“Countercurrent”

CEBU, Philippines — In the lexicon of tailoring methods and techniques, shirring and smocking have seen to the elevation of fabric manipulation and patterning as a form of visual art.

A recently-concluded exhibit in Cebu tapered its curatorial moorings on the creative compositions that can be achieved with such techniques – albeit with painted approximations; not with real folded fabrics sewn with a needle and thread.

Titled “Countercurrent” and presented at the main exhibition space of Qube Gallery at The Crossroads in Banilad from October to mid-November, the show mainly presented the representational art-cum-abstractionist leanings of G.I. Pongase – a young Cebu-based artist who has recently been making waves in the local visual arts sphere.

Composed of works that blend the impressions strewn by abstraction with the definition that comes with figuration, the show’s presented pieces bear visual allusions to intricate fabric manipulation methods – done so with parallel line rendering techniques that serve as Pongase’s “thread” as his brush serves as his “needle.”

A nuanced understanding of how the relationship of warm and cool colors can set a 3D effect on flat 2D surfaces completes the overall tone of the show.

This play on the relationship of warm and cool colors gave “Countercurrent’s” works a visually tangible temper – a quality which photographs of the pieces don’t get to capture in full rich detail.

In combining depth of field manipulation art-making methods with the process-oriented bearings of expressionist styles, Pongase, in “Countercurrent”, sets a novel factor to wall-bound artworks by alluding to the creation of space without encroaching an actual area.