Thursday, May 7
at 6:00pm
Silverlens Galleries
2/F YMC Bldg 2, 2320 Don Chino Roces Avenue Extension, 1231 Makati
reverse boomerangs and other exercises for pleasure ( warm up / cool down )
by CATALINA AFRICA
7 May – 6 June 2015
Opening Reception
May 7, Thursday, 6-9PM
Silverlens is pleased to announce Reverse Boomerangs and Other Exercises for Pleasure (warm up/cool down), an exhibition in two parts by Catalina Africa.
Employing a variety of media, from painting, video, collage and other combined material and objects, Catalina Africa reexamines and reforms the practice of painting into an enlightened ritual of self-discovery and sense awareness. In this exhibit at Silverlens, Africa returns to the sensuous gestures of painting, reflecting on its surface and effects, then cooling down with an afterglow from the rapture of painting that began in this two-part exhibit with 1335 Mabini gallery. Africa thereby continues to fabricate symbolic narratives about her personal work, the world she lives in, and the interconnectivity of things that describe existence and the experience of life.
Africa considers the practice of painting as a time machine in the production of space and the compression of temporal meaning, creating an archive of symbolic gestures and narrative designs. Time here is not constrained to a residual by-product of an event but rather the catalyzing element within the artistic process. Thus Africa accomplishes the experience of terrain, of a landscape that is traversed, all part of the journey of becoming. It is a metaphor for the topology of painting, being a fertile ground for events, an arena to reach the critical condition of artistic practice – the legacy of utopian desire, then of painting’s proclaimed death, now its apparent return – a reverse boomerang of the authentic self. Africa applies a variety of tactics and strategies in putting painting within the realm of personal meaning and aesthetic relevance while “it aims to deconstruct ideas of self in order to render the maker transparent” (Africa). Painting thus becomes this ritualistic practice, sacred, a way of losing oneself to a larger whole – as in the video presented at Silverlens, of the maker disappearing into the large painting – the one shown at 1335Mabini. As in her other works, she has constantly devised hermetic narratives to use painting in stating the essence of experience – autonomous, pleasurable, warming up, cooling down.
About the Artist
Catalina Africa (b. 1988, Manila) graduated from the University of the Philippines with a BFA in Painting. Active in showing with various galleries locally, she is an emerging young talent that redefines the way we look at art by way of painting, sculpture, collage and other mixed media to produce ambivalent configurations that unsettle the familiar. Africa lives and works in Manila.
About Silverlens (Manila and Singapore)
Founded by Isa Lorenzo and Rachel Rillo in 2004, Silverlens has earned recognition from both artists and collectors as one of the leading contemporary art galleries in Southeast Asia. Through its exhibition program, artist representation, art fair participation and institutional collaboration, Silverlens aims to place its artists within the broader framework of international contemporary art dialogue.
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