In Measured by Images, artists Pardo de Leon and Bernardo Pacquing expand each other’s artistic discourse on painting and the painted image. To “measure,” in common use, is to consider the “dimensions, quantity, and capacity” using a standard and “a reference used for the quantitative comparison of properties.” “Image,” here, most likely refers to images as materials gathered from the immediate bubble of the artist-of-interest, and manipulated in a particular way accordingly. Each artist’s own use of their images sheds insightful dialogue in varying aspects, especially now with the constant emphasis on the visual image as a vital tool in transacting information and knowledge.

For the exhibition, Bernardo Pacquing worked on a suite of collages that has dimensions within the measure of an arm’s breadth, and a collection of sculptures that are portable in scale – the smallest measuring a bit taller than a pencil. For Pacquing, these groups of works were borne out of necessity, as he found himself in a forced lockdown in a foreign country because of the pandemic crisis. This is a collective catastrophe the world is facing, yet it is not easy to put down the artistic pain of separation of being away from one’s own home studio and being disallowed from any creative work at full potential. For the artist, it was “a cathartic and desolate state.”

The collages, all under the catalogue “Untitled - After Antoni Tàpies Grey Paintings” and numbered sequentially, exude the elegant calm typifying Pacquing’s artistic sensibilities, albeit the aforementioned circumstances are under a gloomy cloud. The artist narrates gathering the cardboards and other packaging paraphernalia from the grocery products that were delivered at his doorstep due to pandemic protocols, and made use of such collateral debris as materials for his works. As it is an homage to the abstract painter Antoni Tàpies, a verse by the great Catalan artist is interesting:

In “Untitled 01 - After Antoni Tàpies Grey Paintings,” and all works in the said suite – which, in the artist’s counting, has reached more than eighty pieces – the colors in the artist’s palette are various tones of subdued gray. “‘Gray’ for me is a pigment that represents ‘uncertainty,’” recounts Pacquing. “I was hanging on to an undetermined time and space. I saw myself staring at a huge concrete wall! Or purgatory—like  a transitional state, and having a desire to come out but without expectation. My grays have different hues but on the dull side—bleak and cold. I guess that was my first intuition in doing so.” Pacquing emphatically adds upon seeing the Spanish artist’s “Gray paintings.” “I thought some of them depicted Muertos, crosses, and earth.”

“Untitled 01 - After Antoni Tàpies Grey Paintings” is a picture of autonomy. Two massive gray rectangular forms seemingly anchor and pivot around each other. A lone line is tactically placed that delineates the ground and figure which completes the pictorial balance. Not the stylistic approach of sophisticated marks and gestures that represent the definitive corpus of the artist’s output, the collages are main components of Pacquing’s oeuvre – and importantly so. A certain alchemy occurs when quotidian objects find their way in the artist’s hands. In the same way, these found materials give form to the artist’s thinking. The potential for each, the artist and his found object, at polar opposites pushing and pulling at each other, are extrapolated.

The set of sculptures, collectively called “Untitled - After Lissitzky,” and also sequentially numbered, are exquisite constructions that express Pacquing’s penchant for woodworking. The artist harkens to four decades ago when he took on restoring their ancestral home in historic Sampaloc, Manila. Making use of pieces of wood, the artist has masterfully fashioned these together with technical ease. “My sculptures may seem fragile in its form as the style dictates,” the artist relates. “All the wooden blocks were carefully chosen, composed, and connected using the basic wooden joinery method. Some I even used dowels for stronger joints. Maybe one day I can build one of these maquettes for real.” Though relatively small in scale, they appear to be bigger as suggested by the proportion of compact forms and the presence of rectangular units jutting out and hanging into space, thus suggesting movement as well – it is a look into the Suprematist Art and its ideals.

“Untitled 09 - After Lissitzky” is an example of the artist’s homage to the artist El Lissitzky, one of the most recognizable figures of Russian Constructivism, a visionary and a mover. For Pacquing, he was drawn to the challenge of the said aesthetic: “I am fascinated with the rawness and massive concrete formation of their structures—cold and uninviting. For me, it was also a form of architecture that redefined the concept of aesthetic, balance and form, and structural engineering.” “Untitled 09 - After Lissitzky” is a totemic piece and arguably has a resemblance to Lissitzky’s unrealized civic project, “Cloud Iron,” a massive undertaking of huge concrete structures in a single file lining one of the main avenues in the city of Moscow and will eventually serve as stations for the city’s railway transport system.

Following this progression of outputs, it can be said, for Pacquing’s adamant explorations, the image is pared down to a certain minimum and freed from any responsibility of representation; but at the same time, it harnesses a symbolic and vicarious burden.

