfishness. He aims to expose what his audiences deny in their daily lives, acting as if nothing is happening—doing nothing despite seeing the problems that they face
Mel “A73” Araneta is a self-taught sound artist, sculptor, performance artist, and painter. He creates experimental sound art under his band ETNIKTRONIKA who creates music through DIY instruments and sculptural sonic assemblage.
Filipino contemporary artist Dave Lock’s earlier figurative paintings have been called emotionally masticated images, nightmare-infested creatures, and extreme terminations of beauty–descriptions that imagine his work as symbols of death and fear. Deformities and painterly effacements are a violent layer upon the image, upon the human face, or what he calls, “the grand container of all truths.”
The face is turned into a paranoiac phantom laden with multiple images and multiple faces, a container of automatic drawings and expressionistic destruction. But it is in this aspect of his paintings that one can strongly identify Lock’s playfulness, even as he misdirects the viewer with heady explanations for his imagery as philosophical/existential falls from beauty, truth, and grace.
