Bukang Liwayway

Potti Lesaguis | David Ryan Viray | Eze Quirante | Gene Paul Martin | Uri Deger

While the surfaces that the sun touches changes throughout the ages, there’s something primal and certain about the dawning of day—or at least it has been for the past 4 billion years or so. The pull of our ancient star on life from around 93 million miles away continues to pull us back to our cycles—re-birthing, the making of everything new again, and bringing truths to light. Billions of years later, celebrating upon seeing the first rays of the sun has yet to get old. At least until it actually does.custom hockey jerseys best online sex toy store custom jersey the wig shop cheap human hair lace front wigs yeezy adidas shoes wigs store adidas yeezy womens custom jerseys nfl jerseys best adidas running shoes cheap nfl jerseys nbashop nike air max 270 sale new wigs 2023

In Bukang Liwayway (“dawn” or “break of dawn”) Potti Lesaguis, David Ryan Viray, Eze Quirante, Gene Paul Martin, and Uri Deger hold different ideas against the light and capture it on their canvas of choice, basking in the act of painting as an equally cosmic, celebratory event. In Potti Lesaguis’ series titled “Malapit na ang Bukang Liwayway” pays homage to flowers as the simplest and most literal symbolism of the word “buka” (“open”) during spring as a time of unfurling. In that sense, flowers have also been one of the oldest natural representations likened to the vagina and female and maternal energy. The portraits emanate these down to the frames, which are adorned with found objects—traces of Lesaguis’ interaction with her kids. She sees herself in these works—a mother, a woman, always in the act of cradling or carrying something.

In a practice of familiarity, David Ryan Viray’s piece, “Familiar Solace”, ruminates on the definitions of the familiar as one relating to a companion or guardian spirit, and its other meaning that relates to those closely acquainted or frequently seen or experienced, with solace equating to comfort. For him, his piece for this show is a retreat from external influences/reality, seeking a solemn place in the act of painting. With painting and drawing as an act of place-making and space-making, Gene Paul Martin’s two-panel illustration titled “5D” explores different areas of the human experience, particularly associated with “intimacy, informality, meditation, immediacy, history, memory, timing, pain, and rest of the hand”. For Martin, the drawing is the continuous present, and a cross-pollination of thoughts, one that creates an extra dimension of space, inhabited by occurrences and beings beyond what we can currently wrap our heads around, like Eze Quirante’s portraits on imagined/reality-inspired creatures.

Perhaps oftentimes scarier and stranger than fiction, reality has the tendency to look warped under lights that show its different angles. A courtroom brawl, a portrait of at least two types of parasitic species juxtaposed on top of the other—in Uri Deger’s paintings, painting is as much release and representation as it is an act of creation. While our days are being created above, somehow, we go on in our own acts of creation down below, waiting until the next day dawns on us all—the good and the bad in equal measure.

Nikki Ignacio