Drop Off Point

The working class of courier-riders is the latest inspiration behind Demet Dela Cruz’s “Drop Off Point.” The artist believes that a courier-rider’s daily work is emblematic of the perseverance, improvisation, and hard work of the Pinoy. A lot of people can relate to this, especially Filipinos who are known for demonstrating an ability to make good use of what is available by maximizing whatever is at hand. The Pinoy usually accepts the reality of having limited resources and adapts accordingly.

Consciously focusing on the here and now of his immediate surroundings, Dela Cruz draws parallels between an artist and a courier-rider through the lens of their admirable diligence and hard work. “For instance,” he points out, “it is amazing to see the rider’s use of a packaging tape to secure a haystack of goods or parcels on a modest motorcycle.” He analogizes gleefully that inasmuch as the rider’s parcel has a drop-off point or destination, so is the artist’s artwork or art for that matter. This artist-rider parallelism reminds us of the French painter Edgar Degas (1834-1917) who is said to have evoked (if not avowed) in his laundress series of paintings that art is not only about an aesthetic act but also a physical act that requires patience or labor akin to that of a laundress—or in Dela Cruz’s case, a rider-courier.

Let us have a quick look at the kind of laborious task involved in this case: Whenever Dela Cruz makes a new series of shaped panels as supports for his paintings, such as the ones in this exhibition, he would normally start by carefully adjoining pieces of large plywood into seamless continuity, their back reinforced with bars, and other stuff. The next step in this labor is to meticulously cut these thick panels into certain contours dictated by the final compositions he has previously and diligently worked out on his desktop computer. After this stage, the shaped supports would be treated with protective barrier to cut down their absorbency a little bit in preparation for the primer as well. The drawing of the entire composition comes next. And finally, the multiple layers of oil paint are applied, with enough drying intervals between each application to ensure each layer is at least dry to the touch, in order to achieve a certain level of richness that is definitely essential for a sufficient simulacrum of reality.

The timely incorporation of the ubiquitous QR code onto Dela Cruz’s latest artworks is also worth mentioning. This is not an approximated QR code-like configuration added merely as a visual motif/element but rather as a valid, scan-functional, interactive one. This is the artist’s invitation for his audience to go ahead and scan these QR codes as a democratizing gesture that art is for everyone. Dela Cruz says, “Even though not everyone can own the paintings, anyone can somehow take them home, so to speak, go deeper about what the paintings are all about, share them with their families and friends via these QR codes.” Artists are so inclined to continue to create in order to have something enriching to share with the whole world, in physical form or otherwise, including the promise of interactive media such as the technology of QR code and the internet.

We have heard that sometimes it is helpful to exaggerate things in order to make a point. As the saying famously described in Matthew 19:24 suggests: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Case in point is the artist’s crucial decision to relinquish the presence of a rider/deliverer, thus enabling us to focus instead on this overwhelming plethora of explicitly religious objects as vehicles of faith and not just mere cargos on outsized motorcycles. And even though it could be practical to view the captured subjects as a kind of bookends of a journey, Demet Dela Cruz, nevertheless, seems to have steered clear of any hint of motion, as if to evoke a narrative of stillness that causes us to contemplate the unchanging nature of the Divine.