The Little Secrets

CEBU, Philippines - Celebrating its opening last June 21 in Qube Gallery Persimmon Plus, The Little Secrets puts the spotlight on Cebu’s new generation of artists, on on-the-rise maestros who are keen on breaking away from the conventional molds of the visual art scene, yet still driven in maintaining art’s role in elevating mindsets and capturing beauty.

Framing new artistic movements currently developing under mainstream consciousness, the show highlights pieces made by Nicebleed, KoloWn, Soi-Soi Kalinaw, Bakh, Sampipebomb, Jan Sunday, Uzi Emperado, Lean Reboja, Kdlat, Kim Barz, The Junks Collective, Wyndelle Remonde, Bart, and Jethro Estimo.

With its featured pieces owing their respective inspirations from various design disciplines and artistic movements, The Little Secrets is unabashed in showcasing works that are steeped by the aesthetic dynamics of surrealism and graffiti design, along with works that take their visual standard cues from the base principles of illustration, pop-art, neo-expressionism and ongoing trends.

KoloWn’s Touch Me Not takes a playful and profound approach in saying something by combining different things together – in the new Windows Start Screen for touch screen displays, in the title of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, and in the visual compositions the Netherlands’ Piet Mondrian is famous for.

Ninja Moves by Nicebleed (a design collective membered by brothers Laurence and Francis Miñoza) takes a stab at the time-bound limits imposed on non-temporal mediums, effectively using a ninja in slashing motion as its focused subject.

Yes Jan by Jethro Estimo might as well be dubbed as “adventures in typography”, given how the piece works through the playful use of fonts and typefaces – a rarity in Cebu’s overall art scene.

Khriss Bakh Bajade’s Gasp and Peacock combines two not often combined mediums in metal and in oil, yielding to a unique visual tableau that is inspiring, all in all.

Curated by Flai of StreetKonect fame, The Little Secrets, with its more than 50 featured works, takes the time in archiving the evolution of Cebu’s artists and artistic growth, as well as marks where Cebu is now, in terms of its artistic views, visions and ideals.

As Qube Gallery Persimmon Plus’ 7th featured exhibition this year, The Little Secrets is about raw and unhindered expressions, bringing the underground to the surface. (FREEMAN)