Maxine Syjuco
25 October — 14 November 2023
Art Elaan
2nd Floor, Filipino Village, Ayala Malls Manila Bay, Diosdado Macapagal Blvd, cor Aseana Ave, Parañaque, Philippines
Internationally-awarded visual artist and poet Maxine Syjuco unveils her critically acclaimed exhibition of ‘visual poetry’ paintings in ‘The Secrets of Spill Seduction’.
Created within the confines of the pandemic, these large-scale panels offer intimate and confessional glimpses into the artist’s subconscious mind during a dark and tumultuous period in her life.
Personal and probing, each painting is a visual narrative filled with secrets to be unraveled through poignant symbolisms and haunting imagery.
As her first solo show in Manila since 2020, this highly-anticipated body of work comes after Maxine was selected as the sole representative of the Philippines in the 2021 Experimental Arts Festival in Greece, and succeeded in receiving awards from the Art Underground Festival in Paris, the Ninja Indies Music-Video Awards in Japan, the Rome Independent Prisma Awards for Best Experimentalism, and the Fellini Art Awards in Italy.
Teaser
Excerpts and Reviews from Critics:
“Ethereal… Maxine’s intricate imagination and trademark wistfulness are as prayerful as they are erotic and esoteric… Primary and primal is her devotion to flesh and feathers — as both turn into one another, exchange fluidity of intention, and revert into excellence of personal illumination.” –Alfred A. Yuson
“Maxine’s title is a voyeur’s tease and delight… There’s a lone black crow standing guard over a pair of wilted hanged roses, an assemblage of wings as if an archangel lost his way… Swipe left then unicorns come on, how they resemble freakish goats, while a clown in a top hat evaporates in smoke… A national artist once said that in order to mature as a writer, one must get as far away from home as possible. The inverse may also be true for this painter: one can become a recluse and turn oneself inside out to get to the root of things… There’s a voice that speaks in Maxine’s pigments and oils, and if music could talk, maybe it’s best to listen to her canvases.” –Juaniyo Arcellana
“Spilled onto spiritual ether, Maxine has wrestled with a supernal energy of a different order that has maxined her into a deeper, more complex artist… A symphony of images in every frame, luscious and looser without identities… Her visual narratives are sculpted as to unfold like sheets of differently painted glass adding details one after another with the vanishing points no longer there. It is carnival time. The witching hour. The time of reckoning and no return. A danse macabre. Memento mori. Unforgivingly lyrical and visceral, this Secrets of Spill Seduction series rewards me with a bracing spiral of experience similar to the time I first fell in love with the outburst that is the Guernica. Bravo!” –Ricardo de Ungria
“Viewers will have the opportunity to meet with the art of one of the finest surrealist artists in contemporary Philippine art… Enveloping her audience in suspense and menace, Maxine pushes beyond the boundaries of convention and haunts our minds with psychic dislocation… From the cavernous depths of her fevered imagination, she opens the floodgates of unseen darkness, and leads us onto the bliss of a new light.” –Cid Reyes
Artist in Conversation
