“HONI UG BANIKA”
It’s been said that art is the child of nature; a locution which infers that the best forms of architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry and music are born from an understanding of the natural beauty of the world. An interpretation of this view on art can be discerned in the exhibit “Honi Ug Banika,” Qube Gallery’s featured hybrid in-venue-and-online show for the first half of August.
It’s a two-man exhibit that’s made of paintings by Cebuano artist-couple Celso and Fe Pepito. The show features artworks which its exhibiting talents made at the height of Covid-19’s stay-at-home restrictions.
Mainly composed of steeped-in-nature landscapes and depictions of musicians, the show is molded to form by the thematic implications of its title, which translates to “melody and nature” – told through Celso’s cubist leanings and Fe’s take on the markers of traditional-representational styles.
More than an exhibit that juxtaposes modernist and representational themes next to each other, the show emblemizes how Celso and Fe have come to reflect on the rhythm of life in the course of the global health crisis; how the couple, as creative daubers, had found transcendence from within.
As it guides viewers through nature scenes and tableaus of musicians in action, the show enjoins audiences to form their own understanding of nature’s rhythms and melodies – to identify the different variables that fundamentally connect intellectual, emotional and spiritual views.
In a time when uncertainty comes off as the only thing that’s certain, “Honi Ug Banika” reminds viewers that though uncertainties are definite, overcoming them is part of the beauty in weaving through the melody of life.