ENCOUNTERS OF DISBELIEF
June 1–29, 2024
Jon Cuyson Lizza May David Kat Medina
Encounters of Disbelief
June 1–29, 2024
Art Director
Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz
Gallery Manager
Álvaro Talavera
Exhibition Team
Thess Ponce
Roy Abrenica
Mariela Araza
Edgar Bautista
Gabriel Abalos
Jose Joeffrey Baba
Graphic Designer
Kyle Azarcon
Exhibition Notes
Jon Cuyson
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Exhibition Notes
Jon Cuyson Curator of the exhibitionGalleria Duemila is pleased to present Encounters of Disbelief, featuring the works of Jon Cuyson, Lizza May David, and Kat Medina. This group exhibition combines three artists whose works oscillate between painting, sculpture, and installation. What form of experience or affect might the viewer have in encountering such works? The title refers to the encounter in art and the “multiple becoming” referred to by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. In his teaching and writing, Deleuze emphasized what he called “thought compelled by the encounter.” The encounter happens when it defines itself not as an internal exercise of reason but as an event that forces it to move. What form of movement and transformation occurs during the encounter?
The exhibition follows the idea of art-making as a series of productive encounters similar to an event, a meeting, or collision between acquaintances or lovers, like two fields of force, transitory but ultimately transformative. Encounters of Disbelief is a deliberate departure from conventional modalities to challenge, to queer, and to question both viewer and maker into a space of uncertainty and contemplation. Whether installed on the walls or the floor, or using technological devices to obscure images, the works featured in the exhibition explore the expanded domain of paintings by investigating color, surface, optics, and processes that explore materiality, space, structure, and objecthood from a queered lens.
Through abstraction, these artists produce works that provoke our understanding of how we might engage with art today. They use expanded painting strategies to provoke thought and engage viewers in a dialogue to express skepticism operating beyond purely formal concerns creating works that acknowledge, obfuscate, reveal, and become.
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Jon Cuyson
Untitled SOS (Obscure Objects #32 Pewter)
acrylic on shaped canvas on wood
152.50 x 61.00 cm / 60.09 x 24.03 in. 2024
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Jon Cuyson
Untitled SOS (Obscure Seascape #1 Brown)
acrylic on canvas on wood
153.00 x 122.00 cm / 60.28 x 48.07 in.
2024
Jon Cuyson presents works from the SOS series composed of painted canvases alone and with objects. These works are part of an ongoing investigation into the narrative of the sea, movement, and notions of labor. The artist use formal and conceptual strategies to explore surfaces, materiality, and sculptural elements while engaging the exhibition space. Through various geometric abstract compositions merged with mark making, his works explore hybridity in painting, sculpture, and installation while revealing structures of power.
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Jon Cuyson
Untitled SOS (Obscure Seascape #21 Purple)
acrylic on canvas on wood panel
122.00 x 152.50 cm / 48.07 x 60.09 in. 2024
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Jon Cuyson
Untitled SOS (Obscure Seascape #91 Green)
acrylic on canvas on wood panel
122.00 x 152.50 cm / 48.07 x 60.09 in.
2024
variable dimension 2024
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Jon Cuyson
Untitled SOS Vessel Series (Pink and Silver)
acrylic on canvas on wood panel and metallic spray on steel hand truck
variable dimension
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Jon Cuyson
Untitled SOS Vessel Series (Teal and Silver)
acrylic on canvas on wood panel and metallic spray on steel hand truck
2024
Lizza May David merges artistic research with painting, exploring her physical and emotional responses to spaces within contested archives during her visits in German collections. With her paintings from the series Deadlines and NegativeSpace she refers to the measurements and architecture of the archives themselves to question the system of archiving and create gestures of liquidity or distortion.
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Lizza May David
Negative Space - Silver acrylic on shaped canvas
160.00 x 128.00 cm / 63.04 x 50.43 in. 2023
Photographic Collection of RJM at the Hasenkamp Storage
c-print on paper
39.37 x 28.00 cm / 15.51 x 11.03 in.
