FINDING THE BODY OF LAPIS LAZULI
A solo exhibit by Faye Pamintuan
“It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then, one day, it became more serious. Then it became somehow personal.”
These words by Maggie Nelson in her book Bluets describe her relationship with the color blue. It seems curious to think one could get to know a color personally, much less one as unfathomable as blue. How can we relate to something so intangible yet present in our every day? Our innate perceptions of color come from nature, and thus, to know color is to know our surroundings. We see this in the way we label our blues by water or reds by the freshest of fruit. We know color by these natural bodies because color itself has a body, no matter how immaterial it may seem. For color is light passing through a body of particles, like the sun shining through the leaves of a simple mango tree.
In Finding the Body of Lapis Lazuli, Faye Pamintuan attempts to know her environment more through the lens of the color blue. Working with a variety of materials and processes, the artist conducts an exploration into her practice as a way to learn more about her relationship with the color. How does that affinity grow into something more personal? How do we find the body of blue?
Employing techniques uncommon to her usual practice on canvas, Pamintuan tears, collages, and paints on free-form surfaces to try to understand her own relationship with blue. There’s a visceral nature to the works that reflects the physicality inherent in the “finding” and the “body.” She lets amorphous forms of blues and oranges roam from their surfaces as if allowing them to find a body of their own. Monoliths of assembled fluidity attest to the search for structure, for a framework of some kind, yet also the unpredictable nature of trying to describe the often indescribable.
Our relationship with blue may not always look blue. It may blossom over time from hazy reds or peak through a cloud of stained yellow. Or we may find blue where there is none, knowing that our appreciation for it grows into something more in its absence. Finding the Body of Lapis Lazuli presents a close examination of how we may relate to our surroundings. What colors do we share a personal relationship with, and what kind of body do they inhabit? As if taking a microscopic view of lapis lazuli itself, Pamintuan peers through its minute crystals to unveil the light that shines through.
– Text by Mara Fabella
