S.R., the ongoing solo exhibit of recent works by Lindslee at the Big and Small Gallery in SM Megamall fleshes out this astute observation made five centuries ago by one of the most adored and revered painters of all time, the great Leonardo himself. Life, or nature, as recognized by the Greeks, remains to be an infinite fount of images, both recognizable and unknown.
The works hanging in the gallery walls may seem to favor the non-representational idiom; but when they are taken in light of the exhibition theme, they become representations of city walls that Lindslee’s artistic eye deems visually patent and therefore potent for an exhibition theme.
The exhibit makes use of paltry walls as venerable subject matter of the exposition. This is further dramatized by making the usual neutral walls of the gallery simulate the walls of the metropolis – rundown, uneven, and wretched. Lindslee carries these wall treatments to another plane. He makes use of his "wall paintings" as an engaging platform to call attention to the decay, both physical and moral, of life in the city. Hence, the cryptic title of the show – S.R. – to instantly allude to social realism.
It is however a shift from figurative art, which usually characterizes works, predisposed to this attitude, to a very formal art, that is both abstract in appeal and contemporary in spirit.
I am (working) in this genre, to illustrate in my own way what it is like to live in my own time, and how I see the world apart from the common perspective. – Lindslee
An amalgam of materials – resin, wax, acrylic, canvas, mesh wires, plastics, varnish, screens, ad infinitum – brings about an engaging visual choreography of textural interests. The varied materials are ingeniously arranged and juxtaposed in coherent compositions to gain either textural similitudes or contrasts, using largely the square format.
Here the layering technique serves as a metaphor for the layers of the natural elements of dust and rain, toxic waste and pollutants that walls accumulate through time, and even human wastes, excrements that are uncaringly imposed on these uncomplaining surfaces that abound in the urban scape of Manila. These layers may often tell stories on their own, witness crimes and very personal acts, or simply act as mute witness to the daily rigor and grind of life as it unfolds in the city.
Lindsey presents the thin dividing line between aesthetic sophistication and social realities in this new series of painted mixed media works. SR is a mysterious indicator: it may mean social reality, it may mean sophisticated reminiscence; indeed, it may mean anything. The trick is to see the artworks and relate them to a network of mysterious visual cues, signs that Lindslee himself suggests at one point or another. They relate to how one lives within the city, its noise, its apathy, and its alienation.
The exhibit can either be a realization of the ideal balance between color and line, or it can suggest the passage of memory, or just the layering of soot. In any case, Lindslee’s works show that Philippine abstraction has not gone stale. It has a definite future, and one that can be quite invigorating, if not youthful.
Lindslee obtained his bachelor of fine arts from the University of Santo Tomas in 2000, then went to the United States to take more art courses at The Art Students League of New York. A consistent finalist in the various national art competitions when he was yet a student, he mounted his first solo exhibit at the Harrison Public Library in New York in 2002. Thereafter, upon coming back to the Philippines, he followed it up with another solo exhibit entitled "Perception" at the Avellana Art Gallery, also in 2002 and then, most recently, "Cause and Effect" at the The Drawing Room in May 2003.