Angelo Valmoria Roxas’ First Solo Show
Opening
June 16, 2024 | 2PM – 6PM
Secret Fresh Gallery
Ronac Art Center, Ortigas Ave, 1502 San Juan, Philippines
Repetition. Recurrence. Trademark. Motif. These are the things that make art recognizable. In certain ways, they bring comfort against the expanse of visual chaos—image, after image, as novel constructions continue to flood the senses. From the renaissance painters to artists like Monet, Warhol, or Kusama, the expressions of singularity in motif and repetition have never translated as signs of arrested development but rather the opposite: a keen dedication to mastery in advancing a particular subject matter and pushing it to its limits.
In Angelo Valmoria Roxas’ Koronang Tanso, the motif of the crown receives its own reclamation project. Having been depicted throughout art history since the time of medieval court painters to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s graffiti, Angelo Valmoria Roxas’ use of this image seems to be borne out of Luna’s or Hidalgo’s coronation as old masters and their sensibilities as artists. It invokes the royalty of the pioneering Filipino neoclassical styles. The intense chiaroscuro, the interplay between dark and light on skin surfaces, the austere representations of figures that seem to thrust them into rumination—these are the motifs to find repose in Roxas’ works aside from the bronze luster of crowns.
In fact, it is the crown here that has been the true constant in Angelo Roxas’ paintings, in both form and shape, dilapidated and faltering, alluding to a symbolism that is both personal and philosophical to the artist. One can even draw further—that it is the crown which has been endowed so graciously with figures and portraits. And throughout Roxas’ growing body of work, the crown has hosted different personalities: from pop icons, close friends, meaningful strangers, and even random, unheralded characters.
For Roxas, the crown represents our consciousness. And this consciousness, in his own philosophical stance—is a false kind of consciousness, where the crown’s investiture could possibly mean an acknowledgment of our own limitations as humans. That is how we become majestic, according to Roxas. To know that our faculty and way of thinking could not bear other unknown ‘truths’ out there that are beyond our understanding. We are crowned as humans, and nothing more. Crowned within our own frailties and restrictions. With texts embedded across the portraits, Koronang Tanso becomes a modern-day inscription proclaiming, ironically, our own anxieties.
In a deeper, and more personal sense, Roxas sees the totality of this gesture—of painting—as something to mark events, particularly poignant and painful events. The crown, which has achieved another layer of meaning after the year 2020, has also, ironically, become a symbol of affliction, and the deaths that entered our lives that will forever be attached to that word. And for us looking: it is not a matter of the symbols or objects anymore, but of an artist trying to find meaning against the chaos of unfathomable events. Afterall, we are mere humans. Regal in our own ways. Trying desperately to understand. Again: Through repetition. Recurrence. Trademark. Motif.
/ Cocoy Lumbao Jr.
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Angelo Valmoria Roxas (b. 1976) is a Filipino painter based in Quezon City. He has been part of numerous group shows in several galleries, most notably, in Boston Gallery, JStudio, and Altro Mondo. He has also been featured in online platforms such as Art Spot and diskurso.com. He has worked for several years in the film and television industry which include credits as a scriptwriter for a major drama series. Koronang Tanso is his first solo exhibition.
