‘Shadows Between The Lines’ runs until Sept. 6, 2025, Galleria Duemila, 210 Loring Street, Pasay City.
“The artist must be true to himself and his vision without worrying about the expectations of others.” — Diego Rivera
Venezuelan artist Jonidel Mendoza’s titles for works on exhibit read like the meditative lines of a poem. The ephemeral and contemplative qualities of his oeuvre presented in his first Manila exhibition at Galleria Duemila appeal to our visceral senses conjuring an inquisitive desire to touch, feel, listen, and enter into the totality of each mixed media painting and sculptural installation. Upon encountering the artworks, one may feel an impulse to interact with them, physically move from one side to the other, wander with one’s eyes in motions that reveal multidimensional layers of aesthetic and social meaning, discovering how the artist’s psyche and perhaps one’s own traverse existential questions of one’s being and purpose.
Traces of the words SOUL| TRANSPARENCY | LEVITATION| IMMATERIAL | SILHOUETTE appear and disappear in intuitive yet controlled lines of hues of blue acrylic paint and black Japanese ink; free-flowing lines of graphite applied on combined layers of canvas; organic silk fabric; and anti-mosquito fiberglass mesh. Apparitions of one or more genderless face and human figures promote interactive looking in liminal spaces. Ubiquitous ambiguity abounds. Who is represented in these pieces—the artist, you, me, us, them? The ghosting effects emulate shedding skins and a convergence of fragmented selves in these wondrous moodscapes.
‘Self-silhouette’
Textural allusions to fine embroidery, braille, Morse code, a matrix of staples, and soldered metal imply a cache of moods enhancing the viewing experience. Mendoza’s mixed-media paintings—Face to Face Between the Lines, Yesterday and Day Before A Portrait of You, Evidence of the Convert, Anonymous Silhouette Whose Life, and Along With Ours Passes, Dies, and Endures, Echo of What We Are There In What We See …, and his two self-portraits, Self-silhouettes—exude vulnerability and nakedness, and whispers of a life lived without closure. The illusive nature of these words, or if they are even seen as words at all, is up to the viewer to ponder. There is a playfulness to this invitation to meditate on one’s findings as s/he/they visually meander through the paintings. It is in this moment that the viewer may enter into the artist’s state of mind now externalized in the push/pull sensations of experiencing the familiarity, disorientation, melancholia, and comfort that these works evoke. And as such, potentially enriched engagements with Mendoza’s creative process and connective kinetic energy can occur—testament to Mendoza’s commitment to self-expression as a means to captivate his audience.
Explorations of these introspections from all angles, close-up, and from afar invigorate experiential readings of the artworks’ tacit universality. Such impressionistic connotations can also be reflected upon in Mendoza’s serial sculptural installations Echo of the Reflection in the Window and In the Midst of Evanescent Society. Literal readings of these minimalist abstractions/ “windows” with hints of human faces sculpted from high-voltage wire prohibit entrance into their profundity, which this writer experiences as “soul-speak.” And like his paintings, movement is inherent within each of these works, albeit of a different kind, as the viewer’s frontal/side shadow fills their vacant “frames.”
‘Anonymous silhouette whose life, along with ours, passes, dies, and endures’
Interceptions of Reflections, a stand-alone wall-sculpture, perhaps best exemplifies Mendoza’s skillful command over his choice of materials to address complex ruminations on humanity and one’s place within it. The homogenous life-size figures made of malleable heavy-duty industrial galvanized mesh appear to be in everyday motions that suggest convergence and divergence. Once again, a question arises as to who this figure/s may be—the artist, you, me, us, them? These open-ended spaces containing shadows/silhouettes in dialogue with a viewer offer a kind of self-reflection that can be calming, jarring, or a combination of both.
Closeup of ‘Anonymous silhouette whose life, along with ours, passes, dies, and endures’
The ideas that informed these 10 artworks stem from being “stranded” in Manila during the pandemic
In an interview with Mendoza, he shared that the ideas that informed these 10 artworks stem from being “stranded” in Manila during the pandemic while waiting for his visa to return to Seoul, Korea, where he had been residing for five years. Such precarity of times in which we lived expanded his motif of interplay with shadows/silhouettes, and his sense of aloneness in one’s inner and outer worlds that also speaks to a pulsating connectivity with the self. Mendoza’s diverse materials—traditional arts, fabric, and industrial wire metal—used to create these pieces embody the sacred fragility and strength of one’s inner being. In essence, the artworks presented in Shadows Between the Lines are portals into the unconscious awakenings of the human spirit.
‘Echo of the Reflection in the Window’
‘Shadows Between The Lines’ runs until Sept. 6. Gallery hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am to 5: pm. Galleria Duemila is at 210 Loring Street, Pasay City, Metro Manila, email: art@galleriaduemila.com or call tel. nos. 8831-9990 and (0908) 307-9972.
Digital catalogue: https://issuu.com/art.galleriaduemila/docs/shadows_between_the_lines
