Heart Evangelista at ArtistSpace, Ayala Museum

MANILA, Philippines - Love Marie Ongpauco, a.k.a. Heart Evangelista, holds her first solo show titled, “I Am Love Marie, the Art and Works of Love Marie Ongpauco,” which opens on May 8 at the ArtistSpace, Ayala Museum, Makati City. The show runs until May 22.

In her collection of about 19 oil-on-canvas paintings — ranging from small frames to almost a mural — patterns and prints repeat themselves, symbols that denote anything from self-doubt to audacity, from love to hate, from melancholy to joy, all the way to those inexplicable feelings. The symbols are not familiar, seemingly random and meaningless. There are none of those recognizable figures in our mainstream symbolic language or iconography, except maybe the heart or the letter H, yet always very small, obscured beneath the bolder, fiercer, louder patterns.

“The patterns, they make it so hard for me,” says Love Marie. “Sometimes I see them in my mind, I dream about them at night. They drive me crazy. All these prints are from my head.”

And then there are the women, sad yet strong, defiant, veiled in the prints and patterns that creep to the side of their faces or otherwise framed by the mesh, the repetitive emblems, the profusion of colors and shapes. These women are not necessarily self-portraits. “I don’t know, they must be me, but I look at each painting like a friend. I gave one of the early works away and it was so hard,” she explains.

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