Gemo Tapales returns to the exhibition scene with Subpoena, a look on how socio-politics is shaping the way we give meaning to what we see. On view at the West Gallery in SM Megamall from August 22 to September 3, Tapales’s collages also run through a cross-section of art history.
Tapales pays tribute to his professors and the masters, for opening his eyes to different ways of seeing and creating. Just as cavemen, the Egyptians and the Romans found a way to communicate their ideas in the early times. Tapales uses more modern approaches but likewise sees these forms as defined by the point of view of the beholder. “Subpoena to C” are a series of tablets, each representing the 10 Commandments. For Tapales, these are basic laws from which the government sets its rules for the believer to follow. Yet Tapales chooses dark shades to demonstrate that rules are not always as clear-cut. People will always find gray areas to exploit.
Tapales also sees creation as coming out of the dark. An object may have always been there, like untapped talent. It exists just when we begin to acknowledge its tangible qualities.
In another collage, Tapales makes use of a more recognizable figure, such that of a woman in a revealing pose. Looking closer, you’d see that the collage L-shaped. It can be anything from love to lust. “What you see is what you get,” Tapales points out, stressing that each viewer may perceive an image differently, depending on how one perceives reality and abstraction.
And what is the world without rules? Tapales simply calls it “Lost in Space”, where there is uncertainty and lack of definition. The lines are deliberately rendered as such that they don’t have definite shapes. Tapales wants to bring order back into his art making, saying that it is his desire to tell the truth that made him want to stay. Showing more enthusiasm, Tapales says he’s more open now to welcoming changes and letting each work evolve freely.
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