Manila Ukiyo-E: We Are All Time Machines

Marius Black

12 June to 1 August 2021

BenCab Museum | Gallery Indigo
Km. 6 Asin Road, Tadiangan 2603 Baguio City, Philippines

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Timeless beauty in paintings, photographs and poetry

What is a time machine? When we think about this magnificent idea, we always picture something high-tech, something with flashing lights, something futuristic. But what if we, ourselves, are time machines? As the novelist William Burroughs puts it, we are The Soft Machine, Marius Black instead says, WE ARE ALL TIME MACHINES.

WE ARE ALL TIME MACHINES explores the artist Marius Black’s theories of time travel. His theory that our body and mind are literal time machines. Able to access the past through memory and see the future through our dreams in the present. Our dreams may not mean anything to us upon waking up, but when we immediately write them down in dream journals and properly digest them, does it reveal their true meaning. People and places often appearing as symbols that we need to decipher in waking life, maybe even revisiting them after a year or so for us to truly grasp what it meant when we dreamt it.

In his 4th Manila Ukiyo-E show, We Are All Time Machines, Marius dreamt of his exhibit exactly a year before getting the news of the approved date for the show. Marius dreamt of climbing a mountain where artists break and fall and he successfully climbs it and later enjoys the view from the top, and mysteriously seeing beautiful scenes from his hometown Manila from there.

Not knowing what the dream meant then, he writes it in his dream journal. To his surprise reading it a year later that the dream reveals its meaning; Seeing scenes of Manila from a mountain meant that his Manila Ukiyo-E artworks will be shown in Baguio at the BenCab Museum.

The show, of course does not only tackle dreams and time travel, but as well as we, ourselves, the people. It’s people that Marius sees every day walking the streets of Manila and it’s these very people that he paints and depicts in his works. Manileños tell the story of both hardships and triumphs. Even though life is hard living in the city of Manila, you can always see children smiling, people doing their best, working hard, still keeping at it and not giving up their right to live.

His subjects are his fellow Filipinos who he adores, he takes candid photos of raw everyday life and paints them. From people sleeping in their tricycles to people selling pigeons at the side of the street when a bank’s closed on a Sunday, to the entirety of the wet market of Blumentritt.

Most of the photos he took were pre-pandemic, therefore, preserving these scenes of a freer time health-wise, where people are close together forming crowds without facemasks. However, as an artist in awe of the everyday scenery of his city, he also has taken some memorable scenes during the pandemic which he sometimes painted with or without masks both shining a light on people manifesting true resilience and some sort of semblance of normalcy from the latter.

Marius has also taken photographs of the future…
or at least what he thinks his future works would look like. Blurs and strobe of lights captured by his digital camera creating in the imagination an image of flying cars and fast-flying humans.
These photos border on abstract photography depicting the speed of light and what it looks like in contrast to people who are standing still while the whole world passes them by in a blur.

Manila Ukiyo-E is an art series created by Marius inspired by 17th Century Japanese Ukiyo-E. Manila Ukiyo-E puts a modern spin on traditional printmaking and substitutes its Japanese subjects into Manileños today. Instead of using woodblocks, he uses laser photocopy machines to produce multiples of his line art, then adding all the colors by painting them by hand using watercolors, gouache, color markers, acrylic, pen, ink, and even highlighters.

His combination of modern mediums sets him apart from other contemporary artists who also paints on paper. That even if his photo reference for his subjects seem mundane, with his vision and palette they become more vibrant and lively. Marius gives them new life and new meaning with his colors.

For his bigger works, he refrains duplicating them and directly paints on watercolor paper. These pieces have a more visceral feel with bolder strokes and finer detail. Thus when seeing them up close they come alive, like real breathing people even if you can see that all his objects and subjects have an outline.

Lastly, his works are tied together by poetry, creating a through-line between past and future. Words forever in the now as timeless as they can be, telling a story that is neither then or to be, but most certainly forever in the now. Not bounded by the clothes and fashion of what people wear, nor is it an imagining of a much brighter neon-lit future, but its time setting; whenever the reader is reading it.

WE ARE ALL TIME MACHINES opens on June 12 at 4:00pm – 6:00pm
exhibition will be on view until August 1, 2021.

BenCab Museum located at Km.6 Asin Road, Tuba, Metro Baguio, Philippines – museum hours: Tuesday to Sunday 9am to 6pm
(Closed on Mondays)

For inquiries, please email bencabartfoundation@gmail.com

Tel: (074) 442 7165
Mobile: 0920 5301954 Smart; 0917 3201347 Globe

Going up to Baguio via bus or car? Be sure to check the requirements online first before touring there to ensure entry! 😃
You must have a Valid ID, Baguio Visita QTP (Quick Response-Coded Tourist Pass, which you can get at visita.baguio.gov.ph)
and a Negative RT-PCR/Antigen/Saliva test result, taken within 72 hours prior to arrival. This can also be done at the Central Triage Area upon arrival in Baguio for P500.

WE hope to see you there! 😊