INFACESTROKADA

a 𝘃𝗶𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗵𝗶𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 of 𝗖𝗲𝘇𝗮𝗿 𝗔𝗿𝗿𝗼’s solo show

Live Video and an Artist talk
May 20, 2020 | 4 PM

Opening
May 20, 2020 | 5 PM

Galerie Roberto
Unit 4, Molito Lifestyle Extension Building, Madrigal Avenue corner Commerce Avenue, Alabang, 1776 Muntinlupa City

“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

While the human figure – more often than not, the female form – has been the eternal subject of art, it is the face, the visage, that has always been its focal point, the cynosure of all eyes. In the case of the Mona Lisa, of course, not only the eyes but certainly the lips that have aroused as many interpretations of its meaning. Still, not the eyes, but the face has it – truly the vessel of all emotions, its countenance the wellspring of all concepts of beauty and pulchritude. Indeed, the face must be inviolate, unchanged, unhurt, unharmed…unscathed.

𝐂𝐞𝐳𝐚𝐫 𝐀𝐫𝐫𝐨
“Gaze”
Oil on Canvas
24 x 24″
2020

Imagine therefore an artist whose mission, it seems, is the violation and desecration of the human face; whose characteristic achievement is the disfigurement of that sacred aspect of the human physiognomy. Iloilo-born artist Cezar Arro has achieved the unexpected identity, if not fame, or notoriety, of being the “destroyer” of human faces. Alas, the accusation itself is an injustice to Arro. For in Arro’s works, the underlying beauty and loveliness of the subject cannot be denied. But still, what might one say in defense of this seemingly outrageous gesture?

Easily enough: to proffer what the French master Matisse said, in riposte, to a woman who was offended when the master painted his subject’s hair the color green: “Madam, this is not a woman. This is a painting.” And, in that one quicksilver retort, we are brought to the realization, as Arro has done for us, that painting is an activity suspended between reality and art, that beauty arises from the whirlwind of an artist’s brushstrokes and personal vision, and that Arro alone possesses the right over a woman’s vulnerability. This remains at the core of his current show at Galerie Roberto, given the unprepossessing title “INFACESTROKADA.” Indeed, it is the artist himself who coined it, adverting to the face, strokes, and the Spanish 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘰𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘢, meaning retouched.

𝐂𝐞𝐳𝐚𝐫 𝐀𝐫𝐫𝐨
“Day and Night Watcher”
Oil on Canvas
36 x 48″
2020

In this show, it is indeed the incandescent female face that prevails and dominates, not only across Arro’s bristling canvases but in the entire gallery space. And while the women’s faces have indeed been wrought and stroked with heavy impastos, turned over this way and that, projected in triple views, or multi-angled, swathed in trowelled pigments, their gazes blurred, their eyes caught in distress, panic, or alarm, and naked with fear and anxiety, facial muscles contorted, their outlines misregistered – Arro invites us to savor the moment of each painting’s creation, and thereby witness the shifting gradations of emotions, splendid in their mobility, theatrical in their nobility, and regard the rich lusciousness of paint as the equivalence of human skin, and forthwith await the sumptuous pleasure of the female flesh. Indeed, it was the American Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, famous for his “Women” series, who declared: “Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented.”

“INFACESTROKADA” is Cezar Arro’s rapacious celebration, and appropriation, of the female face.

𝘞𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘊𝘪𝘥 𝘙𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