Opening Tonight in VINYL ON VINYL

3 exhibits happening tonight in Vinyl on Vinyl, 2 solos You will destroy this planet by Darrel Ballesteros, Beach Houses by Teo Esguerra, and a massive one: Buhay na Walang Hanggan featuring: Tano Panaligan, Ren Quinio, Miki Mulingtapang, Mhelen Hassim, CURSE/GIFT, Regen Mulingtapang, Migs Deniola, Darwin Pena, QWARK, Donisio Sandoval Jr.!

Darrel Ballesteros
Second Solo Exhibit

It’s no secret that the ground we stand on is that of a crippled, dying world. For years the red flags have been raised, the warnings have been called, and the stakes are set higher as time passes. The living die by the hoards, millions washed away on the shores, countless species made extinct, the seasons and even earth’s topography has changed drastically over such a short amount of years; all of which are caused by the one track mind of a specie that mostly cares about getting newer gadgets and what’s on Facebook and not the space they’re living in. Change has been at full force this past decade. The world has reached a point of alarming transformation due to the increasing demands of a materialistic, consumerist world; one that does not transpire good fortune. Despite the changes that bleakly emerge around us, one crucial variable remains the stubbornly unchanged. We’re all still stubborn as hell.

Stupidity, apathy and ignorance is a badge man has worn all too well in this plight. Depends of course on how you define ‘well’. Despite years of already knowing the hazards of our habits, man still harbors it’s one most fatal flaw: that we can’t seem to see or feel beyond what’s in front of our eyes and what’s outside of our bubble. Apparently a problem indirectly felt, and maybe to some not even at all, is no problem at all. It’s a tragedy really. To know you’re the cause of your doom and nonchalantly go about life as if it weren’t. To step off the edge with gleeful abandon.

In Darren Ballesteros’ show he puts all the cards on the table for all to see in a manic candy-colored imitation of man’s rather disturbingly relaxed ease into his own suicide. A convoluted mix of candy and collapse, this show is a message rather bluntly put. You will destroy this planet. Not that you already are.

Teo Esguerra
First Solo Exhibit

Beach Houses is a collection of paintings of houses on seascape photographs that explore the artist’s poetry of his fascination and perspective of people and their personalities as they embody a structure that often feel safe, open, intimate yet at times unfamiliar, uncertain and disconnected — regardless of his relationship with them.

Esguerra’s years of photographing family members, friends and strangers in his own safe environment and sojourn in different and unfamiliar places unconsciously unveiled an understanding of his purpose for making art through relating to people backed with his strong family ties. His personal struggles with staying true to his artistic work are slowly coming to terms, especially with painting, thus producing this collection.

The acrylic-painted houses are superimposed on Esguerra’s small prints personally hand-printed in the darkroom while the bigger ones are archival prints from a local printing shop. They don’t necessarily represent any particular architectural style or period. The sea, on the other hand, acts as the houses’ emotional backdrop. As Esguerra relates it, “The sea symbolizes life in general, vast and uncertain.”

The interrelated pieces of artworks reach to find its own home in us. In Burning House, Esguerra depicts the ashen grey house by the rocky beach as a physical and inner sense of an individual’s igniting passion. Bird House resonate an open yet temporary refuge for those yearning for freedom. Flying House relates closely to the artist.

Beach Houses invites us to examine our relationship with ourselves and others with pure intentions and without prejudice. Esguerra’s paintings provide a sense of relief and familiarity amidst its dark tone that mirrors the solace or ambiguousness we feel from our personal encounters.

We are all like houses drifting in a beautiful and scary open sea.

-Ria Kristina Torrente

Tano Panaligan, Ren Quinio, Miki Mulingtapang, Mhelen Hassim, CURSE/GIFT, Regen Mulingtapang, Migs Deniola, Darwin Pena, QWARK, Donisio Sandoval Jr.

Contrary to popular belief, life is eternal and, unlike our memories, will never perish. It has no end and could never be stalled even by death. Eternal life is often equated to the afterlife and the notion of living forever past our deaths. That in order to reach eternal life, one must first die. Yet there is more to eternal life than its stereotypical thoughts of an only after death possibility. The present, in all its living, breathing bravado, is eternal. People are drowned unconsciously in the inevitability of life that makes them live in the world of “what is”. Hence, living life in bewilderment, frustration and remorse. This keeps them from seeing the real perspective of life’s awe, beauty, bliss and even its flaws.

People hasten to create their own personal wanderlust due to an idea that life is short. People often overlook the openness and the endless possibilities found in the seemingly minute present of life; that “Life” itself is a worthy travel and that a moment isn’t bound by any laws or ideas and is thus eternal. It is the possibility that one can pursue anything, do whatever you please and be anyone, without of course the barriers of self-imposed ideals, that gives light to an eternal life lived before death.

People are afraid of dying for dying connotes ending. Living can never be mired by death, for death is not the end but simply just another moment; another low point like one’s first failure or regret. These are all painful yet could be overcome once accepted.

One could live and die more than once in a lifetime; a never ending cycle. Life is permanent in one’s given time. The eternity in life is in the now, not the life we will have someday.