“From the first standpoint, the worst is going to happen. You’re all going to die.”
Alan Watts
Through time our instincts become predicated by our distinct and personal experiences, how much we use what is innate to us can still be dictated by our external circumstances. Our acquired knowledge of our environment helps us navigate life, much like learning how to dance with an unpredictable partner. In learning to accept all the missteps we take, we become more resilient to the changes and welcoming to the simple joys of the world.
In August Lyle Espino’s “Cosmic Joke,” he transmutes his life experiences through his canvases, navigating the unpredictability of his medium while balancing it with his desired outcome. Each of his works presents us with his playfulness and seemingly fleeting movements creating these anamorphic shapes. The grand abstraction of shapes and random changes also leaves us with nibbles of reality, challenging us to look closer in them and spot ambiguous semblance of familiar silhouettes. In his piece “Cosmic Camper,” we can spot a yellow and white old Volkswagen campervan behind the landscape-like abstracted terrain, while a misshapen comet blazes down from the sky. The entirety of the image suggests a serenity at the foreground and looming chaos behind it – a paradox in its totality. The well-blended figures of a goose’s head and a teacup in “Goose-sip” tickles the viewers’ imagination into seeing more within the piece. The tongue and cheek suggestions are crafted with a sense of seriousness with its deconstructive brush strokes and color choices. The playful illusions he creates in his pieces are both delightful and introspective in equal measure. There is complexity being thrown at in every shape, distinguishable forms, intended accidents and color choices but a simple and grand scheme is revealed when viewed at a distance.
As Espino puts it, he tries to navigate “the dance of surrender and faith…” In “Cosmic Joke,” August Lyle Espino openly collaborates his perceived ideas to the actualized realities with every pigment he dubs and strokes into his canvases. He invokes the audience to reflect this simple gesture of letting go and letting gravity, nature, and life take control. “…To see life not as a problem to be solved but as a mystery to be lived.”
Lec Cruz
