Everyone has a tune that reminds them of their early years. Music has an effect on the mind s recollection of events. Breakfast is seasoned with the rich modulated voices of radio hosts, commutes on a highway are oft accompanied by everyone s own favorite tunes, dinner seems to go better with relaxing music. Growing up everyone has their own genre, and as they grow older some genres lose their appeal and some come to be more defined into someones personality. People grow up listening to their parents music, hearing songs from their brothers and sisters or sharing music with friends. Lyrics become soaked up with the tensions of the time. Emotion builds up on these memories and sentiment causes the emotion to well up on the occasion of hearing them. A persons taste in music becomes a window to take a glimpse into their inner personality.

Seeing a song is a human attempt at capturing the emotions provoked by songs and lyrics that through the years have become culturally significant. It is an association of vision and reminiscence to convey a sensation most are familiar but rarely express.

O send round the bowl—

While the waves roar and roll,

Let Freedom and Love touch the strings of the soul

excerpt from Amos Kendall’s poem “Ode to Freedom”

These days, we as a society take many things for granted. We have gotten used to walking under the sun, burdened with the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life, that we have put aside and forgotten about the battles and challenges that those before us have faced, both in the context of our country’s freedom and in the context of the boundaries that which art was and is being dictated by.

Freedom is a concept that is heavy with the weight of its history. This history consists of Filipino heroes like Dr. Jose Rizal, who famously fought for our freedom with the use of pen and paper, and artists like Claude Monet, who pushed the boundaries of the art of their times with artworks that set the standard for the Impressionist era. Their influence can be observed to this day, and this exhibit commemorates the freedom of art and expression through the works of Melvin Guirhem, Robert Besana, and Wilfredo Offemaria.

Text by Melissa Uy

What would run through our minds if we were face-to-face with the end of the world? 

This is the question around which this exhibition orbits. Would we be afraid? Would our lives flash before our eyes? Or, impossibly, would there be relief? As we spin through this carousel of possibilities, so spin the different interpretations of doom and the end, through this exhibition. Four talented artists – Adrian Labuguen; Roel Salvatierra; Kiko Marquez; and, Reuel Rendon – take us through their unique interpretations of the human condition and reactions in the face of an end. 

The end in question, however, can be taken in a literal sense – such as the case of a nuclear apocalypse – or, as a metaphor, for the breaking point(s) and points of no return that any person can and does pass through: such as heartbreaks, bankruptcies, and failures. Regardless of the definition, what remains unanimous throughout the works in this exhibition is the bold humanity in each artist’s works, each a distinct and expressive perspective of what facing the end might look like. 

Yet what each artist also invites us to contemplate, is what really ends when the world caves in – is it just the world around us, or is it the world within us, and whatever makes us human? This question is the precipice that we stand on, as each artist reminds us to consider it thoroughly. As the world caves in. 

Text by JC Barcelon