Elmer Borlongan - Coffee + cat (2022) , Acrylic on canvas, H 61 x 61cm - Boxed in (2022), Acryliic on canvas, H 61 x 61 cm
Elmer Borlongan - Beast of burden (2020) , Monotype - H 23 x 30,5cm
A page is turning in his strongly expressive and meaningful painting. In the darkness of the times, hope remains, in the image of these two lovers kissing under the masks in spite of all the prohibitions. They mark a time, announces the next. Down with the masks, like this eye piercing behind its red leaf, premonitory painting of 2015 and today in a private collection. Elmer Borlongan tirelessly continues to paint the stories of his people, of their daily struggle and resilience. This is why his paintings touch us, move us and pierce us. They speak to us of subjects with universal resonance. About family, relationships, work and the freedom he believes in as an artist and for which he ardently defends the community. Without ever giving up, he has chosen figuration as a mode of expression. Even if it displeases the tastes of international institutions more turned towards the conceptual, which has earned many of our painters, starting with Gerard Garouste, to be long in purgatory in the post-Duchamp era, before being worthily celebrated in the masterly exhibition currently held at the Centre Pompidou. Equally committed, Elmer Borlongan's painting is imbued with strong and disturbing messages that resonate with our world in crisis. A mature artist, very attached to the culture of his country, he has a full place in the troubled times in which we live. And still so much to say, without compromise, like an "intranquil" (to refer to Garouste's book!) in perpetual questioning.
Béatrice de Rochebouet
Art critic
E L M E R B O R L O N G AN
W H E N T I M E S T O O D S T I L L
S O L O S H O W
Elmer Borlongan's characters embody those years when "When time stood still", the title of the exhibition at the Géraldine Banier gallery, showing some fifteen new paintings and monotypes, celebrating the 75th anniversary of relations between France and the Philippines and presented, in this context, by its embassy. Still imprinted with those of the streets of Manila, then of the countryside of Zambales, these have taken on a more timeless and universal dimension after the weight of the pandemic. This exhibition is an opportunity to better understand the work of this unclassifiable artist, one of the most highly rated of his generation on the Asian market but still little known in Europe, while he works tirelessly in his studio in Zambales where he plans to host artist residencies.
Text by Béatrice de Rochebouet //
What do the strange human figures with bald heads and elongated limbs of Elmer Borlongan hide behind their large almond-shaped eyes? In unreal shades of skin, they seem to belong to another world that must be penetrated to discover the secrets of their history. This story is the one that has always haunted the observant, tormented and oh so sensitive soul of this artist born in Manila, Philippines, who transcends the subjects of daily life, politics and society, under a well controlled brush. Between distrust and attraction, one cannot help but dive into the eyes of his characters, each more enigmatic than the other. One floats in suspense with a book in his hands, another carries black plants that could devour him, yet another holds a tree full of thorns as if he were beginning his way of the cross.
Produced during the Covid years, his new series draws on his past experiences and observations but is more introspective. "What is important to each of us after the pandemic we experienced? What is the meaning of life from now on", these are all questions that led Elmer Borlongan, 55 years old, with a voluntary face animated by a bright smile, to push his work further. By returning to the essential subjects, like the baker who works the dough with his big hands. Or by taking a tragic turn, through this man supporting the weight of life in his hands, sitting in the air, waiting, under his clock. What is also waiting for, the melancholic man (Melancholia 2020) in his basin of water as black as his body and his heart? The colors are dark like the power of the darkness of the tormented landscapes of Evrard Munch, the distorted figures like the tortured bodies of Egon Schiele that the triumphant suffering metamorphoses into pure beauty.
Elmer Borlongan - Melancholia (2020), Acrylic on canvas- H 122 x 122 cm
Views the exhibition, When Time stood still by Elmer Borlongan
20 OCTOBER - 20 NOVEMBER 2022
54, RUE JACOB
75006 - PARIS