Gray Matter: Ciron Señeres

In his solo exhibition Gray Matter at West Gallery, Ciron Señeres delves into the materiality of plastic, that ubiquitous “necessary evil” whose presence permeates our lives while contributing to the degradation of the planet. Through the agency of pigment, Señeres transforms this industrial material into a subject for artistic exploration, interrogating its dual nature as both indispensable and harmful.

This body of work began during the early years of the pandemic, when the artist first painted cut-out transparent water bottles. This initial engagement with plastic—wherein the artist sought to render the objects’ translucency—eventually led him to opaque materials, resulting in the works that now define this series. The slick, lustrous surfaces of these paintings evoke the texture of oil, a nod to the fossil fuel origins of plastic.

In this series, the artist depicts bundles of plastic, tightly wound and sealed through human intervention. Each piece is a meticulous rendering of creases, folds, and layers, executed with an intensity of attention akin to the traditions of still life painting. The textures Señeres creates are not only visually precise but also suggestively tactile, inviting the viewer to imagine the sensation of the materials.

Curiously, the current series finds its roots in a 2021 exhibition titled Landscape, where Señeres’ forms alluded to topographical configurations. Here, however, the transformation takes a different turn. The tightly wound packages on display contain nothing concealed beneath their layers of plastic; rather, they represent the sheer human will to shape something flat into something three-dimensional. These works are both sculptural and painterly, embodying the artist’s fascination with the intersection of form and surface.

The title, Gray Matter, points directly to the subject matter of plastic—often dull, gray, and unassuming—but also invites deeper associations with the human brain. Just as gray matter governs cognition and creativity, the exhibition suggests an intellectual and emotional engagement with the materials that shape our existence. The works provoke questions about the entanglement of human agency with the ecological crises engendered by plastics.

Señeres’ exhibition also exemplifies how objects embedded in everyday life can assert their own aesthetic significance when reframed through art. These plastics, transformed by pigment and imagination, assert an individual beauty while remaining charged with the weight of their ecological implications. Through Gray Matter, Señeres challenges us to reconsider the ordinary and confront the consequences of our material choices, finding a haunting yet undeniable allure in the very substances we might otherwise discard.

Carlomar Arcangel Daoana