Energetic, variable, and masterful, Edwin Wilwayco’s Wave Cadenza, is another poetic chapter within his formidable series of abstracted images inspired by and evoking musical structure. In this suite of dynamic paintings Wilwayco engages the viewer in the compositions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
In Wave Cadenza, Wilwayco achieves the visual physicality of Mozart’s grand and luscious musical theatrics, flourishes, and diversity of sound architecture: the wavelike movements, layering of curves, counter-curves, dissymmetry, and repetition of high and low expressions; and, as is natural for Wilwayco – the strong play of bold, vibrant, and powerful color arrangements to deliver profound emotive viewer satisfaction. The various applications of paint mannerism provide a visual representation of the many instruments of the Ancien Regime, Classical and Rococo period: harpsichord, violins, violas, cello, flute, and the newly developing fortepiano, which allowed the loud-soft tones.
While Mozart is today, by contemporary standards, appreciated as a traditionalist within the Classical period of music, and iconically old-fashioned to many ears, he was in his own contemporary period loved as a revolutionary and fanciful super star, creating a wide-range of compositions from entertaining intimate joyful divertimento pieces to monumental operatic stage epics that continue to influence the musical and visual arts today. During his short and highly creative and productive life – admired for his rapid, easy, and manic pace of compositions of amazing diversity of genre – he gained a reputation as a rebellious young modern, who added to, assimilated, and rejected the previous generations of serious-minded and heavy Baroque musical masters of his time, to welcome-in the innovations of the Romantic era. To some critics, his music falls as superficial joy, but to others it exemplifies a gleeful seriousness.
The exhibition will run from October 11-22, 2022 at Galerie Joaquin Rockwell with an Artist Reception on October 14 at 5 p.m. The gallery is located at R3 Level, Power Plant Mall, Rockwell Center, Makati.