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Pardo de Leon’s recent series of paintings, “Of Long Vague Sighs,” are beautiful pictures of scenes and landscapes that evoke a subliminal feeling. Consisting of three huge diptychs and three lone paintings with a composition suggestive of such, the artist considers these an offshoot of a previous series from a one-person exhibition with a nostalgic and enigmatic title, In-Betweenness, painted in 2016. The current work is relatively more concise, and perhaps, positively wistful. Like magnificent windows in a trompe l’oeil, these paintings want to tell a story. But because of wit and intent, it seemingly refuses to tell any story. Perhaps, as such, it is closer to consider these pictures as visual haikus.

The paintings here seduce the viewer with a complex relationship of images, and it is very inviting to decipher what these pictures mean. But perhaps, to have this mentality is not what it is about. In conversations with the artist, she hints, “I think my paintings are an exercise in showing, not telling.” And so it might be futile to seek for the code that unlocks the meanings of these visual juxtapositions. Perhaps a way to come to terms with these puzzling images is to relate these to the person of the artist: “… I am drawn to images that stare back at me from whence comes the impulse and compulsion to paint them,” Pardo de Leon mentions in ad hoc conversations via social media. She continues, “Perhaps a safer word to use is instinct, or even gut-feel, rather than intuition.”

Pardo de Leon has worked as a painter making use of the photographic image for the span of her career, dating back to her studies in the UP College of Fine Arts in the early 1980s, which consequently introduced her to the mentorship of artist, teacher, and curator Roberto Chabet. During that time, the use of recognizable images signified a return to figurative painting, alongside the prevalent abstract painting and conceptual art that became the standard art form circa the 1970s. Pardo de Leon found herself, with other prominent colleagues, as central proponents of this pivotal turn to paint once again. The reverberations of this switch can still be felt by the younger generation of artists.

In the diptych “Murmuring Pool,” two panels with identical pictorial structures play off each other. The image on the right is a pool reflecting its surrounding trees, while the one on the left is the same pool reflecting a monochrome sky, which could well be the same representation of the sky behind the trees in the right panel. It is a very tantalizing picture, almost bringing time to a standstill. The two panels also impress the notion that gravity is suspended and subverts the known physical reality. Perhaps, too, this picture illustrates how the artist has used and navigated images through her body of works, “The older I grow, the more exposure to the world and its workings and mysteries, the crazier the mishmash between realities and dreams, the possibilities, the hallucinations, the what-ifs. I am painting the spaces between. I am painting the grey.”

To express a “sigh” is the aftermath of a pause and a look back. In a couple of diptychs, the artist, perhaps, draws on her bank of images from a very storied creative life. In “Color Yield,” Pardo de Leon hints on appropriating an image for formalistic purposes. The effort to insert an image of a plank sculpture by the American sculptor John McCracken adds to the pictorial structure of one of the panels. It also adds tension to the thematic aspect of the picture as it offers a comparative opposite to an otherwise decimated landscape. In another work, “Full House,” a giant produce is framed on both sides by a couple of facades of a rustic house. The artist tells the title of the work is a reference to the cozy restaurant run by the mother of a very close friend and artist decades ago.

Perhaps this is a look into how images are applied and thus made to operate. The revered French critic Roland explored these operations. A memorable line from one of his essays is highly suggestive for the purposes here: “every sign includes three or implies three relations; to start with, an interior relation which unites its signifier to its signified…” This is a viable declaration which can be aligned to the importance of an artist’s activities of constructing his signifiers, and associating and attaching these to his/her subjects to be signified. In another book by this same author, A Lover’s Discourse, Barthes gives a definition of what an image is by linking it to a subtly felt, private pain: “In the amorous realm, the most painful wounds are inflicted more often by what one sees than by what one knows.”

In one more diptych, “Whistling Field,” a phalanx of giant oranges appears to be whistled up by a pied piper to hold the line and protect a territorial wasteland. How should one interpret the pictured surreal and whimsical scene? Is it a comedy of erroneous realities or a fairytale jest? My own reaction was a split-second contemplative ease. It also whistled me to a delightful remark by the great American artist, John Baldessari, of a musing about his own use of disjointed images in his work:

Both artists presented here have a firm grasp on the nature of images and have incidentally tapped into that ‘grey’/ ‘gray’ field—a  zone unseen perhaps that lies obviously in front of our eyes (Bernardo Pacquing and his use of readymade objects and one-to-one associations) but a blind eye is turned to the obvious, right under our noses; and the images “in-between,” as the artist calls it (Pardo de Leon and her use of strewn, surrealistic images that mask obvious meanings), that takes more to realize. Dutifully, and done with panache, both have striven to bring us to that point to reconsider the images that have bombarded and conditioned the psyche; and nudges an introspection beyond the veil and the smokescreen.