Calm Shots: Lourd de Veyra and Kaloy Olavides

From saints in Baroque altarpieces and martyrs in Renaissance panels, to lovers in Japanese shunga, to lovers embracing in Expressionist reveries, the history of art is water-stained with faces frozen mid-rapture.

But Calm Shots (to be read with utmost slownews and care) strips the ecstasy of its narrative frame. There are no arrows of St. Sebastian, no figures locked in aerial kiss. Instead, this visual duet, rendered in ink, acrylic, and marker, wields the monochromatic austerity of black against the fever of red. It traps the erotic and gang-bangs it with a element that is pleasure’s polar opposite. The result is a question: what if the sacred and the obscene are simply different dialects of the same bodily grammar? And what if either agony or libidinal bliss are one and the same avenues through which the self returns to a place of absolute silence?