What can geometry contain? In the art of Jomike Tejido, geometry holds an artist’s history—with line, color, shape, and all the contours of his creative practice.
Alongside his work as a visual artist, Tejido also juggles his time as an author and illustrator of children’s books. But before back-to-back sold-out solo shows and over a hundred children’s books under his name, he was first an architect, having obtained his architecture degree at the University of Santo Tomas.
It is a journey evinced in form: canvases, sculptures, and paper collages that bear a complex professional background. His tendency for gridlines and the geometric was fostered from his time as an architect; his technique in color and world-building was honed from his work as an illustrator.
“The lines that I employ echo my architectural past, with drafting work on plans and engineering elements such as support beams, metal cables, and such. Meanwhile, my work as an illustrator helps me with world-building, where I use color to convey a mood. I like playing with these things—some of them from my past—because it feels like I am taking a serious side of my life and literally playing with the elements of my memories,” he shares.
For Tejido, locating a particular subject in his geometries will always remain an elusive feat. “I often think about what my paintings really are. The fact that the question is still lurking around my mind means there is a constant reason to make a lot of them and see where my wild Venn diagram-like forms take me.”
While his works evade subject matter, they turn to the intangible instead: emotions, moods, and feelings in place of the concrete. “I like painting a mood or feeling because it is something you cannot see, so there is a reason for me to make it. Like how does one put into visual forms a feeling of love, excitement, pleasure, curiosity? Those are the things I love to put in a diagrammatic expression in the form of paintings.”
Tejido maintained this regard for the affective in Yasumi, his latest Solo Online Release with Cartellino. Taking his cue from his travels to Japan, he anchored the series to the concept of rest through the Japanese term ‘yasumi’ (vacation).
“I like Japan because it is a country of traditional things as well as new things. The things I see there are the extremes of the old and the new. I feel as if I am zooming in and out of time, and that usually decongests my mind and helps me create more things,“ the artist explains.
The primary visual idiom for Yasumi was the four seasons, where we saw him recast the colors of spring, summer, fall, and winter into his own geometries. Japan then serves as a site of creative revival, with its contrasts as the wellspring of inspiration.
“My most recent vacation was in Osaka, where I conjured the solution in making the experimental set of wood dragons in this release. Despite it being a fun winter vacation, it made me eager and excited to get back to the studio to work on them. Thus begins a new cycle.”
Wherever in Japan, or anywhere in the world he might be, there will be one place he would always go back to.
Off to the studio, he returns.
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For 2024, Cartellino will explore exhibitions and artworks through form, content, process and mood: FCPM. It might seem too simple for some, but our goal is to make it art relatable and easier to understand. Let us know what you think!