MANILA, Philippines - In the coming Lenten season, artist Demetrio Dela Cruz finds it time again to reflect on the meanings of Lent and how they impact on the Filipino museumgoer and lover of art. The Pinto Museum under Dr. Joven Cuanang in Grand Heights Subdivision in Antipolo City presents an exhibit on view until April 23, with the show installed and stationed on museum grounds.
His present show at Pinto Gallery, titled “Offering,” demonstrates a fresh burst of artistic vigor inspired by the Lenten season, memorable to all Filipinos. But unlike most artists who convey their message only through two-dimensional paintings in oil or acrylic, Demetrio adds another new and distinguishing element: that of three-dimensionality.
Now this factor is important indeed, because the secret of art is the ability to invent, use and explore various media, not only for itself, but most of all, to convey meaning. Indeed, the medium and the meaning have a basic relationship that can be quite complex and challenging. And while the artist may have a body of spiritual meaning or meanings in mind, he or she needs to explore and choose the medium that best conveys this complexity of meanings. And, as in the case of Demetrio Dela Cruz, he invents the medium (or media) with which to best communicate his set of ideas. It is this aspect that sets Demetrio above the rest.
For the artist, Lent is mostly a season of reflection. But reflection can have many meanings. It can be an inner spiritual activity of contemplating life and the world. Visually, it can involve the use of mirrors as in double images, and here it is used to derive multiple images of a figure or a scene in order to obtain a rich, multidimensional vision that surpasses a simple view. And this is what Dela Cruz achieves in his combination of new materials in multimedia. His 14 works for the show are not plain paintings in oil or acrylic but rather a combination of oil paint and mixed media on transparent sheets. He uses oil paint but applies it on transparent Flexi-Glass sheets of five layers which have a way of oscillating with the light, adding a sense of movement, as well as enhancing colors which all together lend an illusion of precious layering.
This clearly suits his subject because Lent is itself a multidimensional religious experience, as it is known to Filipinos. In these works, the images and the details which constitute them create a complex weave of lines and hues, inviting the eye to move over the work as on an unusual, breathing tissue of pain, suffering and hope. To all this, the artist adds one more element: the wooden frames and wood carvings, recalling the traditional frames of the 19th century, but now bordering a new artwork and bringing out the brilliant effects of new media in unusual and inventive combinations.
This new show of Demetrio Dela Cruz does advance the Filipino’s artistic, as well as spiritual, experience — one can call it a “eureka exhibit” and it is well worth a visit to the museum.