Pag Tumitig Nang Matagal: Mac Andre Arboleda's First Solo Exhibit

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Mac Andre Arboleda's first solo exhibit "Pag Tumitig Nang Matagal" runs until May 17 at Cafe Berde, Los Baños, Philippines. The exhibition, which features 15 photographs, opened last April 26, with a short program with guest reactors Om Velasco and Sarah Koo. 

In the exhibition "Pag Tumitig Nang Matagal", Arboleda shows offbeat images of mundane objects from his bedroom: electric fan, calendars, clotheshangers by the window, books and memorabilia on shelves; and at the same time, denying their objectness and giving a sense of discomfort and nausea. 

Mac Andre Arboleda, 23, also known as "Asshulz" on the Internet, makes web comics, zines, short films, and organizes art events around the South. He is the author of photozines "The Face of a Marcos Apologist", "Noah's Ark", and "Fictional Instagram Feeds", which make use of the Internet & other media to make photographs. He is a Development Communication student in the University of the Philippines Los Baños, member of art collective Magpies Press and is founder of the biannual zine expo "Zine Orgy". Last year, he won the Pelikultura Best Film Award for his #BuhayElbi entry "Boy Dyaryo." 

Arboleda said that "Pag Tumitig Nang Matagal" was inspired by ideas of "looking," how one's personal space could appear or feel different after a long session of just staring around. "There's this Internet joke that cats are always tripping on acid because they like to stare at blank walls." According to him, his goal was to capture the look and the feeling of being so bored that you start seeing things in a new perspective.

"Pag Tumitig Nang Matagal" requires that the pictures be stared at longer and more carefully, so much so that boredom allows the objects and the spaces in between to be seen as different parts of different bodies altogether, just as the artist’s own everyday and prolonged gaze allowed him to look at his own room differently. At a time when digital media and the internet’s fetish for the new and instant no longer allows staring at a fixed surface in boredom, the exhibit is an unassuming invitation to return to the appreciation of the picture through the rudimentary act of staring.   

"Pag Tumitig Nang Matagal" runs from April 26-May 17, 2018 at Cafe Berde, Los Baños, Laguna. Cafe Berde is open everyday from 10AM to 8PM.

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