Rain Libiran’s works for “Timeless Tableaux” show how the everyday is layered with histories, meanings, and potential. In elaborately staged compositions bursting with competing patterns and elements, Libiran creates thought-provoking tableaux featuring characters in traditional Filipino regalia. Enlisting customary characters into his oeuvre, he encourages even more combinations and poses as means for them to perform a contemporary concept. The results are familiar yet imaginative, bound up as they are with the struggles of colonial mentality and self-identity. He has extended the complex but fragile history of the Philippines in relation to cultural identity both progressive and traditional, locally and globally.
As for Libiran’s chosen medium, the whole process of working with ink intrigued him; watching how the ink changes as it dries, and producing drawings with layers of pen marks and strokes. Most especially, the artist prefers to look at that borderline between the whole work and its elemental marks– to be far enough away to see the semblance of the whole image, but close enough to see how the illusion is shaped.
In a way, Rain Libiran’s works take a critical view of social, political and cultural issues. For “Timeless Tableaux”, he deconstructs the Filipino psyche – the values, morality, belief systems, and culture in general. Libiran’s work reproduces familiar visual signs, arranging them into new and conceptually layered commentaries.
Raymond “Rain” Libiran (b.1973), is a visual artist hailing from Santa Maria, Bulacan. Rain’s love for art began through the drawings of his brother and his favorite pastime, reading “Funny Komiks” (a popular children’s comic book), which was regularly brought home by his father and became the initial ground for his drawing lessons. Copying pictures of Filipino heroes growing up, Rain soon realized he will also traverse the artistic path that his idols Salvador Dali, Michelangelo, Juan Luna, Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish have taken.
“Timeless Tableaux” by Rain Libiran will be on view from November 11 – 20, 2019 with the Artist Reception scheduled for Tuesday, November 12 at 6PM. Galleria Nicolas is located on the 3/F Art Space, Glorietta 4, Ayala Center, Makati City. For inquiries, contact Galleria Nicolas at +63 (2) 8 625 0273 or +63 (917) 534 3942 or email info@gallerianicolas.com.
words by Grace Ng