By Rhobie A. Ruaya
SILLIMAN UNIVERSITY (SU) Fine Arts painting major students presented their projects in their Senior Thesis Exhibition that officially opened last Feb. 5 at Silliman Hall.
The first batch of the Senior Thesis Exhibition is composed of works by three senior students: Hans de Barras, Ramon Adonis Catacutan, and Dolly Jane Sordilla. The second batch of exhibits by another three senior students, Jed Canaan, Ramsid Labe, and Vina Paullete Tejanowill open on Feb. 16.
Hans de Barras said that he wanted to play with visual forms and explore indexes and the forms they would make. De Barras has a total of 27 works using rocks, charcoal, pencil, and imported fabric.
De Barras started working last June, and said that his exhibit, entitled “Trace,” is his way of showing his obsession of the texture and roughness of rocks.
“Although I’m only tracing the index of the rock, I eventually end up making mistakes and these errors create paths for more explorative, morphing patterns. This is what interests me: the forms that they project become my index on the work. These human glitch errors make the work what it is,” said De Barras.
On the other hand, Ramon Adonis Catacutan, with his work entitled “Matchbox Warriors,” focuses on portraying spiders as samurai warriors and mythical beasts.
Catacutan’s work is influenced by oriental paintings of samurai warriors and some Japanese landscape paintings which encouraged him to make his own versions while incorporating his love for spiders.
Catacutan said that his childhood memories inspired him to incorporate his fascination for spiders and the art of spider fighting.
Catacutan used coffee, ink, and pencil for his ten works and he said it took him almost the whole school year to finish his show because he wants it to have a great effect.
Catacutan’s first solo exhibit was held at Captain Ribbers last year.
Meanwhile, Dolly Jane Sordilla used a variety of mediums and had a total of 19 works composed of 10 paintings on wood, eight clay formations, and one audio installation which she worked on the whole semester.
The audio installation was based around a recording of phases relating to stress.
Sordilla said that her work is about the “honest and unapologetic thoughts everyone has” under intense pressure, the “overpowering anxiety” that one feels in their last year of college, and the stress she got from her last year of college experience, thus, she called her work “Stress girl.”
“As I did not have the option to abandon my thesis work, I have used this as the subject for the exhibition. The whole experience is very stressful but I [coped] with my stress with humor and sarcasm and after now, I feel relieved,” said Sordilla.
W Don Flores, adviser of the class, said that it is the first time that the students are getting a “really formalized exhibition space” because of the difficulty in finding a gallery space in Dumaguete.
Flores also said that they are glad the administration allowed the Fine Arts department to use Silliman Hall. He added that they will have more shows before the school year ends and another show during the summer.
“I’m very proud of them. We always kind of assume that it’s just about painting and the labor of it. But what many people don’t realize is that it takes a tremendous amount of cognitive labor also, not just the physical labor,” Flores said.
**The SU Fine Arts Department of the College of Visual and Performing Arts would like to invite more people to visit their shows. They are also willing to sit down and talk about the different creations.~
