Perspective, whether linear or aerial, has long created the illusion of space in painting.  For centuries before modernism, artist have shunned the flatness and material two-dimensionality of the picture plane for the illusion of inward recession into depth. The linear perspective of the Renaissance with its division into foreground, middle ground and background, with lines converging into a single point on the horizon line, long governed the organization of space. This constituted an important canon in classical painting. But with modernism, the approach to spatial organization changed with impressionism, cubism and simultaneity, along with other innovations.

In the present time, young artists have taken up the challenge of capturing space and time in their own original ways.  One such artist is Malyn Bonayog who exhibited some works recently in Art Gallery Manila, a new venue in La Fuerza Compound. A young painting major who graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in 2005, she has consistently joined group shows and competitions where she won many awards.

A work which caught the interest of many artists and gallery-goers was Time Warp, which was her entry in a group show of new art in the Art Center of SM Megamall. In wall-size dimensions, the work stood out for its multimedia effects from a combination of acrylic painting and video which was a box situated above and across it, focusing on the large work. The image itself was a unique combination  of photography  and painting, the two media  in an active mutual symbiosis. The basic scene is a photographic rendering of old Intramuros, shown in perspectival view, with buildings on both sides with their particular architectural features and old automobiles parked along both sides of the road but seeming to meet at a distant point. The image, however, challenges the traditional optical view because it is divided into sections, each with its distinct pattern of fine colored lines, straight or wavy, but always equidistant like fingerprint  patterns. According to the artist, these separate sections may represent different time zones  in the history of the place. The wavy lines  necessarily bring in movements and directions that increase the potential of the image. Completing the urban scene on another layer are people that appear to belong to different places and different time zones which indicate gaps and dislocations in the historical narrative despite the dynamic linear movements. The human figures themselves are of  different ethnic characteristics. At the center, a city denizen in modern clothes seems to walk into a lumad from a different habitat. Even the two women walking on the left possess a faint  anachronistic quality.  However, the artistic device combines the synchronic of the same vertical time and the diachronic of horizontal  movement in  one cohesive and complex image.

Even more, the video from the black-box sets the whole image in motion and the scene becomes only one moment in time, for new figures and dramatis personae enter the street both ways, as in the manner of holograms that move too elusively to be captured, each moving in their own personal rhythms. After a while, the viewer himself feels a part of this busy urban commonality as it combines Filipinos from different zones and times to participate in and gravitate to a dynamic center filled with powerful archeological  energies.

Malyn also likes to use the same device in her series of old houses, such as Casa San Miguel, also painted in 2010. In contrast to the first, the image is relatively static, also a fusion of painting and photography.  The bahay-na-bato which is positioned in a corner of the street is entirely covered with fine vertical lines like a mediating screen protecting the subject  from  direct unguarded view. Likewise, in some areas of the image are faint white dots that create a blurring, distancing effect as of memory. In the black-and white image where undulating tones are foremost, two or three windows emit a reddish light. The general structure of the house  is well-defined and clear, although its broad and pointed roof  has an organic rather than geometric  appearance because of the lush effect of its tones that run down the side staircase of the azotea. The image of the house tells of its vicissitudes through time, its celebrations and its griefs, its living energies, as well as its hauntings.

A third work , this time of contemporary issues, shows a different effect for the linear rhythms. In Box Office, a policeman imposes control on a crowd of youth in a theater queue or rally. The space of the policeman is plain as daylight and unlined while the row of young people pleading to be let in or to participate in a mass action is streaked in red and white undulating lines expressing their emotional fervor and avid desire to be counted in. There is a strong contrast between the two spaces. On one hand is state discipline and on the other, the challenge from the youth: one order, the other fervor  for a cause.

Perhaps, there are many more discoveries and directions that Malyn Bonayog will find in this visualization of space and time. And her use of multimedia will lead to further developments in this age where one discovery leads to another. But Malyn Bonayog moves at a faster pace by enriching the image from rich and fertile fields that seem to proliferate with each invention in art and science.