THE SHELF LIFE OF BEING
Leslie de Chavez
Drawing similarities on the currency of image/idea alteration, intervention, reinvention, and/or distortion to create an extension of thought, Leslie de Chavez’s Lason ang Tula at Panghimagas Nitong Talinhaga intimates meaning-making as it preoccupies appropriation as a form of response to other works of art.
Seeking to resonate on the multiple ways to decontextualize meanings and metaphors by juxtapositioning, the combination of existing text (poem as an abstraction of an idea) and an object (cast to embody meaning and associations) is aimed at conjuring the symbolic to speak the ambivalence of power relations (both literally and metaphorically).
A textbook composed of literary materials used for teaching/learning could be an analogy for food to sustain, empower and end the hunger of the consumer. While on the other hand, the composition of the food (as well as the book), its preparation, combination, ingredients, etc., could also be used to function the other way around. Juxtapositioning these two, the work sought to amplify these existing tensions and contradictions already embedded in these objects.
Leslie de Chavez, Lason ang Tula at Panghimagas Nitong Talinhaga, 2018, Cast lead, found textbook, cast concrete block, glass vitrine, 12.20 x 15.74 x 19.29 in
Leslie DE CHAVEZ(b.1978) is an artist whose work captures the story of the past, the people living in the present, and the will for the future, which mainly constitutes a country of the contemporaneous Philippines and offers an extraordinary insight into the past and features an interesting and colorful expression of various critical points that are seen in contemporary society by mixed with religion and symbolic figures.
De Chavez has held several solo exhibitions in the Philippines, China, Korea, Singapore, UK, and Switzerland. He has also participated in several notable exhibitions and art festivals, which include the Singapore Biennale 2013, 3rd Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan 2011, 3rd Nanjing Triennial in China 2008, First Pocheon Asia Biennale in South Korea 2007. A two-time awardee (2010/2014) of the Ateneo Art Awards for Visual Art, Leslie de Chavez is also the director/founder of the artist-run initiative Project Space Pilipinas, in Lucban, Quezon.