Alain Llaguno
Opening
April 7, 2024 | 2pm
Secret Fresh Gallery
Ronac Art Center, Ortigas Ave, 1502 San Juan, Philippines
The Happy Past of Alain Cuchas Santiago Llaguno
History is not always monumental. For our artist – Alain Cuchas Santiago Llaguno – history is personal. It can be about the simple past. This past is not about dark events, nor is it about the persistence of our own disturbed psychology.
They are all about the happy past. Candies, not even how they tasted but how they appeared in wrappers. Instant noodles take on ancient forms as they seem plastered on a wall. Characters from films are rendered iconic or reduced to poster gestures. Sometimes, remembering them becomes an exercise of the mind thinking in outline forms. Or in ellipses as in the image of the King and the Bully, their names shrouded in secret codes only the fan of those action films would recall with fondness.
The artifacts of this happiness are all found in memories of the extraordinarily ordinary. The many events one remembers at present because maybe you were not there, but when you go back to those days, you are there, Present. These images are as haunting as they are haunted. As real also. As if you were there below the kata of the Drunken Master. Or caught between Michael Jackson in red and the same idol as a zombie long before the genre of the excitingly Undead became viral.
Looking at these images created for us by Alain, we cannot help but listen to what seems like a relentless melody in the background, the Last- Song-Syndrome sounds of a childhood presently preserved – plastered – in shapes and symbols we all share, after all, we all had our own lovely, liminal, limitless past. And they are always for sharing…
By Tito Genova Valiente
