Under a Dark Sky

Jone Reaño Sibugan

August 26 – September 14, 2019

Opening Reception
August 26, 6 PM

Underground
Makati Central Square, Chino Roces Ave., Legazpi Village, Makati City, Philippines

There is something uncanny and mystifying about mushrooms. Perhaps it comes from their otherworldly often terrifying physical appearance or that they are more animal than plant. Many cultures have come to see mushrooms as either a sacred gift from the gods or a carrier of death and evil.

All things that are born out of nature move in cycles. Existence dances between the dynamic tension of two opposing forces – creation and destruction. Our creation myths tell us how the world will end in apocalyptic proportions so that it may be cleansed from all evil and in time, will emerge a better if not utopian world. Similarly, mushrooms echo the same sentiment of life and death cycle of the world in a smaller scale. As decomposers, they feast on organic and dead matter and in turn provide and replenish nutrients to maintain and create space for new life to grow in the ecosystem. Mushrooms remind us to honor the natural cycle and rhythm of life— everything will one day return to the ground until something new is created.

Life is filled with contradictions. Symbolically, mushrooms represent both life and death for some of them contain properties which can either cure or poison the one who ingests it. There are always two sides of the coin and we are made to choose carefully what we are nourishing our bodies and the surroundings around us; for it can either heal or kill us.

Life is a marvel. Mushrooms mostly flourish and grow in the dark – we are incapable of seeing that underneath the dust and rot is a hidden body of existence, a kingdom of complex and hidden connections much like the expansive invisible networks that link our universe. Unusual species like mushrooms give us a chance to awaken and widen our vision to the overwhelming depth, immensity and magnitude of life’s complex, often strange and irrational expression.

“Under a Dark Sky”, Jone Reaño Sibugan’s first solo exhibition stems from the artist’s
imagination of places veiled in darkness where mushrooms seem to tower and dominate the almost barren landscape. There is neither a sign of human presence nor manmade structures; we are made to witness either the decay of the old world or the gestation of a new world. In between what is illuminated, beautiful, possible, pulsating, flowing and breathing and what is dark, horrific, impossible, still, stagnant and decaying, we cannot fathom how, where and when life will take form. What the mushrooms give us is a vision of hope—that under the dark sky is light just waiting to illuminate and reveal what is being hidden in the shadows.