The visual poetry of Ilonggo artist Bryan Liao

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BY RHICK LARS VLADIMER ALBAY
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February 10, 2018
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They fill the room with poetry: these intricate installations and bare-faced geometric pieces –all tessellating and multiplying–gilded wood grain reflecting delicate yet sharp-edged shadows on the walls, the lights flickering on and off with the movement of its audience.

This is how 27-year-old Ilonggo artist Bryan Liao saturates a room with visual poetry: by tapping into nature’s innate geometry, channeling Islamic mosaic, and paying tribute to his late mother.

The self-taught installation artist expands his foray into conceptual artin his second solo show “Exploration and Exploitation” which exhibited at gallery i – housed on the second floor of Iloilo’s iconic heritage site the Eusebio Villanueva Building, at the heart of the metro’s downtown city proper.

“There’s a thin the line separating ‘exploring’ from ‘exploiting’ something  – from societal, environmental, and individual, among others – it takes on many forms,” explains Liao, a marketing management graduate and full-time entrepreneur, whose passion remains rooted in art.

A PORTRAIT OF ONE

“We are all basically looking for something and in this endless process of exploration,” shares the artist from Antique, who unflinchingly mines his own life experiences to produce his honest and awe-inspiring art.

Liao begins his journey with “A Portrait of One,”which the artist describes as a tribute to his late mother who was stricken by cancer.

“To me, it’s a portrait of my mom. There’s a certain fondness and gentleness to the piece, as if she’s greeting the guests entering the room: ‘Welcome, have a look around,’” muses the artist.

But, holding the most sentimental value for Liao is “Meager Exploitations,” wherein he usespieces of mahogany wood bought by his own mother before her untimely passing nearly 10 years ago.

“The piece ‘Meager Exploitations,’ has some sentimental value for me, since most of the wood I used were already a decade old, and were even bought by my mom before she passed away,” retells Liao. “She bought it around 2008, intending to have them made into chairs or cabinets, a year before she passed away in 2009.”

“The fact that this was the same wood she bought and left us gives it more value to me more than any other piece. I am sentimental like that,” he says brushing off a notion of loss.

UNSTRAINED ABUNDANCE

At first glance, it may be easy to overlook that all eight of Liao’s wall-mounted installations are complex permutations of the same basic blocks: mahogany prisms, all cut in the same size.

Liao held up two of these small pieces of wood during the show’s opening night, explaining the pain-staking three months it took him to assemble “Exploration and Exploitation” while also busy with his day job. It’s by this precise unit that the artist has shaped and set the limits and breadth of his gestalt pieces.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It started with the first wooden block I used and how it somehow pushed me to my limits, searching for other ways to present it,” Liao relates. “I realized how much exploring and searching I had to go through to create the initial blocks.”

“I wanted to see how far I could push myself to come up with these different pieces of art relying on just the same basic building block,” shares the artist,  as he’s been encouraged by his friends and decorated Ilonggo art veteran Rock Drilon to delve deeper into his woodcraft.

Audiences often enter “Exploration and Exploitation” with wide-eyed wonder, and leave walking to the stride of their thoughts, grappling with what they’ve just seen – affected by Bryan Liao’s visual poetry.

Liao is a member of Rahmag Visual Arts group in Antique, and the Hubon Ilonggo artists collective./PN
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