Six artists explore ‘nearness’ in León Gallery show
Prophecy and paradox are featured in the new show “In the Near Distance” at León Gallery, set to open today, March 25 at the gallery’s premises at Corinthian Plaza, 121 Paseo de Roxas, Makati.
Six artists — Ian Anderson, Olivia d’Aboville, Henri Lamy, Leeroy New, Mark Nicdao, and Enzo Razon — explore the meaning of nearness.
“Art is prophecy wrapped in immediacy. And yet, it is that immediacy that creates the paradox of propinquity — that quality of the thing nearest you that can attract or repel,” said cultural consultant Lisa Guerrero Nakpil who curates the show.
She continued, “‘In the Near Distance’ is intended to unite the various outlooks of the Filipino artist as global nomad, travelers to and from the familiar as well as the forgotten, the men and women with one foot squarely in the land of their birth while the other is more or less out the door by happenstance. It’s a parable of what was near as well as of what was distant — and all the places in between.”
The exhibit reflects, not entirely by design, each artist’s inner response to the world “in the near distance” around them.
Two of the artists featured, Olivia d’Aboville and Leeroy New, may be described as warriors for the ecology, relentless in their cause to breathe life into our polluted waterways. D’Aboville’s pleated tapestries foretell an imagined, perfect world.
A third younger, but no less adamant, voice for nature in need of rescue is Enzo Razon, who shows two landscapes in the ironic form of a karaoke vignette, suggesting that this may be the only way to view nature’s glories in the future.
Henri Lamy is most light-hearted, his works combining the physicality of his capoeira and his paintbrush.
Ian Anderson captures the mindless monotony of the ordinary man, trapped in an unforgiving present.
Mark Nicdao offers a riveting image of beauty skewered by the arrows of passion; a commentary befitting the country’s most sought-after yet mysterious photographers. Nicdao’s creature bleeds for her art, but in molten gold.
Identity and sense of place in both their original as well as borrowed countries inform “In the Near Distance,” a joint project of León Gallery with the DF Art Agency and Geoff de Boissieu. It runs for two weeks until April 8.