Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz-Garcia collaborate anew in Uncommon Grounds, which is on view at West Gallery, SM Megamall until November 25.
Uncommon Grounds experiments on different painting surfaces and traditional process of mark-making. “Works in this exhibit are different from the usual works that we do. We tried to invent/experiment in this particular show,” Tapaya and Garcia wrote in a statement.
Tapaya, for instance, painted landscapes using acrylic paints on acrylic sheets. His work shows the process of painting in reverse, where first layers of paints are seen in the foreground instead of being covered due to the painting process. Tapaya’s new works are more of a drawing than painting, not only that his process reveals the ground and not obscure it, but also the character of each stroke shows immediacy in technique. The theme of Tapaya’s new series revolves around landscapes. Landscape can also be referred as ground of the earth or any surrounding area.
Tapaya studied painting at the University of the Philippines and took intensive studies on painting and drawing at the Parsons School of Design in New York, USA, and at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland. He won the grand prize at the Nokia Arts Awards Asia-Pacific held in South Korea in 2001.
Cruz-Garcia’s works for this exhibit are embroidery on printed canvas. Her process is a combination of photography, digital printing, and embroidery. She first photographs dresses of her mom’s and her mom’s siblings, prints them on canvas using laser printing, and embroiders narratives about the wearers’ lives. She calls this series embroidered landscapes. Themes about family and memory are explored in the choices of objects, patterns, motifs, and stories stitched in the canvases.
Cruz-Garcia also studied painting at the University of the Philippines, where her thesis was named most outstanding in 2003.
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