AN ART exhibit dubbed "On the other hand" featuring the art masterpieces of Tristan Miravalles and Mikiboy Pama at the Orange Project opened in time for the Tanduay Bacolod Rum festival opening held on August 12, 2022 at the Orange Gallery in Mandalagan, Bacolod City.
The artists brought in paintings about the evolution, which Pama describes as a language of time on a grand scale.
“Like time, we cannot see it beyond the conceptual level (but) only through observing the effects it has left behind are we able to recognize its reality,” he said.
Pama added that the past is the keeper of truths etched in stone and, oftentimes, in bones. Saying that he is not an artist, but an explorer, Pama said his art practice does not stray far from a paleontologist’s manner of creating a faunal assemblage where bones, decayed specimens, sketches and other such ornaments are more informational than they are aesthetic in both content and composition.
For his part, Miravalles said, evolution for him is a mirror that reveals what we are now by showing us what we were in the past and what we can become in the future.
For instance, he said, naturalist, Charles Darwin correctly predicted, before his death, the existence of a species of moth possessing specific physical traits 130 years prior to its discovery.
This foresight, however, is not the kind of one who encounters from theatrical conjurors or fortune tellers, Miravelles said.
He added that this predictive power of science is honed from an elaborate and elegant examination of factual data, long-term research and repeatable experimental conclusions.
"Humans will evolve based on what they choose to resist and what they choose to accept," the artist stressed.
Tanduay Bacolod Rum Festival Director Charmaine Pahate, Bacolod Councilors Jason Villarosa, and Em Ang and Artist Charlie Co graced the opening of the said festival.