Exhibitions

Eight hundred years ago, the mystic Rumi wrote, “don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the wounded place; that’s where the light enters you.” Like the waning moon that knows the fullness to come, or kindling beholding spark from the flint, or the wheat grain that split open to grow, was crushed into flour, then dissolved as it nourished a human being; wounds are manifestations of frailty, but also resilience, and the continuous quest for the ultimate good. Hablo’s show will be the soft opening exhibition of the new Galerie Joaquin Podium. The new Galerie Joaquin Podium is located at the 3rd Level of the newly opened Podium Mall. Galerie Joaquin presents the seventh solo exhibition by Iloilo-based abstract artist Allain Hablo entitled Sacred Scars. The collection of twenty artworks, poignantly minimalist and immaterial, heralds the reopening of the modern and contemporary art gallery’s second branch in the new wing of The Podium Mall, continuing their eight-year legacy in a bigger and better space.

Born in Estancia, Iloilo City, Allain Hablo has been an artist for most of his life. But the road to success was long and winding - despite knowing that painting was all he wanted to do, Allain took over his late mother’s large-scale dried fish business while taking care of his wife and four children. In 2000, he struck what was to be a life-changing deal with his wife. If he won the Metrobank Young Painters’ Annual Competition, she would stop her schooling to run the business while he pursued a career in art. The third place prize brought Allain to where he is today, seventeen years later. Since then, Allain has run quite the gamut: from portraits and mixed media art to sculptures, murals, and even production design for independent Ilonggo films. A proud member of Iloilo’s crop of talented artists, Allain has steadily established himself in the Philippine art scene, bagging prizes from the Shell National Students Arts Competition, the Philippine Art Awards, the Bangko Sentral National Painting Competition, and most recently theVisayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference (VIVA ExCon) Garbo sa Bisaya (Pride of Visayas) Award. Allain has joined countless group exhibits in galleries and art fairs in the Philippines and abroad - he has exhibited at the Red Mill Gallery in Vermont, USA, at Avellana Art Gallery, Galerie de Arsie, Casa Real de Iloilo, ManilArt, and at Art Fair Philippines.

At almost fifty years old, Allain is a firm believer in the old adage that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” He created the twenty lacquer and gold powder paintings in Sacred Scars with the philosophy of kintsugi (golden joinery) in mind. It originated in fifteenth century Japan following the spread of Buddhist philosophy. The practice repaired broken ceramic vessels using gold lacquer veins and patches from other existing pieces, the resulting joinery highlighting the place and occurrence of damage. Often, these ceramics were tea ceremony utensils, wherein the participant’s use of the repaired items would inspire a deepened awareness of the passage of time, as well as one’s own inevitable mortal fate. However, the unintended accident also set in motion acts of repair that would ultimately lead to a more profound appearance than before; if only one surrendered the desire to impose one’s will upon the world. Carrying the scars of the past, yet accepting of the vicissitudes of the future, the self would be reborn in a new identity.

Like scrolls of wisdom passed down through generations, or hanging scrolls of calligraphy and painting, eighteen of Allain’s artworks for Sacred Scars stretch dramatically across the horizon, or extend overhead. Only one pair of paintings is perfectly square, stricken with gold that splits them imperfectly asunder. Patches of layered color, morose and hazy, seem to obscure a foreign landscape upon which the golden scar charges like a flash of lightning. Rhythmically it traverses the twenty paintings, stitching together a muted, shadowy world that was once possibly a cohesive whole. The clean divisions, cutting across one end of a canvas to another, suggest a past totality, a primordial Pangaea that inexplicably drifted apart. Allain’s deft hand translates the technique of golden joinery into two-dimensional visual form; the resulting minimal image suggests an infinite extension of the image beyond the confines of the canvas, an allegory for humanity’s limitless potential, despite and precisely because of, our mortal fate.

Damage and destruction is necessary for change and evolution; but it is by human minds and human hands that ill fortune is transformed into vitality, resilience, and new life. Allain Hablo has, by sheer dedication, perseverance, and an incessant thirst for art-making, sustained wounds as diamonds do cuts. By going beyond the limitations of the human senses, the abstract artworks in Sacred Scars resonate widely and deeply. In his seventh solo exhibition, Allain asks his viewers to move past the wounds that bind them, to fully exist within the moment, and allow for the rebirth of the self.

Sacred Scars is the seventh solo exhibition by Iloilo-based abstractionist Allain Hablo. Its Artist Reception on December 5, 2017 heralds the reopening of Galerie Joaquin’s second branch in the new wing of The Podium Mall. The gallery is located on the 3rd level of The Podium, ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong City. The exhibit will be on view from November 28 until December 13. For inquiries, contact Galerie Joaquin at (+63) 917 158 9243 or email them at podium.galeriejoaquin@gmail.com