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The artist is foremost inspired primarily by the art movements of abstract expressionism and gutai, and almost as a contrast, expresses its response from its own individuality. Abstract expressionism was an exploration of expression, with material and modernity derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools by the artists in America of the 1940s. Gutai was an avant-garde post war Japanese group formed in 1954 whose radical ideas and approaches to making art anticipated later performance and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s; The strong influences then lead to experimentations on processes that involved the subconscious mind, thus letting the unconscious part of the psyche assert and express itself in manifestation of the act of pure creation that opened up a series of new possibilities.
The two main art movements are responses to the culture that were present in their existence. The countries that these movements emerged from was still reeling from the collapse of world order, triggering a major influence for the movements’ artists – many of whom still remembered the experiences that afforded them the opportunity to develop, search, and respond to the societal uncertainty. A represented radical and energetic approach to art making that took advantage of the newly found freedoms to move forward from the depression of war to the newly democratic freedom available to their homeland.
As the artist is based from the representation of modern Manila, the society mirrors the survival of creativity. The war on drugs, the war with our government, the ongoing war with ourselves, it is impossible to paint the kind of paintings that are primarily present – flowers, nudes, beautiful filipiniana, as the artist explores its ideologies, belief in concept over form was bonded – thoroughly rejecting representative art. Moving away from focus of the art object but more so on the engagement towards the invisible world of ideas, and to leave plenty of room for the audience to come up with potential meanings of their own in their relation of the present.
The process then explored the outcome. Such as artists from the gutai and abstract expressionists pioneered performance art, the artist then searched to unify time and space, two concepts that are divided by rational thinking, but become joined together in the sphere of action and flow of gesture and spontaneity merged further with conceptual, performance, and minimalist techniques. Brush strokes were arranged more separately and simply as opposed to of the former multi-layered approach. Moving to form ideology to the material, the artist then explored ideas in modern culture, as rooted from the concepts of modern technology and ideology, the artist conjures sculptural and immersive experiences using technologies that hark forward to fully networked, digitally assisted future of image and identity production. With the emphasis of fo radial formal experimentation – the artist communicates the fascinations that rooted from the aesthetic and technology to the world of spiritualism that further finds the conjunction between them.
In the days of celebrity in art where the artist’s lifestyle becomes a motif, an extension of the artwork itself, the artist cultivates an aura of secrecy further exploring the notions of obscurity the world and the internet landscape provided. The secrecy becomes an ironic state of affairs given their total absence from the scene – perhaps suggesting a more realistic representation and connection both to the art and artist. The use of and avatar and moniker in the digital realm from this perspective, is no different from social media accounts and digital platforms that maintain its anonymous representations.
