Garbage Flowers & Foolish Words —Lynyrd Paras

GARBAGE FLOWERS AND FOOLISH WORDS LYNYRD PARAS

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CANDY BABBLE AND ACID WHIP GINA FAIRLEY

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Walking into a room of Lynyrd Paras’s paintings you can almost hear the chismis [gossip] behind hand-veiled mouths, its rising babble bearing down with a claustrophobic wallop. Text, like the urban patina of graffiti, layers these paintings as un/conscious streams of thought. Paras calls them foolish words – ‘the poisoned fruit borne of the poisoned tree’ – and yet, within this cacophony and chaos there is the occasional smile and open gaze that reaches out for human connection.

How, then, do we as viewers navigate this complex landscape of emotions?

“Garbage Flowers and Foolish Woods” offers the next chapter in Lynyrd Paras’s catapult career, a suite of ten bold large-scale paintings that push in fresh directions. While their foundations reach back to Paras’s first international solo, “Boxed Noises” (TAKSU Kuala Lumpur 2008), centred on the invasive sounds of the city and our facility for filtration, the noise of this earlier work has become more channelled. Simply, that public spatial rupture has been increasing honed back to Paras’s own world of reference. We are mere voyeurs latching on to a heartfelt lament. It is both an intriguing and incredibly seductive landscape, true and uncensored in its conviction and for its quality of painting.

The exhibition’s title painting, Basurang Bulaklak, Tengang Basag Basag, underscores this complexity. Placing himself central to the work, visually locked with the viewer, all elements radiate from that axis of engagement. New is the use of a graphic device to break up the painted field into classic ‘rays’, drawing our eye to this singular narrative around which all others orbit. It structures the painting between the elements of chance and control, metaphorically corralling and separating public and private space. We see these rays repeated across this body of paintings: in Gitnang Lason [Poisoned Neutrality] splicing one’s gaze into focus, for example, or more literally as streams of projected babble in Painosente [Words that stab in

the back], a refinement of Paras’s earlier emotional purge as vomit.

Technically these graphic divisions alleviate surface clutter while engaging the tenants of abstraction, without loosing that bristle of the raw gesture signature to Paras’s painting. This charge is key. It is what holds us in sync with Paras’s paintings – a shared empathy. It is amplified through the repetition or echo of the sitter, a technique Paras’s has long employed.

Is it the schizophrenic layering of personas, the badgering sub-conscious, an alter ego, or merely aesthetic theatre? This is the brilliance of Paras’s constructions: to snare you in a web of unabashed ambiguity and intrigue.

It takes on a magnitude in Basurang Bulaklak, Tengang Basag Basag, moving between the carefully rendered portrait and sketched outline of a woman, to dismembered body parts – chatting teeth, a floating ear, pointing hand – a building of symbols that take their cue from the Tagalog title literally translated ‘broken ear’, or colloquially ‘foolish words’. Almost as an aberration to this corrosive chatter a rose appears sideline to the narrative. A classic symbol of love and beauty, it is also the seal of secrecy as per the Latin phrase sub rosa or ‘under the rose’ dating back to Greek mythology – a rose given to Harpocrotes, the god of silence, to ensure the indiscretions of the gods were not disclosed. In Roman times roses were painted on the ceiling of banquet rooms, a reminder that things spilt under the influence of wine – sub vino – should remain sub rosa. Perhaps this ancient bond lays core to Paras’s “Garbage Flowers and Foolish Words” subtly carried across this series. (continue on back cover)

cover Apoy Sa Loob (Silent Heart) oil on canvas / 61 x 92 cm / 2011

GARBAGE FLOWERS AND FOOLISH WORDS LYNYRD PARAS

_ ISBN 978 - 981- 07-1277- 8 PAPERBACK

978 - 981- 07-1278 - 5 E-BOOK

Catalog © 2012 TAKSU Artworks & Images © 2012 Lynyrd Paras

Gitnang Lason (Neutral Ground) oil on canvas / 122 X 153 cm / 2011

Matamis Lang Dinig (Filter) oil on canvas / 183 X 107 cm / 2011

left Bukang Bibig (Mouth Wide Open) oil on canvas / 153 X 183 cm / 2011 right Dikit Tas Gamit (Sleeping With The Enemy) oil on canvas / 122 X 153 cm / 2011

