Both Black and White is Beauty: Memory Escapes My Head Like a Blur of Dave Lock.

           

 A student’s life would mean a lot of incapacities and time constraints as tasks rain cats and dogs. My summer-born love for visual arts was clear that it would end whether I like it or not.  But I want to fulfill this wish despite the immobility so I surfed the net for solutions. I gladly found Art Informal, an open and free space of exhibits that showcases artworks online. Though nothing can surpass an actual face-to face meeting with the piece itself, I still consider this as advancement and a continuity of my love for arts. I mean I have seen Da Vinci’s  Mona Lisa (a billion times) but it can’t parallel the feeling when I first saw Juan Luna’s Spolarium actually. Live is better than tapped.

            The first exhibit that struck me was Memory Escapes My Head like a Blur of Dave Lock. Memory has a lot to do with everyone. It even becomes an incognito foundation of us as human, imagine life without it - every five minutes you meet new friends you've met ten minutes ago. It’s crap. I call it incognito because a few people consider it, we always patronize the heart that does nothing but to pump blood. I don’t mean our hearts should be disposed in bins. But let us wake up to the fact that our memory takes the love we possess and not the heart. Our memory links us to a greater portion of the world and continually reminds us that we belong, whatever happens. From this, memory is thus a core faculty of life. Psychology teaches us that there are two classifications of memory – short term and long tern. Sadly, God doesn't provide permanent thoughts only lasting ones. Our memory is always at a brink of loss in the infinite space. The mind has no strength to be a container of unlimited memories and maybe by this we bear the capacity of fully forgiving those who hurt us. The when memory takes its own way, it becomes a chameleon to mist and remains unfound. And an abhorring fact to be grieved upon is that these memories are snippets of our creativity. Unlike those memories we induce to forget that doesn't quickly escapes.  Good thing Dave Lock willfully got a chance to retrieve and prevent these memories from running to the abyss.

There is a poem of Angela Manalang Gloria entitled Poems (1940) saying:

“But all of them, however perfect

In my mind’s retreat,

Appear bewildered when released

And oh, so incomplete.”

The poetess appears so distressed of incompatibility of the actual opus to its mental state as Fr. Miguel Bernad SJ calls it – inchoate. Memory Escapes My Head Like a Blur’s completion as a magnum opus and incompletion as inchoate heavily anchors on our judgement and on how we unravel the semantics of the works.

            One distinctive touch of Dave Lock’s works is his titling. He sublimely justifies the correlation of its nomenclature to the artworks. It seems to me that the marriage of his titles to the works can parallel the essence of an epic. It’s not like the parodied Mona Lisa of Marcel Duchamp entitled L.H.O.O.Q which embodies lone Dadaism. Lock attempts to give meaning from the bosom of the opus to its extremities therefore nothing is bypassed.

                Of the many colors that the world offers, Lock uses only two black and white – white as the space while back as consumer of space. The synchrony of black and white, matter and content, drives us closer to the gamut of the artist’s expression. Black and white tends to be dependent, mutually owing their existence from one another as white defines black and black defines white. Though monochrome in nature, his works offer a prism that introduces us to pastel interpretations in a spectrum. Its action as dualistic is converted to a purposive plurality relatively ranging from the imaginative to critical interpretations.

            From a pool of his works, I have selected ten (not in order). The basis of my selections is personal than conceptual. It’s the subjective relation that paints the details that match to what has been stored to our memory. For example, Leap of Faith appears to be an illusion of a faith moving forward but is visually dismal. The paradox it shares among an array of audience signifies the artist’s capability to reflect or deflect man. Siamese is dichotomy of the human personality torn between wraths. In the other hand, Coil gains our pity from a female interfered by her environment to be naturally dependent.

            Four Place at Once established an ancient concept of balance, order and tranquility much like the coexistence of earth, wind, fire and water. From the distinctions of its shades, we take a vivid picture of each detail simultaneously working to create an equal existence, relying from one another for creation and survival. Aloof from the balance that the aforementioned work offers, comes the opposition of matter versus natural order. Gravity is an Ugly Lover depicts the matter pushing itself away from its usual ground against natural order that pull matter back. The conflict gives rise to chaos and eminent death. Lock doesn't only paint death. Out of the decay of a Sarcophagus, he breathes life in it. That within a sarcophagus is a system that relies on the process of nature and that dying is somehow of life itself.

            But between Life and Death, the artist gives stress to the dominance of death. In a clash between fire and flowers, life becomes submissive and transforms into ashes. Unlike the Phoenix that has an innate chance to rebirth, the flower has none. In the context of the society Lock’s equation is true. Try to measure to speed of the propagation of bad and good news, the results are amazing. Pass an examination, your family will celebrate. Fail it, prepared to be devoured and feasted by your neighbors.

            Memory Escapes My Head like a Blur builds a bias to what is happening in a mental realm especially dreams. Forgotten Dreams express a frustration from a break-out idea. And once you find it, you will discover that it is badly shaped and obscure in figure. Probably,  one of the greatest imperfections of humanity is to mentally recover its very own dreams exactly. Indeed, it is the epitome of a memory that escapes like a blur. Even worse is Dreamless 1 that having nothing at all is problematic. But we are relieved by Dream are Longer When You don’t Sleep because it assures us that we have an all day chance to find our slipping dreams, wide awake.

             The exhibit is toughly mental; it challenges our imaginations and the very knowledge of us. Take time to visit Art Informal at 277 Connecticut Street, Greenhills East, Mandaluyong City, Philippines. Gallery hours are 11:00 AM-7:00PM (Monday to Friday) while 10:00AM-6:00PM on Saturdays. The gallery is always closed on Sundays. For further details refer to these numbers: 63 (2) 725-8518 or 63 (918) 899 2698. Don’t wait until July 1, 2013

About the Artist

B. 1986. Dave lock is a non- art school undergraduate. He has had 6 solo shows to date, and a number of group shows around here in the Philippines and one recently in Singapore, where he also had his two week in-house artist residency. His latest exhibition is currently ongoing at the UP Vargas Museum. His method of painting and drawing are quite similar, as they are both done freehand and executed in an obsessive compulsion for detailed etchings. The habitual line drawings and repetitive patterns crawling among his eerie portraits describe his almost neurotic paranoia of existence, and its cyclical dominion over us.

Leap of Faith

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2050

Wildfires Spread Faster Than Flowers
ink and acrylic on paper
49 x 36.5 in / 4.1 x 3 ft
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2061

Four Places at Once

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2048

Gravity is an Ugly Lover

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2049

Sarcophagus

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2055

Siamese

ink and acrylic on paper
49 x 39.5 in / 4.1 x 3.3 ft
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2065

Dreamless (1)

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2043

Dreams are Longer When You Don't Sleep

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2045

Forgotten Dreams

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2047

Coil

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2042

 

PS. I do not own the images. They belong to Art Informal.