Across Structural Realities

In Across Structural Realities, recent works by Rene Bituin, Sarah Conanan, Rhex Dacaymat, Teo Esguerra, James Fowler, Hannah Nantes, Mark Nativo, David Ryan Viray and Zuh Dai cross concepts, visible spaces, and pressing concerns in this post-pandemic world.

James Fowler's painting of a deteriorating concrete post serves as a reminder of the fragility of our constructed world. Rene Bituin's works use patterns from camouflage, rock formations, and human-propelled renderings of ever-spreading crystallizations juxtaposed against the organic lines of a tree trunk, in one of his pieces allowing natural matter and angular shapes flowing out to the open. Sarah Conanan's Mothering features a grown cat caught on canvas with a dead bird, seemingly confused whether to attack or nurture. In Start Them Young, she portrays a curious kitten playing with the dead bird, raising questions about the relationship between creatures and their awareness of mortality. Teo Esguerra's Low Frequency Noise Box features collaged images of crushed fabric compared to water, a beach, and a figure.

Wave Sample, Reverb + Delay features another pieced-together collection of images, this time drier with its
depiction of leaves and earth, a pathway, and a child looking out into the horizon. Both pieces are interspersed with pink lines and shapes, underscoring random beats visibly pulsating. David Ryan Viray's Left Handed Painting showcases objects that surround and represent the artist's studio life. In his bigger piece, The Right Handed Painter, a detailed anatomical rendition is overlapped with a mapping of creative flow, the artist’s blood tracing energy as it builds strength before being impressed on canvas. Mark Nativo's monochromatic scenes of figures outside home structures convey a sense of despair and uncertainty, reflecting the anxieties of the present and uncertain futures. Rhex Dacaymat's petrified tree branches in grayscale portray the beauty of nature frozen on canvas, a visual scale of white, gray, and black with shades from bright to dark and punctuated by a vibrant spurt of crimson.

Zuh Dai creates a molded acrylic painting with comics and anime-inspired spliced images that bring pops of
process colors, varying planar depths, and clearly delineated, zoomed-in imagery that plays with the
fragmentation of the figurative to usher notions of the abstract. Hannah Nantes presents paintings of vintage plates in A Well-Curated Display and A Thin Veneer Of Mahogany, showcasing the artist's attachment to nostalgia and traditional design as she engages memory and tweaks it to compare and contrast with the more formal ornamentations of fine China mounted against a humble wooden setting.

With structural realism as a pretext, we may view scientific theories that tell us only about forms and
structures of the unobservable world, neglecting its nature. This selection of artists with their works work
across worlds both seen and felt, collecting experiences and presenting them as tangible visions. They invite us to contemplate on the complexities of our existence, allowing us to reflect on our relationships with the natural and fabricated realities we find ourselves in.