Hypnagogia: Brink Of Sleep
"The path bridging the
conscious and the unconscious is ethereal, and the sensations we get
from it, ephemeral." Artist Tokwa Peñaflorida interprets the journey to sleep with sprites
and spirits with long lush, hair, and spellbinding eyes that convey
sensuality and voyeurism. He also included different cultural concepts concerning dreams, such as the bangungot or batibat of Philippine folklore, the incubus and the succubus which are almost universal, and the use of dreamcatchers by the Native Americans.
Peñaflorida’s
style is highly influenced by the works of Alphonse Mucha, Gustav
Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Japanese pop art: the enhanced sensuality of
the female, dreamlike, provocative, and cheekiness. As a result, his
work is always, although subtly, highly emotional. He uses
different techniques such as wash, and mediums, mostly acrylic and
watercolour, both fitting to bring about the gossamer and incorporeal
elements of dreams.
For
Hypnagogia, the artist exhibits melancholic “sleep creatures” which
emanate a longing for the dreamer, as if hoping to be remembered after
the enchantments of sleep wear off, their eyes, enticing, hypnotizing,
offering themselves. The dreamer, in his consciousness, is either
relieved or distraught, but nevertheless struggling to recall the
sensations he felt—the dream itself.
One of the paintings in the exhibit, Recurrence, is
an illustration of Peñaflorida’s recurring dream wherein a naked woman
holds a huge needle against the backdrop of a crystal castle. In
recurring dreams, the dreamer is bound by confusion from the seemingly
meaningless abstractions. Many would claim that this kind of dream is a
prophecy or a reassessment of the dreamer’s state in life. Somehow it
seems romantic to think that these dreams could just be a showoff of the
enchantress, to show pointless things to the dreamer that is not normal. Nonetheless, it attests to the connection of the dreamer and his dream spirit.
Our
suppressed and unconscious desires are presented to us as we cross the
bridge from the conscious to the unconscious. According to Freud, our
dream symbolisms are sometimes shaped by our life instincts or Eros (survival,
pleasure, and reproduction). This instinct creates a libidinal energy
that is greatly projected in dreams, which is sometimes blatant, but
most of the times hidden. Death instincts or Thanatos is, unconsciously,
our desire to die. These instincts set the mood as to what, how, and
who we see in our dreams.
Contrary to the idea that
dreams are considered to be the opposite of reality, it is, in its
subliminal and truest form, a reality—a few intimate minutes with the
dreamer and his undisclosed fantasies.
In the languid slumber of reality
About the artist:
Tokwa Peñaflorida
The young man as a
portrait of an artist begins with the words indelibly inked on his two
legs: Lorem Ipsum. He professes them to be part of his advocacy of the
decorative absurdity. He is silent on the fact that they are the flawed
preamble to a dissertation on pleasure and pain.
Like the phrase,
the subconscious polarizes the readings of his artwork. There is a
weight behind his apparent portraits of beauty. Languorous gazes,
sinuous lines, and decorative effects points his stylistic influences:
Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Audrey Kawasaki, Stella Im Hultberg. With
them he shares the fixation of the malleable allure of the feminine. But
his figures are often laced with confusion. He prefers to flaw them.
The surfaces are tactile with imperfections, in layers or washes or
phantom manifestations. His canvases are like lovely blossoms with the
perfect worm in the heart of florid putrescence.
His
recent works reflect the change from his earlier oeuvre, in which he
explores the expressionistic character of his washes within his
psychological vignettes, drawing from the subject of a darker eros--one
kin and wed to primordial chaos.
