DISRUPTING WHORL ORDER: Bernardo Pacquing

Bernardo Pacquing (b. 1967, Tarlac, Philippines; lives and works in Parañaque City, Philippines) is a seminal figure in Philippine contemporary art, known for transforming the refuse of Metro Manila into raw works that blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture. His practice filters Brutalism and Abstract Expressionism through a distinctly Filipino ethos of resourcefulness and repair, resisting the sanitised aesthetics of global urban development in favour of a language shaped by time, wear, and improvisation. For this West Gallery show, Pacquing presents a continuation of his canvases from his ongoing Blossoms series, that translate the structure of a flower in bloom into gestural fields of house and oil paint. From a botanist’s lens, a standard flower is built like a set of concentric circles, starting from the outside edge and moving into the very center. He decides to deconstruct a blossom’s presentation and captures its disintegration in the wind. He does so through the use of house paint - an everyday material tied to labor and maintenance.

His body of work is anchored on his lived experience, turning it into a metaphor for decay and renewal.

Accompanying the paintings is a series of collages, where he highlights the stark difference between the soft and frail blossoms of mimosa pudica (damong makahiya) and the rigid and rough found objects he uses.