Demosthenes Campos
March 4 – 25, 2023
Opening
March 4 | 6 PM
Art Cube Gallery
Unit 104 G/F Building 3, OPVI Center, 2295 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati
Website Facebook Instagram Waze: OPVI Center
Abstracted Landscapes
Demosthenes Campos continues to explore his multi-layered, highly-textured abstract idiom in his solo exhibition, Paisahe. The exhibition’s title is derived from the Spanish word for landscape, and Campos explores how landscapes—an enduring painting genre—may be translated into abstraction, and how the inner world of an individual may assume the contours of a landscape in this series of works.
Throughout history, artists have been inspired by the natural world, and many have sought to capture the essence of landscape in their works. Abstracted landscape paintings have a long and rich tradition, from the Impressionists’ depictions of light and atmosphere to the modernists’ exploration of form and color.
In works on canvas and paper, Campos explores how the “ground” (both an artistic and geological term) provides all that an artist needs in order to convey the varied, lush, and eventful surfaces of worlds both natural and man-made. Through a process of accretion, the artist lays down oil and acrylic pigments, evoking the infinite varieties of earth, plant life, and landscape topographies.
Aside from working with the plasticity of paint, Campos incorporates a variety of materials into his works, including old canvas once used as wallpaper in an ancestral house, which imbues the pieces with a sense of history. Some of these works feature geometric elements, in acknowledgment of the canvas’ architectural past.
Additionally, some of the works contain botanical elements (sourced from the same ancestral house), adding a further layer of natural complexity to the abstracted landscapes and highlighting the artist’s ability to balance the organic and the geometric in his works. These plants are no longer recognizable in their original form but are already transmuted, present as deep impressions of color, particularly in the five by eight feet work—one of the largest paintings that Campos has accomplished in his career.
The layers of texture and materials used in these works evoke a sense of history and memory, adding a deeper emotional resonance to the abstract landscapes. Through his use of materials and techniques, Campos creates a sense of depth and complexity in his works. These works are not simply representations of landscapes but rather interpretations of the emotional and psychological landscapes that the artist has experienced.
Overall, Paisahe is a profoundly eye-opening exhibition that showcases the unique vision and artistic skill of Demosthenes Campos. By exploring landscape through abstraction and incorporating personal history and botanical elements into his works, Campos creates a body of work that is not just visually striking but also celebrates the staggering richness of the world we inhabit.
– Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
