The Silence From Our Passing

In every mythology, man’s ‘hubris’ leads to his own downfall. It is the same hubris that mars the reality that nature precedes human society and that the world will persist long after we are gone. In the grand scheme of things, every mythology about human society will be washed away by the rising tides; stories will fade like ethereal echoes in the air; and ultimately, traces of our civilization will be consumed by the earth’s vegetation.

Rene Bituin’s exhibition serves as a continuation to his solo show The Earth Doesn’t Need Us, where his exploration of abstracted forms is paralleled to man’s relationship with ‘Nature.’ The Silence From Our Passing further excavates this theme through metaphorical representation of the natural processes. In it, biomorphic and geometrical shapes are tense in their relationship to each other presenting us a poetic clarity with subdued tonal transition of colors.  Every image is suspended in a vacuum of space or in a formless landscape allowing us to simultaneously feel the filled up spaces and the left-out void. The lyrical semblance of Bituin’s biomorphic forms to organic elements (e.g. a tree branch or mountainous landscape) and his geometrical shapes to man-made structures succinctly suggest a pre-existing symbiotic relationship of man and of the earth.  In each succeeding piece down to Bituin’s installation of a branch of tree within a frame, the natural element becomes the dominant imagery, as is suggesting nature’s dominance over time. 

Needless to say, Bituin’s approach to his chosen images does not imply a doomsday prophecy, rather an objective outlook the audience needs to revisit. The Silence From our Passing is an artistic transmutation of scientific reality that the world does not need saving. It may even be a visual amplification of astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s statement: “Earth’ll be here long after we render ourselves extinct.” 

Le Cruz