Basurang Bulaklak, Tengang Basag Basag (Garbage Flowers And Foolish Words) oil on canvas / 122 x 244 cm / 2011

Mas Delikado (Silence) oil on canvas / 122 x 92 cm / 2011

right Painosente (The Pretenders) oil on canvas / 112 x 92 cm / 2011

left Tiwala Wala (Trust?) oil on canvas / 153 x 122 cm / 2011

right Wala Pake (Free) oil on canvas / 122 x 61 cm / 2011

(b.1982 in Manila) Bachelor of Fine Arts College of Architecture and Fine Arts Technological University of the Philippines, Manila GRANTS

LYNYRD PARAS

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2009 RIMBUN DAHAN Art Residency, January to March, Malaysia. 2008 BLANC COMPOUND Art Residency, July to December, Philippines. 2007 National Commission for Culture and the Arts SINUGDANAN Program Grantee, Philippines.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2012 “Garbage Flowers and Foolish Words” TAKSU, Singapore. 2011 “KIRKEI” (Art Toy Launch) Secret Fresh Gallery, San Juan City, Philippines “No One Waits For A Lonely Answer” BENCAB Museum,Baguio City, Philippines. 2010 “Days When Blood Are Tears” Avellana Art Gallery, Pasay City “SOME THINGS ARE NOT MEANT TO BE BEAUTIFUL” Ayala Museum, Makati City, and Yuchengco Museum, Makati City.

2008 “AGAINSTMYBLACKHEARTEDWORLD” Blanc Compound, Mandaluyong City “BOXED NOISES” TAKSU, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2007 “A DAY WHEN EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL” Cultural Center of the Philippines, Pasay City SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2011 “RE:VIEW 2011” BENCAB Museum, Baguio City, Philippines “Flatfield” West Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines. 2010 “ROGUE WAVE!” TAKSU, Singapore “THESE ARE DAYS” Blanc Peninsula, Philippines 2009 “ART SINGAPORE 2009” Suntec Singapore “Manila Art Fair” NBC Tent, The Fort, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig Editor Theresia Irma “Tanah Air” Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia Essay Gina Fairley “OVERLOOKED” TAKSU, Kuala Lumpur, Photography STUDIO 1616 Malaysia “LOVERULES” Boston Gallery, Graphic Design Jeffrey Lim / Studio 25 Quezon City “A Book About Death” Emily Printer Unico Services Harvey Foundation Gallery, New York, USA. 2008 “ART SINGAPORE 2008” presented by All rights reserved. No part of this TAKSU, Suntec, Singapore. 2007 “Through catalog may be reproduced or the Palette’s Eyes” Cultural Center Of the transmitted in any form or by any means, Philippines, Pasay City “Box” Cultural electronically, including photocopy, Center of the Philippines, Pasay City “Tutok recording or any information storage Perspektiba 3” University of the Philippines, and retrieval system, without the prior consent from the artists and gallery. Diliman, Quezon City

2006 “Sweetscreams” Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City “Alab” Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City “Tutok Dospordos” Boston Gallery, Quezon City. 2004 “Secret And Silence” Avellana Art Gallery, Pasay City “Box” Avellana Art Gallery, Pasay City SELECTED AWARDS

2007 Finalist, Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards, National Capital Region 2nd Place, Metrobank Art & Design Excellence, National Competition. 2005 Honorable Mention, Art Association of the Philippines Annual National Art Competition.

