Kumot Yamot
(On Sheets and Ennui)

On average, a person resides thirty-three (33) years within the four corners of a bed, twenty-six (26) years asleep and seven (7) years trying to sleep.  A universally familiar space that can hold the most intimate moments of our waking lives and the absurdity of our dream state. Within its banal and bland sheets all pretenses are shed and laid down to rest. A space where we sever ourselves from the public eye and simmer into our own musings allowing our bodies to unwrap freely and our most irrational thoughts unravel themselves. It is within its softest terrains and borderless boundaries that we shield ourselves from the harsh realities of the outside world – from its constraints and limitations.

In Kumot Yamot, Kaloy Sanchez continues his exploration of the naked body and the private spaces they occupy.  His use of the vernacular for his exhibition title “kumot” (blanket, sheets) and “yamot” (annoyance, weariness, ennui) provides the local viewers an idea of his theme but leaves non-Tagalog speakers with loose interpretation of what it denotes. On the surface, Sanchez’s nude paintings, which often involves his neighbors and friends, can be seen as images that exposes vulnerability, untangles intimacies and suggests voyeurism, but underneath are layers of body politics and domesticity, themes easily marred at the site of bare flesh.

In viewing Sanchez’s body of works, one will be acquainted with his usual subjects  and his interest in showcasing the unidealized body and the unconventional sitters that hints of the mundane and pedestrian lives. In Uyayi (Lullabye) and Mulat (With Open Eyes) our gazes are directed to two subjects of almost identical figures with their mass easily felt as they occupy a large portion of their beds. Both scenes suggest a moment of slumber and a visceral sense of security within their present settings as their voluptuous bodies along with their tattoos  in front of us. In each scene, we are left to wonder if the adulations will extend beyond the gazes of primed spectators and beyond the confines of their spaces.‍

Lunes, Martes hanggang Linggo (Monday, Tuesday until Sunday) is a series of close-up portraits of Sanchez’s wife and long-time sitter as she sleeps in a week’s time. These images are portraits of the couple’s domestic life; their shared passion for the arts; and the sharp contrasts of their lifestyles. It outlines their navigation through the nocturnal life of Sanchez as an artist and the intersecting moments of their lives as partners and as individuals. Uliuli (Whirlpool) depicts the subject posed in a mid-stretching form, extending across the bed that gives us a panoptic aerial view. Its restless aura is compounded by its rotational mechanism, allowing viewers to interact with it.‍

Para kay Pepe (For Pepe) is a nod to German-born artist Walter Sickert, who was known for his Camden Town Nudes, where he portrayed nude women lying on an iron-framed bed, inside a claustrophobic room that sets an atmosphere of conflict, menace, and violence, often with a clothed man in the scene. In Sanchez’s Eba (Eve) we see a trans-woman as she lies on a wooden sofa with her draped clothes used as pillows. Serving as her backdrop is a part-modern, part-ancestral house with its antique furnishings and wooden structures.  Upon closer inspection is the subtle detail of her genitals and her residual manly features, a picture that can only relay the nuances of modernity within the trappings of our conservative culture.

These works may be seen as a shared narrative of our collective truth, a depiction of the universally unavoidable act, but also serves as a pictorial extension of the unknown and the uncertain after our own slumber.