About the Event
The show perhaps should be called ‘Infinite, Zero, Infinite’ pertaining to the middle number that zero stands for. On either side of it, are an infinity at the positive or at the negative. Mathematically, these are unconnected—zero is a number; infinity is a concept you can never reach.
For this show, Jose Santos III chose Bernardo Pacquing, Bernardo Pacquing chose Chati Coronel. Santos and Pacquing were first, and last, together shown at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award in 2000, the millennium bug year. Chati’s pieces float in and out of Bernie’s consciousness, like spirit pieces reflected on months after their encounter. A conversation over studio visits among the artists revealed common interests in the beginnings of their processes, in the endless inquiries presented by specifics. Inquiries that can go either side into positive or negative: x-axis or y-axis. Or z-axis even!
Zero is the measure of nothing, of having no quality; infinity, we use to describe the process of doing something forever. Zero is a definite presence; infinity is an approach. Diagrammatically, their symbols are the same, an unbroken but connected line, but twists of each other.
The twist is what we are interested in. When does something become art? When do materials rise above their humble parts to become more than their sum? When Pacquing ratchets together hard and soft objects to form impossible but consummate unions; when Coronel paints layers on layers of color and text to reveal a final figure that was there from the beginning; and when Santos builds assemblages into cascading packets of the national psyche.
Philosophically, they present a way of working— a perpetual beginning, an indivisible source, the perfect unknown.
-Isa Lorenzo
Zero Infinite is on view from 23 March to 17 April 2019 alongside Continuing Growth by Tessy Pettyjohn at SILVERLENS, 2263 Don Chino Roces Avenue Extension, Makati City. For inquiries on this show, contact info@silverlensgalleries.com or +63917-587-4011.