Parial at Pinto with pigments & pixels
March 31, 2003 | 12:00am
Mario Parial is back in the exhibition circuit. Last March 23, he opened his nth solo exhibition of recent and new works at the Pinto Gallery in Antipolo City. A total of 62 works on paper, each measuring 6.99 x 9.25 inches, constitute the awesome show. Parial graphically titles this comeback exhibition of sorts Pigments & Pixels.
The title alone sums up the flavor and attitude of the exhibit. Never to rest on past laurels that have been reaped on his person as one of the country’s leading visual artists, Parial keeps on forging new grounds to further his stature as a caliber artist. The exhibit attests eloquently to Parial’s maverick stance as he forays into the relatively young art form of digital art.
It is worthy to note that Parial continues to produce works that are as fresh and rich as when he started his art career in the 1960s. Through the exhibit, Parial proves that art making today can be responsive to the oftentimes magical advances in technology and communication.
Armed with a digital camera, Parial takes pictures of anything that he takes fancy of and loads them in his computer. Harnessing Adobe Photoshop 7.0, he proceeds to work on the images, enhancing their colors and resolutions, resizing or cropping them, and retouching and providing them with added textures and other visual effects in endless permutations.
Once the desired intent and composition are achieved, Parial continues with his manipulation by actually applying pigments to the prints. This way, Parial is able to juxtapose traditional pigments with pixels, which are the smallest units or picture elements in the computer.
Parial’s Pigments & Pixels is significant for two reasons.
The occasion marks the artist’s first exhibit at the Pinto Gallery. Since its opening, the gallery has exclusively featured works of the young generation of Filipino artists active in the exhibition scene today. Parial’s exhibiting in the gallery therefore indicates the readiness of the gallery to welcome to its halls and hang on its walls works of senior artists as well.
Second, the works in this particular collection are what Parial considers as very personal documents of the journey he took on his way to recovery, having been hospitalized last year. He was physically unfit for quite a while that he had to forego painting for exhibition, much against his desire.
"Age," Parial says, "is fast catching up with me. I had to take care. And had I not taken the necessary precaution, my spinal column would have given way. This exhibit, therefore, comes after a long lull. I just have to go back to the one thing I love most, making art."
The subject matter in the ongoing exhibit is handsomely varied. At best, it proves Parial’s very catholic view of life. No amount of hospital isolation hampered his oneness with his art. It is a delight to see how he successfully transformed his illness into something fulfilling and productive.
The works in the collection not only document the rehabilitation process he underwent for an early recuperation. More significantly, they showcase Parial’s enviable passion for details as he focuses on ordinary things in his surroundings and plucks them out of their anonymous existence.
Take the case of "Gate." It is a detail shot of what may be a representation of a painted white gate with rust formations eroding its surface, which look more like groups of islands in a sea of white. The diagonal lines that streak across the white field are actually remnants of water drips after a downpour. To bring forth the notion that life still visits this almost decaying piece of reality, plant forms are shown encroaching the view from both sides.
Parial did not have to manipulate this image the way he did with most of the pieces in the collection. The picture as it is is a very powerful study of contrast. The visual elements in various nuances of browns are starkly set against a non-color field of white. The generous brush strokes of blue paint in the shape of a rectangle at the center frames the biggest configuration of rust formations, imbuing the view with a new dimension of focus and association. One may even be bold to say that the framed elements look like the Philippine map in its current crumbling state of affairs.
The gift of Parial in isolating details is also expressed in "Breaker." The almost constructivist composition of circuit breakers relies heavily on the compact arrangement of the rectangular forms close to one another. A sense of dynamism is achieved by the vertical lines as suggested by the connecting electrical wirings, extending upward the composition. The focus remains on the red box amidst a non-color field of black.
Parial’s proclivity for abstract images, even if his sources are from the representational world, is noticeably exhibited in "Batik-Batik," "Damo" and "Maugat," where the flowers, leaves, and roots are taken for their linear values and their natural inclinations to put forth repeating patterns, crisscrossing lines, and dynamic rhythm. Even in "Rehab 2," Parial is able to delineate the hospital gadgets that were once a part of his daily regimen into lines and shapes that crowd the foreground.
"Founten" and "Kinalawang" show generously Parial’s affinity with the abstract. In "Founten," for instance, the combination of shapes and colors are almost reminiscent of a colorfield painting. "Kinalawang," on the other hand, affirms Parial’s attachment to constructivism where the overlapping of geometric forms becomes the overriding artistic concern and colors are kept to a minimum.
The exhibition, which runs until April 13, comes wonderfully at a time when the art scene is swamped with very progressive works of young artists. It proves that Parial, now 59, is not wont to quit the frontline yet.
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