Rumors, 2010

Mideo M. Cruz  

This work originally appeared in the 2011 solo exhibition in Singapore called "Into the Wild". It was shown again in 2019 in Manila at New Frontier Art Gallery solo exhibition "Works across transformative years". It is a great work from a multi-award winning relevant and contemporary artist. The artist's statement from the 2011 exhibition is below.

We are walking into a new wilderness. A jungle created by the age of profit. We are confronted with a barrage of information full of deceit and underlying meanings. The works are products of survival in this wild era. They are attempts to provoke in a playful way insight as to how we adapt to the new jungle we live in, based on day-to-day episodes of drowning in the flood of minutiae created by this age of capitalism.

We present images with altered meaning, made popular in the arts by Rene Magritte’s thought-provoking image La trahison des images. But under prevailing conditions, the paradox of images is becoming part of the norm of everyday spectacles sans the corresponding meaning. Or ironically it now contributes to the vocabulary of meanings, images and expressions. Or a much-simplified character provided to a word or words. Or a simplified image added to Orwellian newspeak. Or an ornately-formed visualization of the alphabet. Or challenges to viewers’ perceptions. There is no real formula in constructing every single idea to realize every work to a conglomerated surface of lines and colours, but there goes a flux that comes unconditionally from the conscious and unconscious knowledge acquired from day-to-day living.

To sum up, the function of the artist in this spectacle of visual amusement is to create an assembly of patterns - an allegory of control and stereotypes that turn into the dynamics of life inflicting pleasure, combined with texts to provide more itch and subtle undertones to the viewer. Tease that happens to be part of our daily doze of urban survival.