It’s a twin solo showcase for Silverlens Manila in November as Luis Lorenzana proceeds with his long-standing pursuit of understanding artistic expression, while Pow Martinez illustrates our collective recent past.
Lorenzana’s presentation, titled Heads, and Pows’s Clunker will be on view from November 3 to December 3 at the gallery’s Chino Roces space in Makati City.
A pop surrealist with recognizable forms, Lorenzana has participated in over 30 group and solo shows here and abroad. His background in politics as a public administration student and employee at the Philippine Senate informed his early works. The artist then circled back to decipher the essence of artistic expression, an endeavor that preceded his artistic career.
In his new solo exhibition, Lorenzana visualizes his latest musings. Colors and concepts may vary, but are artists ultimately doomed to be reduced to a cookie-cutter approach in production, if not already? Are they shackled by their own thoughts and processes? Perhaps this is what Lorenzana implies in an untitled piece, running patterns of the same characters in various renders.
A close inspection reveals individuality. From a broader view, however, everything looks the same. It’s as if the artist leads us to ask: Is freedom scarce even in expression itself?
Alongside Lorenzana’s exhibition is Pow’s newest solo, his fifth with Silverlens Manila.
Clunker presents the artist’s recent works bursting in his signature bold colors and grotesque themes—a style that has earned him acclaim even outside the country. In this exhibition, Pow calls on his demons and deviants yet again that inhabit environments that are as peculiar; their actions, however, much more subdued.
Unlike in previous works where they scream and screech and bend and crawl, here they are mostly languishing by their lonesome. They are on their phones and melt with the furniture, suggesting an extended period of sedentariness.
Pow is recognized for daring artworks that are far out there. But those presented in this show prove to be much closer as they hit home. They are not vibrant portals to otherworldly dimensions but a mirror, reflecting our recent collective past living in lockdown.
For once, at least this pointedly in Pow’s art, we are the creatures living in an odd world.