Why I Keep an Online Journal
Because I want to remember when I know that forgetting is inevitable. Simple joys, daily musings, and what-have-yous. These things are made to be forgotten. Especially by a person who exists solely in the present, straining a pornographer's binoculars to catch possible permutations of the future. Laughter is fleeting, memories can be distorted, people even. It is a sad facet of life for those who always choose to move forward, abante abante, never looking back.
Thus, this.
Last Week in Photos
Good Morning Makati. Never again will I be first in the office.
Bastos Con Diablitos.
OMG OMG. I forgot to tell you about this entire exhibit. A few months back, A and I travelled to the huwag po country of San Rafael Bulacan to shoot the installation of Yason Banal for the Singapore Biennale. (Thanks so much Tatin) We forgot all about it until I received the invitation to the exhibit. It's here now! You won't see my face anywhere in the larger than life Isa Lorenzo photos, but you will probably see a shiny sequined shadow transforming the little big boys into Kiss disciples. Face paint, art brushes and tons of eyeliner in hand, I drew little daggers tears into their bright little faces.
Yason Banal
Bastos Con Diablitos
8-30 November 2006
Mag:net Gallery Paseo
Opening: 8 November, Wednesday, 6PM
Moving between performance, music, installation,
photography, video and delicate craft-like works,
Yason Banal's practice takes myriad forms and
conceptual strategies to weave together traditional
and contemporary folklores, icons and belief systems.
In The Legend of the Sleepwalking Tricks (2003) held
at the Kunsthall Oslo, Norway, the artist commissioned
several young men to stand in a gallery listening to
death metal on Walkmans and sip hot milk laced with
potent sleeping sedatives. Over the duration of the
performance the men gradually became drowsy, lying
down and eventually falling asleep. In other works he
has referenced slasher horror films, Christianity, sex
and political history, at once channeling awkward
adolescent interests with his fascination in altered
states of consciousness and democracies. Underlying
much of Banal's work is an interest in what he calls
'dreamy conceptualism' and 'tropical gothic', moving
towards the dark side of the life-giving sun.
His recent work for the Singapore Biennale brought
together images, text, video and performance
sculptures made in Tokyo, where the artist became
interested in the Great Earthquake of 1923 which
devastated the city, as well as other disasters both
man made and natural, such as the recent mass stampede
in Manila and fake visionaries sprouting up in nearby
provinces.
Banal's works combine seemingly distant belief systems
and symbologies - religion, folk science, art history
and queer hagiography, as well as music and film
genres and subcultures - to trigger suppressed
associations and links. The artist speaks of trying to
initiate 'constellations' through the different
elements in his work - referring at once to heavenly
bodies, but also to their relationships with events
unfolding on earth, sometimes benign, but often
catastrophic.
- Roger McDonald, Curator for the Singapore Biennale
Yason Banal's solo exhibition Bastos Con Diablitos
opens at Mag:net Gallery Paseo on November 8,
Wednesday at 6pm. Exhibtion runs until November 30. Mag:net
Gallery Paseo is located on the ground floor of Paseo
Centre, Paseo de Roxas corner Sedeno St. For inquiries
call 8177895 (Jhennie) or email magnetplus@gmail.com
or visit www.magnet.com.ph
Spaghetti Attack. Because we love pasta, and anything Italian. Let's do this more often la.
La.
Thus, this.
Last Week in Photos
Good Morning Makati. Never again will I be first in the office.
Bastos Con Diablitos.
OMG OMG. I forgot to tell you about this entire exhibit. A few months back, A and I travelled to the huwag po country of San Rafael Bulacan to shoot the installation of Yason Banal for the Singapore Biennale. (Thanks so much Tatin) We forgot all about it until I received the invitation to the exhibit. It's here now! You won't see my face anywhere in the larger than life Isa Lorenzo photos, but you will probably see a shiny sequined shadow transforming the little big boys into Kiss disciples. Face paint, art brushes and tons of eyeliner in hand, I drew little daggers tears into their bright little faces.
Yason Banal
Bastos Con Diablitos
8-30 November 2006
Mag:net Gallery Paseo
Opening: 8 November, Wednesday, 6PM
Moving between performance, music, installation,
photography, video and delicate craft-like works,
Yason Banal's practice takes myriad forms and
conceptual strategies to weave together traditional
and contemporary folklores, icons and belief systems.
In The Legend of the Sleepwalking Tricks (2003) held
at the Kunsthall Oslo, Norway, the artist commissioned
several young men to stand in a gallery listening to
death metal on Walkmans and sip hot milk laced with
potent sleeping sedatives. Over the duration of the
performance the men gradually became drowsy, lying
down and eventually falling asleep. In other works he
has referenced slasher horror films, Christianity, sex
and political history, at once channeling awkward
adolescent interests with his fascination in altered
states of consciousness and democracies. Underlying
much of Banal's work is an interest in what he calls
'dreamy conceptualism' and 'tropical gothic', moving
towards the dark side of the life-giving sun.
His recent work for the Singapore Biennale brought
together images, text, video and performance
sculptures made in Tokyo, where the artist became
interested in the Great Earthquake of 1923 which
devastated the city, as well as other disasters both
man made and natural, such as the recent mass stampede
in Manila and fake visionaries sprouting up in nearby
provinces.
Banal's works combine seemingly distant belief systems
and symbologies - religion, folk science, art history
and queer hagiography, as well as music and film
genres and subcultures - to trigger suppressed
associations and links. The artist speaks of trying to
initiate 'constellations' through the different
elements in his work - referring at once to heavenly
bodies, but also to their relationships with events
unfolding on earth, sometimes benign, but often
catastrophic.
- Roger McDonald, Curator for the Singapore Biennale
Yason Banal's solo exhibition Bastos Con Diablitos
opens at Mag:net Gallery Paseo on November 8,
Wednesday at 6pm. Exhibtion runs until November 30. Mag:net
Gallery Paseo is located on the ground floor of Paseo
Centre, Paseo de Roxas corner Sedeno St. For inquiries
call 8177895 (Jhennie) or email magnetplus@gmail.com
or visit www.magnet.com.ph
Spaghetti Attack. Because we love pasta, and anything Italian. Let's do this more often la.
La.