In the realm of punctuation, the colon and the dash declare interruption, but also connection–verbal associations that allow sentences to trail off to digression, expand into inventory, hurtle into self-collision. These offshoots of language, pebbles and sticks on the page, introduce drama and breath, continuity and complexity. They give space for expression and thought, sometimes reluctantly, to grow—and growth, in the bodies that keep us together, in the corporations that violate the soul and soil for profit, as in, inevitably, the sentences we write, come with their own sets of malignancies.
The unexpected and necrotic, the bewildering juxtapositions of modern life, are the subjects of this new exhibition at the Instituto Cervantes of Manila, fittingly titled A dash, a colon. The show brings together the works of artists Brisa Amir and Cristina Gamon who both deploy paint, emulsion, and surface as portals, or mirrors, to a hybrid, uneven state.
In this exhibition, interruption seems built in. Driving through Intramuros to find a tight nook which houses the institute, you are brought head-on into the noise and cacophony of the Intramuros. The gallery is tiny, and the tourists making their way through the walled city are heard in all directions of the place. In these works, you give into the absurdity of the examining eye, like an exile reliving their earliest days in a destroyed homeland. The centrality of this place, one informed by a history of fortification, trade, and vast commercialization, this history which is also the ruin of our country’s becoming, plays into the piece’s fragmented states, broken apart like a kind of secret.
Madrid-based Cristina Gamon, who makes use of swirling forms and layered acrylics, draws on the vibrancy of pigment by incorporating laser-cut plexiglass to stage her psychedelic landscapes. In Gamon’s frames we pierce through a void cut through floating masses of color, like an alien ultrasound. They bring to mind the ghosts that haunt a palimpsest—a word that in Greek translates to “scraped again,” layers of the mind making sense of a lost and forgotten place.
Contrasting the fragmentary and elusive quality of Gamon’s contributions, Filipina artist Brisa Amir’s pieces, most especially the massive installation titled “Continually Cresting,” ground us in the real and handmade, the bustling world of objects and life forms. They bring to the foreground the juxtaposition of urban life and the natural world growing through the cracks of a city wasteland. Here, the malignancies of restless urban development give way to shards of living,collage-like compositions, brimming with patches of colors.
What brings these two artists together is a nuanced exploration of mediums that draw on painting’s formal properties without being restricted by its traditional methods of framing. The canvases here act as foreign objects, hanging from the ceiling or left on the floor, shaped into a circular mass, or transposed into sheets. We arrive from here a way of looking at development as a non-linear act, full of twists and turns, gatherings and goings, never settling on a fixed idea. Appearing as fragments, the ghosts of these works arrive as patches of light, accruing into a longing expanse, tragic and questioning.
Sean Carballo is an art writer. His writing can be found in the Philippine Star, Vogue Philippines, ArtAsiaPacific, and Plural Art Magazine.
Images courtesy of Brisa Amir
A dash, a colon runs from January 26, 2026 to March 28, 2026 at Casa Azul, Instituto Cervantes, Intramuros.