The Artist's Alter -Ego

There’s a lot to like in Kenichi Wani’s approach to making art, a quality which tells about the overall nature of artistic creation: it is serious business, unbending to halfmeasures and loose convictions.

This not-so-often-mentioned aspect in art making is the binding factor of the exhibit “Odi’s Adventure to the Wild” – the young Japanese-Filipino artist’s first professional solo art exhibit.

Opening on October 1 and ongoing at Qube Gallery in The Crossroads until October 19, Wani presents a selection of surrealist paintings in his professional debut show – paintings that zero in on different challenges an artist gets to face in a pilgrimage for creative growth.

Telling stories that take place in the dirge-teemed watersheds of freelance forest, the rye-riddled steppes of compromise meadow and challenging pathways of the make-or-break plains, Wani – through an alter-ego named “Odi” – raises questions in this exhibit about how ambivalently fickle and rewarding life can be for an artist – recognizing that the struggles of an artist can be elevated by his passion to create or can just become burdens with jaded and crass precepts.

Collectively, “Odi’s Adventure to the Wild” tells stories of an artist’s triumphs and tribulations – framing Wani’s own struggles in starting anew as a creative visual dauber.

Fittingly narrating his own adventures out in the wild, the show’s narrative surrealist tone enjoins viewers to hear the storyteller – to learn of the tale that led to his telling.

“Raising the White Flag,” oil on canvas Born in Cebu in 1985, Kenichi Wani is a graduate of the University of the Philippines Cebu College of Fine Arts. His creative oeuvre mainly entails playing with the scale and size of various visual elements –...

“Violet Crate,” oil on canvas

“The Gathering,” oil on canvas

“This is a Life Line,” mixed media on canvas

“Fight for that Fruit,” mixed media on canvas