Jay Ragma and Fitz Herrera
February 9 – 28, 2021
Arte Bettina
3rd Level, Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center 1224 Makati, Philippines
Mobile: 09166 474 984
Email: artebettinagallery@gmail.com
The Immensity of Probabilities
Arte Bettina proudly presents Unbounded Possibilities, a two man show with recent works by Jay Ragma and Fitz Herrera. With each artist’s choice of styles in expression, they tread on the paths they have paved in creating abstract paintings that take them to different directions despite the parallelisms in their practices. Both University of the East alumni and multi awarded since their student competition days, Ragma and Herrera have maintained their passion for art from childhood, managing to hone their craft as they continuously push their creative boundaries. Unbounded Possibilities describe both the artists’ horizons, and their next much- awaited artworks, whose noteworthy styles earned them places in the creation of a smart home by a leading electronic brand that both challenge and validate the evolution of their oeuvres.
Herrera is known for his thick applications of acrylic paint on canvas impasto style, which historically had its beginnings in the 17th century. Baroque painters Rembrandt and Velazquez skillfully captured light by adding raised textures of paint on the flat canvas with palette knives. Herrera, however, brings the technique into contemporaneity by not being restrained by formalism and ornamental elements: each daub, dot, swathe and stripe is intentional yet loose, the artist pushed by youthful wonder in the exploration of surfaces, color harmony and an organic heaping of pigments that sometimes resemble clouds, at times flower petals, or even rock formations that burst into irregular shapes superimposed onto each other with gestural bravura.
Ragma, for his part, relies on straight-edged linearity that evoke virtual space, cities, and urban frameworks. With his orchestrated repetition of lines, he plays with light and dark colors that seem to move from one point to another, with highlights turning gradually into shadows, sometimes almost disappearing as it is absorbed onto the flatness of the painting’s surface. Calculated and restrained, the artist’s works are informed by the lines and sharp edges of Mondrian’s De Stijl and Braque’s Cubism. Where the Western masters of abstraction seemingly capture motion in stasis, Ragma uses gradations to lead the eye ever onwards on his taut and steady superhighways, like kinetic networks that unremittingly spread across the technological landscape.
