"Figure-proof is a proposal to think about figure—both as representation, image and likeness, and also as the figurative: semblance and metaphor. The title references this ambivalence and may mean anticipation and resistance to figuration (as in related words such as “waterproof ” or “future-proof ”), impossibility of recognizing or figuring out, or the evidence or trace of the figure or the figurative. Five young artists from the Philippines respond to this provocation and present ways how the exceptional time of the global pandemic might offer opportunities to reconsider the figure and the figurative in terms of artistic tendencies, materials, and technique.

Figure-proof speaks to the exceptional milieu of a global pandemic across different registers. First is the pragmatics of an online presentation. When Joshua approached me to curate online in response to how exhibiting contemporary art might change, I wanted to conceptualize an exhibition that took the opportunity in earnest. I wanted to work with young artists from the Philippines, and not just with artists based or trained in Manila, but also across the archipelago. I find the online format auspicious for gathering artists from allover the Philippine archipelago, an outcome that would have been much more challenging were this a physical exhibition: Jan Sunday was until recently based in Cebu, Ginoe is based in Negros Occidental, both part of the Visayas group of islands, in the Central Philippines, south of Manila. I also chose to work with younger artists just because I feel that they understand the specificities of the format more and would be able to be more responsive to these.

 

The exhibition foregrounds the discrepant ways we deal with the pandemic. For the artists, this involves keenly conceptualizing their practices—their materials, methods, concerns—as acutely social. We have confirmed the exhibition in June, during which time most places in the Philippines were still under lockdown, or for many of us, under Enhanced Community Quarantine—most places were closed, mobility extremely limited, everyone anxious about everyday realities. The milieu inflects artistic production and conceptualization. When I approached these artists, all of us were faced with new or aggravated anxieties in relation to the global pandemic. Because access to materials and a kiln would have been very difficult, Pam Quinto is showing existing works. Another artist withdrew their participation because of personal issues arising from the pandemic.

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Pam Quinto’s works explore the potentialities of ceramics as medium and how it is used alongside other forms and materials. In her practice, an astute sensitivity to how ceramics becomes a remnant of memory or sympathy to the human psyche is seen and felt. In her hands, the affective materiality of ceramics is foregrounded and articulated as a certain sense of intimacy and vulnerability in terms of the thematics of the feminine and in relation to an embracing attentiveness to intricate detail and soft forms that foil ceramics’ logic of hardening or objectifying material. This is seen in how the artist uses resin and textile as ceramic objects, the effect of which renders a solid object that visually retains the litheness of fabric. Quinto’s trajectory is prolific: she works with stoneware, cement, and porcelain and deploys these with interdisciplinary forms such as photography, installation, and text. In Quinto’s works, ceramics is both craft and experiment, vessel and venture."

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Carlos Quijon Jr.

Curator