Postmatter, Postmeaning

France Daffon, Denver Garza, and Raffy Ugaddan

Mar 17 To Apr 17, 2025

This online release explores the aftermath of stylistic, material, and relational interfaces; convergences that transform matter and meaning upon the point of contact. 

The participating artists present varied forms of encounters as formative sites of unfolding.

FRANCE DAFFON

France Daffon is an artist from Rizal. Her early works included blind and modified contours that laid the groundwork of her style today. Her illustrations prioritize capturing women's experiences centered on the importance of gathering—encompassing the ambient times of intimacy to silence. The colors switch between blue and white guided by her treatment of the yin (blue) and yang (white). The blue silhouette, which she likes to refer to as Anino (shadow), denotes the antipathies of the self and confronting internal fears. Her choice of cobalt is inspired by the monochromic blue hour—the haziness of light slowly engulfed into darkness.

 

DENVER GARZA

Denver Garza, born in Manila (b. 1987) with an academic background in Psychology. Prior to pursuing art, he worked as a mental health worker. His practice involves painting, mixed media craft and participatory performances that contemplate the meaning and comfort in life uncertainties. His works stem from intrapersonal exploration on identity, beliefs and social dynamics woven physically into a world through various media. His solo exhibitions tackle various topics such as drawings as exploration of self and others (Psychological Drawings, AIR-Hachinohe 2018), family dynamics (Default Paradise, 2019; Closure is a Labyrinth, 2024), and exploration of vulnerability (Arena, 2019; Ghost and Host, AFP 2020). He is also a recipient of CCP Thirteen Artist Award in 2024, and currently resides in Bacoor, Cavite.

 

RAFFY UGADDAN

Raffy Ugaddan is a visual artist currently based in Marikina City. His process consists of an unhurried and meticulous distillation of visual stimuli from the everyday, from dismantling an object’s form from its function, then reinventing them with the characteristics of another. This leads to the creation of whole contemplative pieces that ultimately exercise the viewers’ attention to travel the canvas.

He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 2019. He was a Semi-finalist at the 2022 MADE Competition (Acrylic), and Juror's Choice Awardee of Excellence at the Philippine Art Awards 2023.

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Raffy Ugaddan pursues this in artistic terms. The artist’s works in this collection mark some of his recent experimentations with color; initial attempts to meld earth and bright tones become illustrative of novel forms arising from new stylistic encounters.

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Denver Garza extends this artistic slant, this time with a turn to process instead.

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His series of paper collage works adopts a self-referential approach to the notion of encounter as, in the artist’s words, the act of layering conjures a “dynamic and layered representation of human interaction.” 

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France Daffon expands the inquiry through a relational approach. 

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She takes her cue from the ‘alternative plot’ storytelling structure to challenge the primacy of connections, foregrounding desolation as the stimulus of the familial reframings pursued by her works instead.

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Together, these works navigate the tenuous spaces where form and relation unravel. In these points of (dis)connection, matter morphs into flux and meaning emerges as an open question—contingent, shifting, and forever in motion.