“Rebirth” – More than Meets the Eye

CEBU, Philippines — There will always be a figurative undercurrent that drives all visual artists to paint, an inkling that stitches what’s seen by the “creative eye” with the byways and treads that earmark the very nature of “creative vision.”

This elemental aspect in artmaking was the binding light of the exhibit “Rebirth” – the year-end show of Cebu’s Qube Gallery for 2017.

Composed of landscapes and life-in-the-countryside scenes, the show featured paintings by the members of the “Aroma Art Academy” – formed by Toledo City-born painter OrleyYpon. Established in December 2016, the group aimed to uplift the craft, practice and appreciation of figurative art here in Cebu – to enlighten Cebuano artists and art lovers that there’s more to the realism genre than being overtly commodified form of art.

Wall-bound works rendered in oil dominated the pieces that comprised the show, each rendered in traditional painting methods and techniques that framed the balance between light and dark.

Co-opted by prismacoloring standards that prompts an artist to discern vivid colors where there is none, the show – titled “Rebirth” – more than highlighted works that run by the “as they are seen” premise, as it brought viewers to the wellsprings that have set visual art’s trajectory from what it was then to what it has become now.

In a time when representational art is widely perceived as art that’s too literal for an artist to fit himself in, “Rebirth” branded such perceptions as fallacies. After all, the ultimate goal of a true artist is to capture what is beautiful – to emblemize his perception of what beauty is, not to craft works that are banded to a Feng Shui that’s all about selling what’s already being bought.