Rock Drilon
Moving on and Other Works
4 – 22 May 200
 
Rock Drilon presents an array of paintings spanning seven years in Moving On and Other Works at Mag:net Gallery Katipunan from May 4 to 22, 2007.  All rendered in acrylic on canvas, the exhibition gathers several of the artist’s larger works throughout the years, which have signified personal and artistic transitions.  

In the show, the artist engages in an act of rumination and retrospection by gathering selected works and presenting them side by side, as if attempting to derive a narrative from the intentional selection of images and texts. The earliest works in the selection, dating back to 2000, derive their titles from popular inspirational texts, such as Instructions for Life II-1 and Instructions for Life II-2. The works were produced as part of a post-millenium series entitled after the texts attributed alternately in popular media to the Dalai Lama and to a bestselling American author. These works were shown as part of two exhibitions entitled Instructions for Life at SM Megamall Art Center and the Ayala Art Center in 2000. 

The texts of Drilon’s more recent works, such as Moving On, however hint at autobiographical and aesthetic resolutions: to intentionally effect a transition at the personal and the artistic plane by learning and reflecting on the past. This is reinforced in the diptych entitled Selective Memory (2006), which is filled with references for assessing and deciphering autobiographical events. As implied by the title of the work, Drilon systematically and intentionally filters recallings of events, impressions, and places in place of a strictly chronological accounting of historical truth. In the work, the artist utilizes the healing technique of biography psychology to draw out and contextualize recurring motifs of conflict and queries. The artist scribbles cathartic passages on canvas, obscures the text with abstract forms, and juxtaposes these with personal symbols as visual references for the history of self: for instance, recurring loops and an undulating and sequential stream of numbers arranged beside parallel lines and places, both signifying passages and transitions.   

As such, the act of recollecting and remembering may not always remain fixated on large or pivotal events: for seemingly small or subtle shifts may signify equally significant transitions. This is seen in Red Line (2006), which hints at privileging the peripheral. The literal referent of this work's title is a vertical scarlet slash lacerating a background of larger, more conspicuous forms. The work is part of Drilon’s series of paintings, produced last year, which intentionally and ironically represent the geometric forms denoted in their titles as random, insignificant, or peripheral aspects of the work.  

Rock Drilon studied under the tutelage of the late modernist Jose Joya while at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He has regularly held solo exhibitions throughout the Philippines, and in South East Asia, Europe and the United States.