Relics

Pengantar untuk pameran Relics oleh Arkiv Vilmansa, Manila, December 2011

For more on Arkiv Vilmansa, click here

"This exhibition marks the artist exploring the felt abstraction of memory, trying to capture the spirit of the Phillipines as he remembers it, rather than representing it figuratively. These works communicate the retained fragments of times past, that are now returning - as relics – to the present. Memory is inaccurate and prejudiced, but they bestow depth to experiences and make them unique. These paintings do not directly show us coastal lines, palm trees and the turquoise sea of the tropics, but the experience of these phenomena as they are preserved in the artist’s memory. His unique, curvaceous lines and luscious colours dance elegantly on these canvases as if to a graceful rhythm. A rhythm we cannot hear, but feel. Memory is a wild terrain, where one could so easily lose their way. The current show presents Vilmansa’s way of taming the wilderness, to make sense of his memories, in order to share that experience with others."