What are we to make of this pandemic now, 100-plus-days down the line? The end of it is still far beyond reach: cases continue to rise and shelter-orders remain in place in one form or the other. A sense of indeterminacy lingers, and yet for reasons certainly not out of healthcare, the world isn’t at the same grounding halt as it was when the coronavirus first turned it on its head.
But it isn’t moving like it used to, either. The present time feels to have hit a snag somewhere between norm-rigidity and normlessness. It makes for that topical kind of inertia—or lassitude—that the keen artworks by Pin Calacal and Ranelle Dial give voice to, all while suggesting ways to get out of it.
Either the body hovers or runs. Mounted at Vinyl on Vinyl for physical view by appointment (available also for a virtual outing) are Pin Calacal’s not quite here and Ranelle Dial’s Forging Ahead. In tune with themes wrought by the pandemic, Calacal’s subjects provide a welcome view into the interior, bodies laying prostrate on the ground as their incorporeal selves hover above amid a stark landscape. At first glance, Calacal’s personal art illustrates several layers of dissonance with the body—cognitive, spiritual—but as writer JC Rosette so eloquently explains, “the artistic intention is to allow [these] discomfiting experiences to resonate” in recognition of these “similar and shared interiorities.”
Just like that of Calacal, the artworks of Ranelle Dial don’t come off as heavy-handed. There’s enough heavy going around with the pandemic as it is that it hardly needs mentioning: the context is invariably given. It’s this context that infuses the topic of running in Dial’s Forging Ahead with such power. As writer Carlomar Arcangel Daoana elaborates on Dial’s series “Forward Forever,” a sequence of oil-on-canvas paintings focused on a pair of legs’ varying states of movement, the attention squares on the “energy, speed, and vitality of running.” The works—along with the landscape sketches “Fartleks,” which feature overlapping multicolored bands to indicate the runner’s (the artist herself) direction and speed—offer a way of retaking control of the situation.
For those who can, not quite here and Forging Ahead seem well worth checking out. The show writeups are also very giving and insightful. Click the links to read. For inquiries and to book an appointment, email info@vinylonvinylgallery.com
