Splayed across the gallery space are Neil Pasilan’s attempts at fashioning a consciousness that resides over decades of practice. The pieces are churned out from his studio meditatively, like clockwork, as he captures visual impressions that come up over the course of his day – thoughts, moments, sights, places. He arrests these impressions in a gesture that serves partly to stimulate, and overall to grasp hopefully at a muse that brings him closer to the fleeting nature of perfection. The characteristics of his chosen material accentuates this resolve. Paper carries with it a certain intimacy where the flourishes of hand and brush on a thin plane seemingly present themselves raw and vulnerable before the prying audience. But while such a process evokes this rawness, the works are far from being unfinished. Instead, they lie in the transient dimension of time. They exhibit its passing through the development in Pasilan’s practice and offer themselves readily to be pulled into the present or built upon towards something entirely new and different.
Neil Pasilan (b. 1970) is a self-taught artist who hails from Negros Occidental. His works draw upon personal narratives, memories and a rich visual and material vocabulary born from incorporating experimental techniques in different forms. Emerging from a background in sculpture, Pasilan continues to manipulate a variety of materials within new mediums.
