Breathe. Simply that.
Such is the title of Thrive Art Gallery’s current exhibit: over 500 miniature squares of wood, each brimming with light and shadow, color and hue, vibrance and imagery, patterns and geometries. Sprawled all over the walls of the gallery, these squares constitute a swirling palette of design, an assortment of abstraction, portraiture, landscapes, distortions, and to the sharp observer, the occasional hommage to some notable artist of bygone times. Taken as a whole, the exhibit is enough to leave the viewer visually satiated, if not breathless – as if to compel him to comply with the exhibit’s title.
These are artworks of Jed and Johanz Mercurio, the sundry product of three meticulous years spent in recreating scenes, portraits, and abstractions as tiny ‘quad paintings.’ Reinterpreting the idea of the diminutive in art, the art are visual microcosms: the little squares carry big ideas. The blocks of wood radiate an aspiration – both in the emotional and respiratory sense – of whimsy and wit, even as they seem to desire and gasp for juxtaposed ideas of movement and stillness. Granted, there are ‘boxed’ narratives, images grouped together in vignette-like arrangements, but there are far vaster sections in the exhibit where no common plot line or theme holds the many squares together, save perhaps their material medium and geometry. Within the frames, everything happens all at once in syncopated visual gasps: there are the scenic, surreal, introspective, abstracted, phantasmagorical, profound, capricious, and deconstructed. These are artworks most mercurial indeed – and aptly does it resonate the surname of the artists.
Not that the quality does not reflect the brothers’ personalities: at least, working with Johanz in Ateneo de Iloilo and one road trip with Jed seemed to affirm that mercurial temperament.
Johanz in the guidance office seemed like a far cry from Johanz the artist. Inundated by blushes and bevies of kindergartners who incessantly and adoringly demand his attention or by the unending stream of paperwork and documentation, he scarcely exuded the persona of an artist behind his desk. One enters his office, and you are greeted with the sparse art which give off hints of his artistic side – and perhaps, to provide a splash of color to the insipidly austere walls. Initiate a conversation with him about a painter or some recent art exhibit or competition, and that is when you encounter the aesthete, animatedly extemporizing about future projects overflowing with imagery, colors, and symbolism.
During graduation last year, he presented then-Mayor Jerry Treñas (who was Ateneo’s commencement speaker) with a cubist portrait of San Ignacio de Loyola as the school’s token of appreciation – perhaps also as an early gesture of entry into the local art scene. The saint’s portrait now hangs demurely at one corner of the receiving lobby of the session rooms of City Hall. Entries to art competitions followed and the occasional canvas or two in this gallery or that one, in one group exhibit or another.
My first encounter with Jed was in a curious and somewhat spontaneous road trip to Dumangas back in August 2023. It was Ninoy Aquino Day; we were invited by renowned Ilonggo artist Rock Drilon to peruse artworks destined for a solo exhibit. Accompanying us on the road were violinist Miguel Davao and the incessant chatter leapfrogging from art to music to literature to recollections of shenanigans accomplished in high school and college days. Amid perusals of Sir Rock’s art, the tour of his quaint studio, and Miguel’s exquisite music played to a backdrop of artworks in progress, there were snatches of conversations with Jed, and whatever lean statements that came from him revealed a serious personality not easily given to talking.
We were only able to meet again last week, as he was preparing for the exhibit: still, he was sparse with words yet brimming with artistic possibilities. A few moments before the vernissage’s opening, he quietly asked for good topics to socially interact about in an art event – and a short amusing chat ensued about aesthetic small talk that would surreptitiously divert the inquirer to the artwork than to him. Even minutes before his show, the mysteriously mercurial exuded from him.
Visit Thrive Art Gallery and peer into their little squares. From a distance, they look like tesserae assembled and arranged in an abstract mosaic never intended to present one coherent image or portrait. Only the visual variety holds them together in a viscous grip of montaged themes. One square is a jumble of bold cubist geometries; another is inundated with bright patterns and swirls of dots, lines, circles, and curves. Another holds a subtle portrait of Frida Kahlo sans flowers; in another is a miniscule figure of van Gogh painting against a blazing blue sky cut to his own impressionist style. There are portrayals of sylphlike women clothed or in various stages of undress; there are portraits of quiet figures in pensive thought or silent action. There are cityscapes and water scenes grouped together, and farms and fields where shadowy trees are set against skies tinted with deeply colorful twilights and dawns. There are pastel pastiches and architectural anachronisms. There are the Familiar and the Odd, the Playful and the Profound, the Grotesque and the Mundane.
In response to random questions of the writer, the brothers shared that whatever is glimpsed within the little boxes came from different inspirations, apparently gathered in a visual bricolage of dispositions and outlooks. Whether understood as a dissembled shattering of the artists’ selves or as a piecing together of their experiential expressions, Breathe transcends from the descriptive to the imperative. It compels the viewer to take part in the artists’ experiences by filling (or dare we say, overwhelming?) the eye with a plethora of elements while evoking nuances of stillness, movement, and freedom, as the exhibit notes point out.
Too early to say that that they have aesthetically come of age, the Brothers Mercurio nevertheless are certainly burgeoning into the local art scene with colorful flair: more than 500 squares of art, miniaturized in four-by-four inches of wood showcased in a jumping-off display for a four-part exhibit. These equate to no small accomplishment and it goes without saying that most palpable to their audience is the creative outpouring onto these frames, matched only with the consistent dedication poured into each quadrilateral of wood. They need but keep up the aesthetic overflow and perhaps, maintain their artistic style – more importantly, the ethos fueling that style: keep to the smallness of dimension and the universality of ideas and images – breathing humanity is in the details, diminutive these may seem.
As we look forward to their next installment, we shall take time to breathe in all of it. Breathe: simply that.
