OPENING RECEPTION: 06 March, Friday, 7 – 9pm

Silverlens is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of the London-based Filipino artist, Pio Abad, in Singapore. The exhibition will comprise of new drawings and sculptures that further explores the artist’s ongoing interest in inventories and the social and political implications of objects.

Our world is propped and adorned with artifacts—without which, our lived experience would appear as a purposeless conference engaged in hollow abstractions. The mind is a doer, a creator, and the history of ideas can be traced from the objects that sprang forth from active hands, either through creation or through acquisition. Nature is in itself active, and has provided for us articles that we can name, categorize, procure, and include in the inventory of what has shaped history.

It is in this kind of historical inquiry that Pio Abad has taken recourse. In gathering a variety of articles and objects to be drawn on white paper, he creates his own inventory of the modalities of our consciousness; objects as both relics and testimonies to our selfhood. Taking the title of the show from Emil Cioran’s book A Short History of Decay, Abad adapts both the nihilistic stance and aphoristic construction of its pages, creating a series of large-scale drawings that echo the Romanian philosopher’s argument that “consciousness changes only its forms and modalities, but never progresses.” Whilst examining how one’s individual identity may play out over a multitude of objects, Abad extends the inquiry further by asking how the same objects may intersect with the progression (or non-progression) of a nation or a civilization’s collective memory?

Portrayed objectively in black and white and in an unaffected manner, these items turn into unassailable, concrete evidences. These objects, which seem disparate in nature with their own unique historical contexts — museum acquisitions, ethnic utensils, historical relics, electronic devices, common household tools, natural artifacts, and accidental rubbish—have been organized by way in which not to signify the singularity of their object-hood, but rather to represent the peculiarity of one’s personal encounters with them. Their placement next to each other leads to the construction of a universal reading; one which connects each item as if forming a pattern or a unique picture-message to communicate the idea that knowledge and history, while conceived in different forms, refer to the same world and ultimately subscribe to the same decadent end.

In a series of sculptures displayed alongside the drawings, the act of seeing is transferred to the art object itself. In Decoys, surveillance cameras take their accepted place inside the gallery while the concept of their prudence is tested to the hilt. Heavily adorned with an assortment of seashells, their décor assumes a corruptive function that both disrupts the form of the camera and extravagantly calls attention to it. With this unlikely juxtaposition, Abad emphasizes the caveats in reconnaissance, forcing once again a dialogue between the observer and the one being observed. 

Words by Cocoy Lumbao

PIO ABAD's A Short History of Decay runs from 03 March to 12 April 2015. Find out more about the exhibition on our website. For inquiries, please email Samantha at [email protected].