2.08.09 mendoza exhibit review

As many of you know I also write exhibit reviews. Below is my first for this year.


A long stretch
Whether one dreams in color or black and white is a question that is often asked.

From artists you would expect that the answer would be the former since color is simply or expectedly part of the immediate range of an artist's vocabulary.

But not necessarily with all artists.

In his thesis exhibit, 'Odyssey,' currently on show at the Cafe Capriccio, graduating UP Fine Arts student, Ramon Carlo 'Caloy' Mendoza hints that he is an exception.

This is not to say, however, that his works are devoid of color. To the contrary, many of his works do have color. But they play a secondary, layer determining or enhancing role, although having a more varied spectral dimension color does, in some of the works where they are present, tend to overstep this role.

Nonetheless, the stellar billing still belongs to images which are in stark, non-gradiated black renditions.

These images, sourced from pictures, illustrations or drawings bear the second exceptional feature in this show. They are not painted images in the traditional sense. They are processed, edited, manipulated using the tool that is now ubiquitous with many artists: the computer and its concomitant software.

Immediately, this raises the stylistic banner of pop art which is, indeed, acknowledged by Mendoza.

While the pioneering work of Warhol, Johns and others set the discourse for pop art in both the elevation of popular, mostly consumer imagery – product labels -- to a level approaching that of the 'fine' bourgeoisie hagiography of traditional painting and the utilization of media that lent itself to mass production – silk screen printing, for example – Mendoza leans on the diffusive possibilities of digital imaging and processes.

And for image content Mendoza is less obliged to pay tribute to the consumerist crowning of the original pop art. Instead, there is a movement towards an ironic nod or frank acceptance of the banality of everyday life.

Again, while in Warhol and Johns – more with Warhol than Johns – the consumer product is presented in bare minimalist fashion, although repeated ad infinitum, the layering remains flat and determinedly on the surface, Mendoza's layers have highly wrought yet decorative functions that highlight not so much a minimalist as an emptimalist core.

In this, Mendoza is right in step with the times, especially youth techno-gadgetry culture that ostensibly celebrates digital connection yet somehow is at a loss on what to do with connectiveness. Or how to achieve and maintain it.

On the technical level, the layering is done in the most painterly way. There is, of course, the pigment of paint – the use of which tend to be confused or slapdash and takes on the quality of wallpaper -- but more in keeping with Mendoza's method, it is the vehicle of paint – here, glue – that allows for physical layers of images on paper one of top of the other.

The works where such layering is most pronounced, which, in the nature of this technique, makes it the most subtle, coupled with a restrained use of images are those that come out as most attractive or most able to afford the possibility of deeper discourse.

Yet, for the most part, deeper discourse is elusive with these works. Not least because Mendoza in his exhibit statement – unfortunately just read during the opening and not made readily available to the public-- opts to stay within the comfort zone of technical explanations and gives precious little about content.

However, such absence does not prevent the works from presenting an interesting departure from the image generation of traditional painting. In many works – though one is at a loss to explain the variety of sizes – the various visual and textural elements brought on by layering comes together to make these pieces feel just right.

Even with these, a walk would be more than enough and an odyssey is a long stretch.