January 17 – February 7
Blanc Gallery
145 Katipunan Avenue, St. Ignatius Village, Quezon City, Philippines
The elaborate figures and ultramundane organisms of Louie Cordero’s inimitable vision sweeps across a minefield heading into a precarious world—a world in black and white, in hues of grays that serve as the next territory for conquest through such a fantastical mode of painting. Nine acrylic paintings complete the foray, which has the viewer tuned in, glued at the same time perplexed, much in the same way one would watch a science fiction movie out of old wooden television boxes. The effect of black and white is sobering, especially for such bizarre themes, but the detail and construction inside a Louie Cordero painting are too vivid to be restrained, and his images are always lifelike, even though they have always been out of this world.
Much has been said about Louie Cordero’s mixture of primitivism with the grotesque, the combination of cubist and constructivist forms with narrative elements in his paintings, particularly in the portrayal of his hometown, Malabon, but in his latest exhibition War Slime, Cordero moves forward to what is essentially ‘primordial’ in his opinion about his art: the incoherence of forms against the incoherence of imagination. In his belief, these are the pundits that lurk at the base of the mind. They are the strips of lines, curves, shapes, and images, which when met with logic and fancy, are forced into being coherent—to the shape of eyeballs, veins, innards, faces with smiles made of watermelon slices and hair flowing down like cuts of meat—only to be forced again into the incoherence of our imagination. To put it simply, it is a disorganization which he tries to organize within the frame, through gut and feel, and mostly, through his unique vision.
Trying to ‘encapsulate this incoherence’ meant having to ‘render it in black and white,’ he says. Since it is, in a way, a journey back to the roots of imagination, it should be done so in a rudimentary approach, such as the basic application of light and dark hues. The absence of color can be attributed to the absence of a strict adherence to a design. The growth of each figure is like the growth of an organism, evolving through little accidents by association, through unlikely turn of events, and through everything that makes sense by not making sense.
A bright, colored border surrounds the painting to complete its frame. The juxtaposition of black and white constructs against colorful margins reminds us that nothing is kept safe and pure inside a Louie Cordero painting. No amount of tense, monochromatic formation can be spared with his trademark explosives for drawing out the unexpected from its hole.
And these unexpected juxtapositions are essentially what remain constant in Louie Cordero’s works. Another paradox—to be consistent with inconsistencies. And through this paradox he has attained his signature style, his characters which have become identifiable with his name. Much in the same way we can identify signature figures from other illustrators and painters, like Jordin Isip’s indigenous characters, to name one.
There is a scuffle across the disputed territories between coherence and incoherence. A melee has just broke out and Louie Cordero has carefully rearranged the scene for us to illuminate—paradoxically, in gray and grim shadows—what it is which makes no sense, yet so tasty, so perfect, like an oozing sensation of disorderly plasma. It is what it is and is summed up with relish: war slime.
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