2004 Grand Prize, 1st GSIS Museum National Painting Competition, Student Category 2nd Place, Far Eastern University 2nd Annual Inter-University, On-the-Spot Painting Contest. 2003 5th Place, PLDTDPC 17th Visual Art National Competition.

2002 Honorable Mention, Metrobank Young Painters Annual National Competition

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GARBAGE FLOWERS AND FOOLISH WORDS LYNYRD PARAS

_ ISBN 978 - 981- 07-1277- 8

The role of symbolism has become more acute in these paintings, adding a further complexity to the framing of the subject.

We first saw fire used substantially in Paras’s exhibition “Against My Blackhearted World” (Blanc Gallery 2008), its apocalyptic overtone of a hellish existence countered by fire’s ability to banish darkness and describe love’s ‘burning passion’.

It reappears in this series in the painting Wala Pake [I don’t give a damn] and the more subtly, Apoy Sa Loob [Fire inside].

For this exhibition, words scald with the intensity of flames, destructive and resolute.

PAPERBACK

978 - 981- 07-1278 - 5 E-BOOK

One could push the metaphor further.

The wispy pull of the flame draws from the sitter’s eye upwards in Apoy Sa Loob, blinding from within as bottled anger.

While there’s sadness within this painting, light is cast across it illuminating the face against its inherent darkness. The sitter is formally isolated from the background, building spatial depth, a clever planar device that pushes her forward. She floats ghostly in space, silent in her fury and in mute conversation with the viewer.

It is interesting in comparison to the paintings Tiwala Wala [Lack of Trust], densely composed with movie poster excess, and Matamis Lang Dinig [Only hear sweet] with its barrage of text draped like a theatrical scrim over the canvas. Tiwala Wala [Lack of Trust] is a stunning painting – energetic, dense, confident. Spatially divided with a ray that zones the gaze, Paras pulled out his paint-box of clichés: a heart wrenched free and worn on a sleeve, a rose sits on lips sealed in silence, a skull reminds us of our mortality and, perched on top of a tempting cake, contests the adage ‘you can have your cake and eat it too’.

It is like an ancient map navigating viewers through our sea of perilous times.

The constant ricochet of the sitter’s visage across this painting, as if reasserting one’s position plagued by guilt, cowers in its own claustrophobic psychosis. Dewy eyes lock ours searching for a connection – an understanding – a release from their

internal barrage. A new palette the colour of candy brings the narrative into ‘cinematic’ zeal. Paras’s palette is significant to this new series, and again adds to the complexity of these paintings and his ability to mine fresh expression in his practice.

In contrast the painting Matamis Lang Dinig [Only hear sweet] continues the more somber tones of Paras’s earlier works.

Elements of text and painterly gestures move forward, and over the sitter, tattoolike invading that personal zone. It is a devise superbly managed by Paras and its spatial flutter has a synergy with the very layering of emotions and narratives enmeshed in his paintings. Semitransparent and abstracted it functions as both cipher and urban patina, a dialectic that could be described as part quasiethnographic and part psycho-semantic.

We will never know how intentional this equation is for Paras, we can only rely on our own reading of his emotional scapes.

What we can be sure is that Lynyrd Paras delivers “Garbage Flowers and Foolish Words” with a passion and sincerity that we have come to expect of his work. And despite their intensely personal foundation, these paintings reach far and speak the language of our times.

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TAKSU is a leading contemporary art gallery and specialist in Southeast Asia. Representing selections of fine art with distinctive urban edge, we are at the forefront of contemporary art in this region. TAKSU works to forge a platform for established and emerging artists to share their pool of creativity and knowledge through its residency programs and exhibitions. Encapsulating the true meaning of the word TAKSU; divine inspiration, energy, and spirit.

Suherwan Abu Director, TAKSU Galleries

GARBAGE FLOWERS AND FOOLISH WORDS LYNYRD PARAS

_ ISBN 978 - 981- 07-1277- 8 PAPERBACK

978 - 981- 07-1278 - 5 E-BOOK

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