Unfolding forms in Rock Drilon’s art
MANILA, Philippine s- In his exhibition of works at Now Gallery, abstract painter Rock Drilon deftly demonstrates what it is like to create in flux and focused abandon: channeling both spontaneous energy and memory to produce a series of paintings and drawings.
The works in the show are largely a continuation of Drilon’s current trajectory as an abstractionist for close to two decades now. This is indicated by the persistence of familiar forms and the artist’s usual visual codes, almost like authorial stamps: undulating and winding loops, clouds of pigment built through scattered brush strokes, and the glow of luminous, pastel hues.
Abstraction as personal ritual
As an artist, Drilon started out strong as a young, prize-winning scholar at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in the late 1970s. Back then, Drilon first worked in figurative painting, producing surreal and expressionist works.
Eventually, he developed his particular style of non-representational painting which emphasizes the physical tangibility and quality of lines and mass. His earlier works in abstraction would often be juxtaposed against inspirational texts as titles, hinting how the act of painting for Drilon has gone beyond being an exercise in formal composition and has become a personal ritual for rumination and reflection on life.
The works in the show are smaller in scale compared to Drilon’s other publicly-commissioned abstract paintings dating from the 1990s, some of which are on display in large corporate buildings throughout the metropolis. However different in scale, both sets of works emphasize the process of painting as ritual performance: one can almost trace Drilon’s forms threading and winding within and into each other, as if marking different points of an unseen and untold journey.
Different forms of expression
Most of the works in the exhibit were produced by Drilon in his hometown of Iloilo. For almost a decade before that, Drilon was based in Manila as the gallery director of Mag:net, the Brix Gallery and Kanlungan ng Sining in the 1990s.
For the show, Drilon produced three series of works, shifting between painting and drawing, figuration and abstraction. The artist worked on these three different series simultaneously: starting on a set, leaving the pieces unfinished, and returning to work on them as hours and days unfolded and overlapped.
Filling up the Main Gallery space are Drilon’s recent abstract paintings and drawings, which highlight his continuing fascination and exploration of abstraction. As an artist, Drilon has increasingly become more deliberate in his wielding and evoking of abstract forms, as if tracing or writing down an unsaid story or path. The paintings in this series still employ forms which have appeared in his earlier works: lines, loops, brushstrokes converging to form inchoate masses.
Simultaneously displayed but standing in contrast to the paintings in the show are Drilon’s series of small drawings.
One is a series of nude sketches, based on live models. These drawings emphasize how Drilon can reinterpret figurative images as abstract form, relying not on careful and realistic modeling but on energetic and linear impressions to capture the volume and shape of the human form.
The other series is that of quick line abstract drawings in charcoal on paper: a progression of loops revolving and rotating within themselves. This is a series that the artist has continually produced over the years: related to yet still separate from his larger paintings in acrylic on canvas. Compact yet in flux, the works remind one of how Drilon approaches the act of painting as a continuous process — an unfolding, rather than a building up of images. Sheet after sheet, the artist conveys the progression of form, experience and thought.
All three series of forms unfolding collectively underscore the energy and reflection channeled by Drilon into painting and drawing: markers of both personal reflection and formal exploration.