2023
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Lizza May David
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Lizza May David
Negative Space - Prussian Blue acrylic on shaped canvas
160.00 x 128.00 cm / 63.04 x 50.43 in. 2023
Lizza May David
Deadlines - Entrance acrylic on canvas
23.00 x 19.00 cm / 9.06 x 7.49 in. 2024
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Lizza May David
Deadlines - M
acrylic on canvas
23.00 x 19.00 cm / 9.06 x 7.49 in.
2024
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Lizza May David
Deadlines - Left
acrylic on canvas
25.00 x 20.00 cm / 9.85 x 7.88 in.
2024
Kat Medina presents a series of paintings called Hard of Hearing. Medina divides the painting with odd angular shapes normally observed from walking around an urban landscape. These angles and divisions provide utility in creating boundaries between the private and the public space. In contrast with the transcendent feeling expressed by landscape paintings, the tight spaces laid on the canvas provide a view of compression of personal expression, public ordinance, and nature (overgrowth, weeds).
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Kat Medina Tree Stump
acrylic and cotton net on rag paper
30.00 x 21.00 cm / 11.82 x 8.27 in. 2024
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Kat Medina
Figuring the Air
acrylic on canvas and textile net
30.50 x 40.70 cm / 12.02 x 16.04 in.
2024
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Kat Medina Revolving Door
acrylic on canvas and textile net
122.00 x 122.00 cm / 48.07 x 48.07 in. 2024
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Kat Medina
Glass Ceiling
acrylic on canvas and textile net
122.00 x 61.00 cm / 48.07 x 24.03 in.
2024
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Kat Medina
Small Window
acrylic in canvas and textile net
2024
122.00 x 61.00 cm / 48.07 x 24.03 in.
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Kat Medina
Knots and Shadows
acrylic on canvas and textile net
40.70 x 50.80 cm / 16.04 x 20.02 in.
2024
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Kat Medina
Worn Down Mirage
acrylic on canvas and textile net
40.70 x 50.80 cm / 16.04 x 20.02 in. 2024
Artist Biographies
Jon Cuyson is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice investigates the complex intersections of history, visual culture, identity, and movement. Born in Manila, he has been exhibiting his works since 1998 and in 2010, he received his MFA from Columbia University in New York. He has participated in residencies such as the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was part of exhibitions in Asia, Europe, and America. Jon Cuyson is a visual artist, filmmaker, and educator who lives and works in the Philippines, where he continues to work on his diverse artistic practice.
Lizza May David (b. 1975, Quezon City) is a painter and multidisciplinary artist interested in gaps and silences in personal and collective archives and experiments with forms of activation or disturbance through abstract painting. She navigates through affects and moments that elude representability, leading to experimental approaches for the same reason. She does not assume the existing binary simplifications of the world, but rather thinks relationally in crossroads, turning points, overlapping and branching out, finding further expression in collaborations, architectural interventions, or installations.
Kat Medina (b. 1984, Manila) paints and makes installations that are informed by the sentience of the hand and negotiations of looking. She explores the performative aspects of objects through their current presence in contemporary society. Her work has been shown in several solo exhibitions such as Forever Folding to Temper a Window to a Siphon or a Knife, The Drawing Room, Makati (2016); The Solution Before Itself, ESC Project, 98B Collaboratory, Manila (2015) and It’s Hard Being a Being (2013), own studio and residence.
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Galleria Duemila was established in 1975 by Italian born Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz. Duemila means “twentieth century” and it was this vision that inspired Duemila’s advocacy in promoting and preserving Philippine contemporary art. To date, it is the longest running commercial art gallery in the Philippines maintaining a strong international profile. With the vision to expose its artists locally and within the ASEAN region, Duemila complements its exhibits with performances, readings, and musical events in its custom-built gallery in Pasay City, Manila.
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Galleria Duemila takes pride in being the only local gallery to publish and mount retrospectives of artists as part of its advocacy in pursuing art historical research and scholarship. With the collaboration of institutions, Duemila has mounted the retrospectives of Roberto M. A. Robles (Ateneo Art Gallery, 2011), Duddley Diaz (Vargas Museum, 2009), and Julie Lluch Dalena (Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2008). It has also published a book on Diosdado Magno Lorenzo (National Library of the Philippines, 2009) and produced a major Pacita Abad exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2004. The gallery maintains close ties with museums throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States. Its futurist vision keeps it at the cutting-edge of PhiIippine art, making and archiving history as it happens.
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