Sulok ng Araw

Sa dulo ng liwanag Ay nag-aabang

Ang talim ng ibig sabihin.

-Wipo

Time slips past seemingly faster than usual and days are blurring into one. Wipo, in his third solo exhibition, makes sense of this relative blur and reflects on the banality of life in isolation by taking notice of the fleeting moments and differentiating between the apparent sameness of memories.

From conception to production, Wipo underscores the way in which language becomes an integral part of his creative process. Hence, he examines the semantics and varying contexts associated with the word araw: talaarawan, kaarawan, balang-araw, madaling araw, babad sa araw, magbilang ng araw, May araw ka din!, to name a few. For him, these phrases and expressions serve as prompts for remembering and contemplating the days that transpired.

Sulok ng Araw reimagines the artist’s daily experience of viewing the sunrise or sunset from the window of his studio in a suburban environment. In a series of photographs, Wipo gathers thirty-six pictorial and digitally manipulated images depicting an overcast sky with a low horizon line across a body of water. The first two series consist of seascapes (“Tanaw”) and long exposure shots (“Abot- Tanaw”) he photographed in 2019. Exploring the aesthetic potential of photography as a tool for realism, he combines and overlays twelve photos from the series of seascapes using computer software. Producing blurred lines and abstracted images, the third series of photographs (“Pinagsamang Tanaw”) is Wipo’s attempt at creating another form of reality out of the existing ones. This particular series serves as a visual reference and preliminary study for his paintings. When viewed altogether, the photographs reinvent the concept of a landscape and metaphorically present varying layers of memory, imagination, and reality.

In “Buong Araw, Abot-Tanaw,” the element of abstraction produced in the series of photographs manifests in the rendering of twelve horizontal brush passages and simultaneous application of blue, white, and red (palettes which hint twilight). Using a custom-shaped canvas with angled corners on one side, the physical structure of the canvas corresponds to the artist’s notion of Sulok ng Araw— the image of the sun edged over the horizon creating an angular dimension. The evenness of paint, controlled and restrained brushstrokes suggest a calm and serene mood, conveying the expansive linearity of the horizon.

Implying spontaneity and artistic impulse, Wipo employs his distinct and bold gestural strokes achieved through intense yet playful brushwork and wiped off paint on canvas in another major piece. “Aninag” is drenched in red, which visually translates the sensation of facing the sun with closed eyelids, capturing abstract images of light perceived by the senses. The pulsating energy and explosive composition portrayed in the painting evoke cosmic glow of a celestial body.

Wipo’s approach to abstraction demonstrates his conscious and continuous exploration of the capacity of the mind. Personal and meditative, Sulok ng Araw confronts the mundane and represents certain realities of human existence in a contemporary world. Wipo, through the exhibition, raises a simple but striking inquiry about self-awareness, “Kumusta ang araw mo?”

-James Luigi Tana