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