Vestida ng Paglaho

Artinformal is pleased to present the works of Jose Tence Ruiz in Vestida ng Paglaho on April 7 2018, Saturday, at 6pm in our Greenhills Gallery.

The current epoch is burdened by an emphysemic surfeit of mirrors.The narcissistic pond has been mechanized into a boggling array of selfie devices, from the portable to the highly automated, all still with the gross effect of pushing vanity to a contrived peak, where it cohabits with respect, compassion, faith, hunger, camaraderie, and old fashioned good sense as one of the must-have qualities of being contemporary. Private trivia is the new manifesto. Vanity is steroid-addled empowerment, licensing our biology to merge with the network and litter our minute innanities all over the landscape, solicited or not.

This epoch of vanity finds it no mystery that the rising swell of mob initiative, of leadership is one built on the assertive declaration, on the compulsive tweet, on the risque but deliberate soft and hard harrass- ment of dissent and discourse, on the lingual gymnastic oiled with eros, on the juggling of gab, on the capture of all picture making, on the provocation and pilfering of all transmission. Conceited bluster, not meditation, not analysis, not rumination, rules.

Vestidas are Ruiz’s old reliable alter-ego of the notion of conceit, whether they are studded with arcane blades and bullet pocked ruins, ornamental vegetation that conceals its own unwilling harvest or rust-frozen infrastructure that grinds and staggers forward on the fodder of quartered limbs. Conceit is a grapple between soaring hubris and its zoologic moorings. It is a grapple between a vain lie and bigger verities.Earlier kotillions gave way to a diplomatic artifice of representation.These vestidas are stark, almost primordial in their totalitarian menace. They may hint at, even promise reinvention, but only after they have pistol whipped us into abject submission.