Memories are like leaves of grass dancing through the strong winds of change. The gust takes us on an intangible journey that opens the door to the past. We can walk into a flurry of feelings that feel worlds apart. We can witness the end of the world, where nothing serves to exist. Memory serves as our footprint, and it is fragile - as the abandonment of the flow begins, it falls rapidly on the horizons of our consciousness.
In Yxandro’s second major solo exhibition “UNDERDEVELOPED & OVEREXPOSED”, he explores these subjects through a monochromatic lens. Taking inspiration from faded film photography, the figures are juxtaposed in the white haze and black smog of recollection and reminiscences. They feel like images trapped inside our subconscious, slowly shedding their skin - begging us the question: will they take on a new form or will they get lost forever? Yxandro’s long practice of archiving photographs and other ephemera takes us on a journey that expresses the importance of sentiment, thus embodying a sense of universal nostalgia. He boldly introspects a fear to be sublimated into art - the desertion of our very identity. He has a vision in which our multitude of experiences could be harshly transmuted into television static, during the quiet hours before dawn. Comparable to Marcel Proust’s masterwork, “In Search of Lost Time”, Yxandro utilizes art as a vehicle of preservation. As a cathartic release, rippling into the pool of our shared destiny.
Throughout this personal apocalypse, and maybe in imagining our deteriorating state, we are forced to look at ourselves and see the impermanence in living. We become confronted eyeball to eyeball with the fleeting nature of our existence, so we may be driven to seek our true purpose in reality. Through the long tunnel of our imagination and memory, there is a space for a thin line in which the self stands.
The most vulnerable yet precious thing one could have.
Write-up by Christian Ray Villanueva