Crossing The Red Sea

Composed of the cumulative work he did in the past 10 years of his artistic pursuit, the exhibition intrigues the viewers with an arsenal of various applications of his chosen art practice. It may be arbitrary in the first few iterations but he has developed a distinct recall with the themes of his work encompassing the stories, personal and spiritual, that has been with him throughout his journey.

In crossing the red sea, he opens up a retelling of the biblical story in Exodus, where Moses led the Israelites to escape from the pursuing Egyptians by using his staff to split the Red Sea in two, giving safe passage to his brethren and drowning the foes. The artworks he created are testament to this story, mimicking in his own life a parting of what once was as whole as the sea, so that he can give way and usher in a new era in his life.

His work started with artworks painted in acrylic and embellished with wire that is crumpled to signify confusion or something similar. He then moved towards simplistic painting of his chosen subject (a humanoid figure in various states of being) but with a progressively layered approach to applying paint on the canvas. After that, he explored various conceptual and installation approaches to conveying an idea, having worked with mixed media in his first serious foray, adding new materials such as nails, cut out textile and shaped dry paint helped him express old ideas in novel ways. The look of his installations usually is a table with various items placed on top. What can be discovered from this collection is his continuous development as both an artmaker and a person.

Having worked at Angono for most of his career, it is embedded in his outputs the spirit of the region and its local flavors. His presentations a reinforcement to his newfound connections to the divine. And the multiplicity of his body of work a peek into his discipline.

The East Wind has descended upon Lyndon Maglalang’s “crossing the red sea”.

-Jerome Destacamento