"MONDRIAN'S DENOUEMENT: THE HILLS OF DERMIS" by JOSE TENCE RUIZ

“Mondrian’s Denouement: The Hills of Dermis”

Jose Tence Ruiz

Oil and Enamel on Canvas/ Completed July 2024

Artist's Statement:

Art without empathy for either history or the present can decay into pure, optical décor, shallow, entertaining, well crafted, capable of emotional rescue but ahistorical and detached. There is no prescription for the art one chooses to do. I have chosen to plug my practice into the new iterations of events unfolding, iterations of historical lessons which take new forms, new media, yet still reflect on age old plagues of selfishness, slavery and megalomania. Often enough, I lament events through works. They help me process, they help me endure. Ukraine, Gaza, the dissolution of democracies by the broligarchs—these are new iterations of old maladies. I lament them in my works, if only to allow me to live through these times. Mondrian’s Denouement, or the collapse of an ideal for existence which Piet Mondrian hinted at, in all its asymmetric equilibrium at the start of the 20th century, has been pulverized: in many wars of aggression, in Ukraine from the last 14 years, in Gaza since the Nakbah but more so since October of 2023, in many a situation where it has been allowed and tolerated. When Mondrian’s idealistic equilibrium is blown to rubble, the Hills of Dermis begin to pile up. I must live through this. We are forced to endure. But I will not let my art neglect its visual lessons. As is my choice. 

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Also available in this issue of The Halo Halo Review, Jose Tence Ruiz's Foreword to his Litanya 1972-2022, an art monograph covering 50 years of his art, is available HERE.

 

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Jose Tence Ruiz (b. 1956) is an intermedia artist who has actively engaged in set design, publication design, book and editorial illustration, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance art. From 1977 to 2004, Ruiz did editorial illustrations for various Manila-based publications as well as the Singapore Straits Times, and for the InterPressService Asia-Pacific, which served Manila, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Singapore.

Ruiz was a significant figure in the ’70s in the early articulations of what would be known later as social realism. His wide gamut of works continues to critique power and its consequences. He has embraced both traditional techniques in painting and digital manipulations. The themes and motifs of his works harness images from everyday life, such as the jeepney (public transport from the Willy’s Jeep) or kariton (wooden improvised cart). He draws from Philippine art, folk and religious devotion, native mythology, media and popular culture, politics and history, computer technologies, and biomorphic patterns. His inventive probe of the techniques of appropriation and pastiche has given rise to innovative forms. The mingling of humor and a sense of play in the appearance of the works and their titles creates a tension between the density of meaning and the latter’s affective, oftentimes lucid qualities.

He has participated in various international projects, among which were: the Rencontre Internationale d’Art Performance, Québec, Canada (2014); the Havana Biennial in Cuba (2000); and the Second Asia Pacific Triennial for Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia (1996).