A love letter and a parting gesture

Two young artists who are making their mark in the contemporary art scene are Lendl Arvin and Johanna Helmuth. The “mark” here should be construed not only figuratively but literally as well: Helmuth exhibits hard-edge realism with her rough, uneven brushstrokes while Arvin keeps his touch lighter and more modulated, approaching a kind of photorealism flecked with disruptions on the picture plane.

Last July, the two artists collaborated on the show, “Unconsciously Living,” exhibited at Secret Fresh. Here, they presented self-portraits and proxies of complex psychological states. Helmuth delved into the violence of the everyday (a threat of impending rape was one of the themes) while Arvin grappled with the demands of art, successfully conveying the impotence an artist occasionally feels in front of a canvas. Together, their works sparked a kind of dialogue into the nature of representation from their unique — and gendered — sensibilities.

Arvin and Helmuth are at it again with “Moving Points” which runs until Oct. 17 at West Gallery in Quezon City. The show is their visual diary that pays homage to the house they shared together for three years as a couple and that served as a witness to their collaborative — almost conjugal — creative feats. Their cohabitation, after all, went beyond the romantic: they painted side by side, honed their ideas of figuration against each other’s practices and supported each other’s budding careers. They were a true working artist couple.

Bridging the dialectic of “Moving Points” is Helmuth’s “Untitled,” a triptych composed of her and Arvin’s portraits, either connected or separated by an easel. The easel represents their chosen craft, the very thing that led them to share one house and, three years later, pay homage to it in this exhibition.

When Helmuth moved out, the two decided to make sense of their breakup though the language they know best: the visual. They painted the house from different vantage points: Helmuth from the view of someone who has left it, remembering its contours and unpacking its memories; Arvin from that of someone who has stayed behind, reckoning with the suddenly empty space. “Moving Points” then is a metaphor of their union and separation. It is both a love letter and a parting gesture.

For Helmuth, the house has solidified into memory, characterized by severe Modernist lines against a blue-gray sky. Evoked with her signature rough, hard strokes as though the brush had wounded the canvas, the house is all rationality and stability — a box that has been closed and never to be opened again. Nothing betrays its interior life; all the windows and doors are shut tight. The only way one can deduce that any sign of life has transpired within its walls is the works’ title: “Studio.” It’s shorthand for what the house has stood for in all those years.

In Lendl Arvin’s work, “Different Space, Same Purpose,” the house is in a state of halfcompletion or, rather, fully completed but interrogated, added with splotches and marks, willfully disfigured. It is as though the artist could not bring himself to paint the house without registering emotion.

Arvin’s version, on the other hand, is in a state of half-completion or, rather, fully completed but interrogated, added with splotches and marks, willfully disfigured. It is as though he could not bring himself to paint the house without registering emotion. It is on the verge of dissolving into abstraction, into the unsayable. It’s telling that in one painting, titled “Working Space,” the canvas yawns unfilled, is empty. His works seem to be saying that it will take some time before things solidify and get done again.

Bridging this dialectic is Helmuth’s “Untitled,” a triptych composed of her and Arvin’s portraits, either connected or separated by an easel depending on how you view it. The easel, of course, represents their chosen craft, the very thing that led them to live in one house. The male artist looks sideways, as though trying to catch the gaze of the woman artist. Alas, she has closed her eyes. They will never see eye-to-eye again. It’s a powerful summation of two lives lived in a singular place that they will never inhabit together again. Yes, art is longer than life but, as “Moving Points” demonstrates, it is also longer than love.