And the Rest is History

OPENING:
Saturday, October 25, 2014, 6 pm

EXHIBITION DATA:
October 25 to December 20 2014


1335MABINI proudly presents Jose Luis Singson in his first solo exhibition titled “And The Rest is History,” from October 25 to November 21, 2014.

You enter the space and you are half-expecting to see it. Browns and oranges, hues that are descriptive of past works are but inherent to his medium of choice—terracotta. More than an exploration of its material limitations and possibilities, Jose Luis Singson’s previous works speak of an attempt to reconstruct his father’s identity and to fill in that part of his own. This heightened personal impulse has since been magnified in the surfaces of his wall-bound iterations. With this value-laden premise, it is of inevitable consequence that its material fragility, made evident by cracks and fissures, signifies the fractures in the narrative he is trying to recover.

In his first solo exhibition in 1335MABINI, the material is noticeably absent. In "And the Rest is History", Singson takes on a self-reflexive bent, informed by his practice as an artist and a gallery worker. This peculiar position brings about a continuous negotiation with the idea of how aesthetic objects are perpetuated as historicized fragments in one’s art practice, especially in an attempt to make sense of notions of relevance and continuity in the larger context of Philippine art history. With his installation, the visual pun still begins with a wall. Building from his previous works, a presence paradoxically amplifies an absence; a suggestion of things that are no longer there. Prompting the reconstruction of previous states, a recognition is made that remains are testaments of time passing. For his exhibition however, Singson takes history into his own hands, bringing together at once, the instance and its documentation.

- Thea Garing