On Turning Points and Precaria
In the 1971-released “Crossroads”, legendary singer-songwriter Don McLean dished on the velocity of growth and direction, the undercurrents of contradiction, and the verity that can be gleaned in suffusing the salient points of the two.
Quipping the line “But there’s no need for turning back ‘cause all roads lead to where I stand,” the song has largely been taken as a commentary on the karmic forces that’re imbued in making decisions – decisions that are emboldened by the grace of faith and prayer.
These aspects to McLean’s song can be characterized as a common ground soundtrack for two back-to-back solo exhibits that feature the works of two Visayanon visual artists.
Titled “Turning Point” and “Precaria”, the shows are respectively top-billed by the works of Guimaras’ Frank Nobleza and Cebu’s Lucilo “Jojo” Sagayno – creative daubers who have made the making of mixed media works their creative forte.
On display at the Pugad ni Art Studio in La Trinidad, Baguio, the shows opened last February 16 and will run until March 16.
While different from each other in terms of thematic scope, the exhibits plate up the touchstone points that’ve made expressionism a force to reckon in the creative arts sphere.
The creative leanings of the artists, after all, are steered by expressionism’s through line; that is, to charge an artist to come up with the compositional merits of a work while in the process of working on it – to think of the process as the means for a conclusion.
When viewed individually, the shows are one in leaving viewers with positive and optimistic outlooks – a youthful-butnot-naïve translucence that isn’t borne from after school confessionals nor derived from clumsy analogies that delve into the corrosive qualities of the signs of the times.
In Turning Point, viewers are treated to visual metaphors of turning points – points in life where one has to take significant steps to reach their goals.
The exhibit largely espouses the process-oriented inclinations of Nobleza as an artist and his take on the mixed media mode.
Precaria (which is a Medieval Latin term for prayers), draws an elemental characteristic to Sagyno’s view that every piece that he makes is a prayer to the Almighty.
Admitting that though he does not consider himself to be a religious person, he is one with the view that faith is a relationship, and he expresses this very well in Precaria – his ninth solo exhibition.