The word “talisman” comes to reflect anything whose presence exercises a remarkable or powerful influence on human feelings or actions — a magical object that is charged with the force which it is intended to represent. With this as inspiration, visual artist Katrina Cuenca opts to overlook the obvious notions of beauty of such objects, instead remaining more interested with the truth of such talismanic elements.
The figures seep and bleed into each other, dissolving and taking shape into organic patterns. Surface and depth form into one liminal zone. The elements that populate Cuenca’s paintings float inside the talisman — their forms porous, as they become divergent to boundaries. The mind’s boundaries are breached and become an opportunity for creativity.
Cuenca’s choice of a personal symbolic language is indicated in her works for “Infinite Talismans”. The artist’s recent series is strongly grounded in sympathetic magic — ensuring the objects power will pass on to its audience. Indeed, Cuenca’s amuletic pieces are clearly grounded in personal narratives, and rely on highly artist-specific personal and abstracted symbolism.
Each piece resides on a threshold; a merging point of interiority and intersubjectivity, of desire solicited and desire articulated, of existence and presence.
Katrina Cuenca (b. 1984) is a self-taught artist who has been painting since the 1990s.
Experimenting with figures, patterns, and textures, Cuenca continuously rediscovers and evolves her art practice based on life experiences. The result is a melding of figuration and abstraction at its most spontaneous and celebratory. Katrina Cuenca has had multiple well-received solo exhibitions and has participated in the longest-running visual arts fair in the Philippines, ManilART, in 2020 and 2021.
Katrina Cuenca’s “Infinite Talismans” will be on view at Galerie Joaquin BGC until January 18, 2022.Galerie Joaquin is located at the Upper Ground Floor of One Bonifacio High Street Mall, 5th Ave. Corner 28th Street, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.
