Gaining apprenticeship in the waning, or arguably the rise, (depending on the where and when of one’s experience of it) of modern living, (mine, the late 1980’s, Manila,) is a phantom pain, and thus subjected to the occasional and figurative exorcisms. Or, to perceive it another way, is it the thickening legs of wine that drives one all the more curious of its taste?
My take has the modern life was meant to be and conspired by a definite, High Power at work to frame a momentous, pivotal event in our history – the persecution and resurrection of our Christ.
Why not make the impetus of regarding modernity a metaphor in itself? The repeated barrage and dismantling of narratives hopefully, and must, nibble and obliterate the veil, or the commerce-proliferated constructs we make to condition and define us, according to the German prophet of Doom, for the sake of prose, hidden under the initials WB.
Like Gentiles grafted to the Chosen line, (a very distant analogy,) addressing and activating modern painting activities is a probable solution. To appropriate, filter, and regurgitate modern art’s visuals and language games perhaps, if given a long limb, aligns with the new and current methods that repurposes the modern art of our time. This is the truest observation of one of the greatest art-thinkers of the day, and once again for purpose of this writing, guised under the initials NB.
To paraphrase WB one more time, let the reign of modernity’s wings of destruction begin. In the case of this exhibition, it is a slow and cool burn.
