Bench in a Park
MO_Space
26 April — 25 May 2025
Participating Artists:
Juan Alcazaren III
Sam Bumanlag
Annie Cabigting
Veronica Lazo
Ella Mendoza
Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan
Nicole Tee
Jemima Yabes
In A Bench in a Park, works allude to instances and mullings anchored on notions of place. However, these are not so much re-imaginations of locations as they are attempts to reference, recapture, and reckon with spaces charged with personal significance. At times, this involves engagement with materials, with the physical environment as source and inspiration for artistic experimentation, straddling as it were, one’s home and work place. For some, this requires a sensitivity to the process of transit. Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan’s waiting matter/s, for instance, presents the detritus left from the chunks of time spent on the road. It references the movement of one’s self through space and time, happening in communion with other mobile bodies in their regular, urban commute. Or perhaps, as with Juan Alcazaren III’s Deliverance, one can nurture an almost nomadic relation to the environment, as the feeling of place heightens in solitary reflection and transience in nature.
Indeed, this individual communion with material and environment seems to arrive easier for artists. Much of creative labor, more often than not, involves a personal and idiosyncratic understanding of the world. At the extent of it, they venture towards the creation of landscapes. This is apparent in Sam Bumanlag’s Early Morning Desires, which crafts a candy-colored world based on trinkets and various odds and ends that one picks up in thrift stores. Or perhaps, the intention may turn towards a critique of artificiality of said landscapes, such as in Veronica Lazo’s Defiant Garden. That is, in the questioning of our distance from nature and what this detachment entails.
Ultimately, one cannot escape other human beings occupying the same spaces. Whether this is found in the hobbies that reanimate our lives, allowing the active respite of play, as in Nicole Tee’s the rope connecting two I and II, or in the vital joy and comfort of a shared spirituality, as captured in Altar Flowers I and II by Jemima Yabes. In this co-occupation, we find community and commonality. At this point, we hew closest to what sociologist Ray Oldenberg coined as the “third place”. It’s a place that’s neither home nor work, ideally accessible, and one that elicits discussions and the creation of social support systems. Third places are regarded as important in fostering engagement, a sense of community, or a notion of civic-mindedness. At times, even as a crucial aspect of democracy. On a more human and visceral level, it allows for a sense of embodied belongingness. Of the body as part of larger bodies, while being anchored within a particular socio-spatial construction.
Unsurprisingly, the third place may take the form of gatherings over food and drinks, in kitchens or dining tables. Ella Mendoza’s time carved out alludes to these discussions, moments of respite amidst artistic labor. And inevitably, as with Annie Cabigting’s Maybe five seconds or more (after Robert Irwin), to even the art spaces. To the places where they can present to the public their works, while also giving space to mingle and converse with friends or strangers.
— JC Rosette