Agnes Arellano and Pardo de Leon at Galerie Hans Brumann
MANILA, Philippines - Agnes Arellano and Pardo de Leon search for singularity in spirit in “Yabyum/Yantra: Tantric Lotuses” which opens on May 23 at the Galerie Hans Brumman in Greenbelt 5, Legaspi Street, Makati City. The show runs until June 22.
The two-woman exhibit references Hinduism, Buddhism, and Tantric mysticism in two media: Arellano’s sculptures and De Leon’s abstract paintings.
Two women, two media. The exhibition obviously is a celebration and critique of binary oppositions — body and soul, lover and beloved, creator and destroyer, the general and the particular.
The yab-yum or father-mother, an old motif which is Arellano’s favorite, has a fresh approach. Here, Arellano continues her search for personal spirituality rooted nonetheless in ancient traditions, and makes a negotiation between religion and sexuality — things that have always been mutually exclusive in the “postcolonial culture” she grew up in. Sexuality is usually negatively perceived as pornographic in the context of religion.
Since 1983, when she first expressed visual interest in the image of the yab-yum, she has always worked from research; her current crop of sculptures, however, are drawn from recent travels to India and Bhutan, where images of sexuality are held sacred in the inner sanctum of temples.
Fascinated by encounters with all kinds of people whether in the city or on journeys into deserts, forests, and high mountain regions, De Leon finds common and recurring forms in the Tibetan Buddhist mandala, the Tantric yantras, and in Christian iconography. Crossings between cultures and subcultures, commonalities between Sufis and acid-trippers, the personal bleeding into the mystical — these are the mysterious gray areas De Leon explores in this show. And this is but a continuation of her years of abstract painting as a form of meditation, which over time has been described by critics as a “minimalist approach to psychedelia” and “transcendentally modernist.”
For details, call 728-2175 or 232-0121, e-mail dididee@hiraya.com or visit the website: ghb.hiraya.com
