Filipino visual artists Lyndon Maglalang and Shannah Orencio join Galerie Stephanie in its 2023 showcase at Art Fair Tokyo, traversing the eternal question of life and death, and where each one really begins. Despite the stark visual contrast of styles by both artists, their exhibit, “Where Origins End” harmonizes in narrative. Maglalang’s visual landscape of muted colors and subtle abstractions initially deceive of pensiveness, however emits a more parabolic nature. Created with symbolic narratives from the Bible (significantly, The Parable of the Sower), he intertwines the ideas of faith and nourishment towards the life of a seed planted on the soil. This idea of life is answered (and questioned) by Orencio’s use of various flowers, stems and leaves seemingly bereft of life, displayed through her use of vibrant colors. Both their works, visually abstruse but narratively coherent, create the foundations that “Where Origins End” embodies. The clever coiling of flora and fertility and the concept of life and death, as well as the question of where each begins and ends and how individuals view these uncontrollable phenomena, all form a universal journey of what is found in between the two. Maglalang and Orencio pivots the question into something more magnified, seeping through the roots beyond the image of destruction and rebirth. While Maglalang’s artworks’ Biblical tillage reflects human growth, Orencio’s forage for memory and mortality.
“Where Origins End” eventually is a show that refutes any question but instead suggests the importance of the in-betweens, and how humans define a chapter of how one reaches one or the other.
Notes by Grace Micah Oreiro
For Galerie Stephanie’s Art Fair Tokyo 2023 showcase, it presents a three-man show depicting the mankind’s interwoven timelines. “Momentary Infinities” features the works of Filipino visual artists Vincent de Pio, Farley del Rosario, and Jomike Tejido in an attempt to capture and narrate the trajectories that push and pull one capsule of time on to the other. How much of the past do we still carry into the present? For how long does one’s “present” last? And when does the future start to be seen through the eyes of the past? Each of the artists’ works represent a segment into this chronology. De Pio manifests the past by traversing into the subconscious, and focusing on the collective visual interpretations that spur forth. De Pio’s signature origami artworks imbibe a cultural aspect of Japan, asserted by his dynamic pop modernist renderings of their personas. While de Pio suggests to be an active observer of the things that happened and why they happened, del Rosario’s faux naïf presentations participate in the observation through integrations of the present. His use of classic icons in pop media situated in surreal, contemporary landscapes enables his artworks to overlap timelines: past and present, present and future. His satirical and comical narrative through unforgettable icons in history opens portals of a cultural past, pulling it and the present adjacently while allowing a steady trajectory into the future. The future, represented by Tejido’s modern geometric symbolisms, is ignited by his present flame. His “yasumi” series is inspired by the natural happiness he experiences through Japan’s four seasons. This use of seasons in his body of work allow him to navigate the idea of consistency that the future ‘s existence holds, emanating hope and a gradual return to the past.
Notes by Grace Micah Oreiro