Self/Consumption: Ruminations on Krys Balmaceda’s art

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

Magnet Gallery in Dumangas was abuzz with life as the artist-run space witnessed the opening of a new exhibit last June 14. Ophthalmologist-artist Krys Balmaceda’s ‘Digest’ offered the sparse crowd of artistes, writers, and poets who gathered that evening, a lean visual narrative comprised of acrylics on canvas. The exhibit traversed the intimately domestic and personal while threading these to the twists and turns of the contemporary; in a manner of saying, it was a digest of the experienced and the apprehended.

Seven frames hanging on bare, whitewashed walls – only these, with the nameplates breaking the leanness of the displays. Bathed in vibrant pastel hues, there was something simultaneously introspective and detached in these sparse frames. The exhibit’s title – Digest – connoted both an act of rumination and an introspective exhortation: to take from the artist’s own description of her works, it is ‘a meditation on ambiguity, on confronting and processing the internal and external realities we usually try to outrun.’

Truly yours had the chance to converse with Doc Krys whilst perusing the display. She pointed out how the perspective shifts: the viewer is taken through a fluid traverse from spectator to participant. Exhibit note writer Roselle Perez described it as ‘voyeuristic’, to which the gaze is drawn through the series of acrylic paintings, expanded like a graphic story depicting scenes of domestic life and the eventual though gradual disintegration of a physical form.

A triptych of sorts commences the vignettes. In ‘Languid’, a seemingly female figure lazes at the center, her legs sandwiching a pillow even as her posterior is provocatively displayed to the viewer. Her face is hidden from the viewer, her arm strategically obstructs her identifying features. The same obfuscation of the face is seen in the next frame: ‘Sundry’ portrays the (same?) subject doing the dishes. The viewer seems to have moved nearer, and one may observe the washing of plates done at the lavabo. This act of laving is carried on in ‘Ablution’: here, the viewer is immersed into the intimacy of bathing – the figure with its back to the viewer, still concealing its face, is divulgent in its nudity albeit obscured by its pose.

On the center wall hangs a single canvas. This time, a particular face confronts the beholder: ‘Sanguine’ centers on an autobiographical portrait. The image offers a quizzical look, almost with derision, querulous yet at the same time, riddled with skepticism. The figure’s temperament is palpable: confident, driven, intense and yet, optimistically cynical.

The third wall holds two prominent canvases. ‘Bourne’ takes on multiple subjects, albeit surreally abstracted. The entwined figures are caught in sensual embrace, hinting on a kiss – or is that a bite? One senses the carnality and corporeality embedded in the sharp purples, vermilions, and ochres, a rather surprising leap from the demure pastels and grays of the previous frames. The next frame zeroes on the face itself, focusing on a half-open orifice in the act of biting and mastication. In ‘Sundered’, the sensuous lips reveal a breaking and collapse into darkness, resonant of Yeats:  Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…

As if to synthesize the visual narrative and give it a fitting ending, the final canvas waxes metaphorical: a teary eye, weeping what appears to be some sort of sanguinary fluid, is superimposed on an open palm. Titled ‘Traumata’, the visual pun of the juxtaposed oculus (mata) comes full circle to Doc Krys’ experiences and intermeshing of the personal and the public, of the introspective and the relational.

Reverting to the role of audience, the takeaway from the artworks appears succinct enough:  digest with caution – what we absorb and consume are certainly more than what meets the eye.

[The writer is a humanities teacher in one of the private schools of the city. Photos are from Magnet Gallery’s FB page.]