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The Unseen Truth
RC Caringal
October 12 - November 24, 2024
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In Unseen Truth, RC Caringal ventures beneath the surface to illuminate an essential truth about human nature: our tendency to hide, minimize, and enlarge our true intentions. As one of her paintings suggests, there is more than meets the eye. Caringal masterfully uses the topography of the human body to map emotional and psychological compulsions.
In works like “Overshare,” she explores how we burden others through excessive speech, symbolized by clasped hands grasping accumulated fat on the belly. In today’s Age of Social Media, where even the most mundane details are shared, this painting resonates deeply. Despite drawing from universal experiences, Caringal avoids autobiography. Instead, she generalizes the human form, inviting viewers to see themselves in the work—confronting the need to hide emotions, the distortions of perception, and our “silent pleas” for connection.
Scale plays a crucial role in her paintings, distorting reality to highlight the disparity between how we perceive things and how they truly are. Yet alongside these large canvases, Caringal’s pen-and-ink drawings reveal a subtler truth—the intimacy of the human hand, reminding us that many of our concerns, when examined closely, are smaller and more manageable than they seem. It is our minds that magnify them.
Caringal’s depiction of the human body stands in stark contrast to the perfected, filtered images glorified on social media. Her figures are vulnerable, imperfect, and mortal—emphasized through her roughshod portrayal of skin. Using slight impasto, she layers paint to create textured, almost raw surfaces that reflect the imperfections of real human flesh. This technique underscores her commitment to portraying authenticity, rejecting the glossy facade in favor of a more truthful, grounded depiction of the human condition.
Unseen Truth marks not only the artist’s technical evolution but also her courage to confront the larger canvas—both literal and metaphorical. Her vision is clear: painting holds the power to expose our hidden motivations, challenging us to look beyond comforting surfaces. In a world that often stays skin deep, RC Caringal urges us to dig deeper, ask questions, and seek the truths that lie beneath.
Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
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