Within

 June 8 – July 8, 2017
Artinformal, 277 Connecticut St. Greenhills East 
Mandaluyong City, Philippines

WITHIN

The clock chimes the midnight in

And ironically gives us the charge

To remember the fleeting day

– Charles Baudelaire, Midnight Examination

Dreams take us to indistinct states of consciousness.

How do we really know if we are dreaming or not? What

can we remember? How much can we remember? How

do we find logic or a clear-cut narrative when things

come in fragments?

Despite these questions, dreams play an important role

in linking reality to other worlds. The realm of dreams

rests in a perpetual illusory state, never to be seen as

a cohesive whole for its élan rests in the crevices of the

unknown.

By their very nature, dreams are flawed. In spite of the

conflicting forces we work with trying to remember

them, to grapple and make them intelligible, they

linger outside our reach. Still, they remain a stronghold

operating within the depths of our curiosities and

continue to serve as a fundamental aspect of the human

experience.

Within takes us there, into a labyrinth of dreams as

imagined by Daniel dela Cruz. It bridges the fragments

that reside between life and death, light and dark,

the physical and the metaphysical, remembrance and

forgetting. It treads that fine line that divides the

conscious from the unconscious.

In these new works by dela Cruz, bodies now lay in a

dream state and induce the twin illusion of fluidity and

ephemerality. They evoke a strong sense of vulnerability

while appearing languid. It is a subtle but immense

paradox as these bodies are rendered predominantly in

metal and clear transparent resin.

The choice of materials and the forms and gestures

they convey transcend their physicalities. For dela Cruz,

existence, perhaps, is really elsewhere, because that

is where Within takes us—in the dominion of constant

flux.

by Gian Cruz