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video works, still life, installations

Halad, single-channel video, 09 min 48 sec, 2020

https://modeka.space/exhibitions/i-m-finding-it-hard-to-believe/

Still Life - Perfume de Adela, single-channel video, 02 mins + AP, 2019

Larga Artist Residency | September to October 2019

One of Adela’s possessions discovered in the Mansion was her perfume collection. Some bottles were almost full while some sat empty. 

Perfume can be an invisible accessory and potent weapon. It can arouse physical, emotional, and psychological affects. The use of scent suggests a show of character, an attempt to be sensual or distinguish oneself from others. Although Adela lived in isolation, these traces of fragrance reveal a desire for life. 

The residue of scents serve as intangible pieces of her story that I sought to give new meaning to through a still life in video. Adela lived quietly during her late years and I wanted to echo that beauty in stillness. 

Still life is a form that celebrates material pleasures and the fleeting nature of life, communicating our mortality through the mundane. This work explores the role of one’s possessions in making sense of being, and the power of objects in articulating something of our lives.

(edited by Lesley Anne-Cao)

Haze (and echoes), single-channel video, 06 mins, edition of 5 + AP, 2019

City of Bawal

27 April to 8 June 2019 

BRISA AMIR, DATU ARELLANO, KRISTOFFER ARDEÑA, JAN BALQUIN, LESLEY-ANNE CAO, MIGGY INUMERABLE, CZAR KRISTOFF, CELINE LEE, CRIS MORA, INDY PAREDES, MARK SALVATUS, JEL SUAREZ , ISOLA ROSA

“For every rational line . . .
there are leagues of senseless cacophony,
verbal nonsense and incoherency.”
– Borges, Library of Babel

How to grasp the everyday minutiae of the city, our city, the city of of bawal?

No jaywalking. No trespassing. No littering. No loitering. No loading and unloading. No parking. No U-turn. No texting and driving. No drinking and driving. No entry. No guns allowed. No smoking. No illegal vendors. Not for hire. Post no bill. Do not blow horn. Obey speed limit. Do not delay. Obey god. Slow down.

Someone discarded a slipper on the street. Did she or he return home on one bare foot? What will happen to the discarded slipper? A pothole is so wide and deep, can it swallow an automobile or dead bodies whole? An ambulance is stuck in traffic, who prays for the passenger-patient to reach the hospital in time? Why do security guards yield shotguns? Do they ever have to draw their weapons? Why does it smell like piss right next to the bawal umihi signage? Who is the ‘we’ in the neon sign 'in god we trust'? Who writes of revolt and revolution on the city’s walls? Who reads these messages? How to respond?

The city of bawal – the seemingly trivial and futile, the fragments… Can the city of bawal be made to stutter? And can the city of bawal be opened up to a different realm of perplexing possibilities. This becoming, stuttering becoming, is set in the messy, mesmerizing, chaotic, cacophonic city.

This group of thirteen artists is on purpose large and diverse as navigating our city requires multiple angles and contradicting voices. Each of the artists has her or his own poetic sensibility to show different urban questions concerning the everyday minutiae of the city, our city, the city of of bawal.

The title of the exhibition is a reference to the short story Library of Babel by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, in which the narrator attempts to find meaning in what appears to be vast randomness.

Itogon, single-channel video, sound, 02 min 45 sec, edition of 5, 2018

Houshanpi, two-channel video projection, 01 min 35 sec and 03 min, edition of 3, 2018

Made to Last 

Vinyl on Vinyl Gallery

19 September to 11 October 2018

i believe that this is a certainty:

that we are waiting for our demise that 

the only thing that is certain from when 

we took our first breaths

is that one day 

we are bound to also take 

our last.

so in the small matters and

small affairs where there is nothingness

there’s a pull, to seek and establish;

that there was something in the in-betweens, 

the fissures; a breach in the system

a split and a break

“what are some things that can last forever?”

an emphasis on “ever” followed by a google search:

a cast iron skillet, converse all-stars 

slide sandals and neon green tupperware like the ones 

inside the cupboards from the 90s, once 

resting in the center of the lazy susan

now stained by wrongfully washed mechado

here is a list of animals that can outlive you

and pantry items. last week, she tells me, 

that she heard a podcast about a vault inside

a mountain, an “ark” for seeds where instead of 

animals, the world’s grains and seeds are stored

and taken care of, for when they die

they never truly do. that there is a chance,

a sprout on the ground. no longer not existing.

it will all be flashes, i was told. 

and projections with some images more clearer

than others, memories stored better until someone

looking directly into the camera yells, “roll vtr!” 

to an invisible control booth and an overworked

segment producer and it plays,

and plays,

and plays; 

in place

Still Life: Woman, Body, Vessel, single channel video, 02 min 18 sec, edition of 3, 2018

/Conversations/Positions/Gary-Ross Pastrana

Mabini Projects
11 May to 8 June, 2018

Jan Balquin, Lesley-Anne Cao, Gale Encarnacio, Lou Lim, Veronica Pee, Issay Rodriguez, Jel Suarez, Nicole Tee

To Eat is to Survive to be Hungry developed from a provocation for the artists to take a deeper look into contemporary food culture, to investigate prevailing dining and dieting trends viewed against the backdrop of the, at times, conflicting moral and ethical issues that surround its overall production and consumption. Under the guise of an intensive seminar, the participants came together for a series of meetings and along the way experienced hand milking an actual cow, managed to fall in love with a dish made out of the different ages of cheese, got the inside scoop from a local chef about his newly opened, foraging-based restaurant, learned about another chef whose take on food landed him an invitation to Documenta 12 and collectively wondered what could’ve motivated the founding of the artist-run restaurant Food in 1971. These and other insights gained from the shared research have now found their way into new, slightly more experimental projects specifically designed to test out ideas, formulate questions and apply strategies adapted from the realm of food and, in the process, articulate the startling complexities that come with the basic act of nourishing our bodies.

- Gary-Ross Pastrana