Wyndelle Remonde & Lean Reboja | Two-man Exhibition
January 14 – February 4, 2023
Opening Night
January 14 | 4 PM
Modeka Creative Space
20A La Fuerza Plaza 1, 2241 Don Chino Roces Avenue, 1231 Makati
There is something deeply traumatic about survival. Even whilst life is spared, still, the scars may be gouged so deeply that the life so spared is irreversibly marred.
At the close of 2021, Typhoon Odette came and scoured the Visayas, shattering glass, ripping roofs, hurling furniture several streets across, and, like the Grim Reaper, claiming many lives. Lean Luis Reboja and Wyndelle Remonde, as long-time resident artists based in Cebu, were not spared this horrifying experience.
Lean and Wyndelle have their own Odette stories to tell. Perhaps some bits of those were immediately banished from memory. Some anecdotes will be recounted, with relish, over beer. And some, perhaps, will be forgotten piece by painful piece, gruesome details thankfully lost over time.
Regardless of how they choose to remember, however, the impact of that experience still informs their personalities (freshly shaped from the pandemic), and yes, emerges in various manifold ways from their canvasses.
A year after their ordeal, Wyndelle and Lean delve into their subconscious. They cast back and bring out (if they can) so much of that Odette experience as they would care. Or dare. Call it a purging of memory, call it documentation – the goal was to translate their impressions and emotions, as well as the residue of all those, as their ingredients, and communicate to their audience the personal aftermath of a naturally destructive force.
On their own, the artists chose to make the message one of triumph. A positive spin, rather a negative focus. Of winning, rather than losing. Or Win/Lose, a title dreamed up by Wyndelle and Lean themselves.
Their works thus reflect both musings on the cyclone, as well as a desire to move on in a different direction. To look beyond the past, to appreciate what is now, and to expect what awaits them. Thus, Reboja’s “Dilubyo” and Remonde’s “Bon Voyage” both cast back to the maritime disaster, while “Therium Path” (Reboja) and “Boundless Journey” (Remonde) can be argued to be natural reactions to such an experience. “Sunshine Beach Club”, of course, is Remonde’s celebration of a life spared – as he is given the impetus to up and move to Argao to find his art haven.
That Reboja and Remonde are still here, with us, is a victory in itself. We are fortunate to enjoy the gifts of their prodigious, of quite literally monstrous, talents. From this perspective, a year thence, the wins overshadow a single, singular loss.
Curatorial Notes by JT Gonzales
