Provenance: Private Collection, Quezon City

ABOUT THE WORK

Using a psychological phenomenon known as facial pareidolia, Martin Honasan approaches portraiture with damage as his starting point and disrepair as his guide. His oeuvre has featured portraits overlaid on distressed and reconstructed canvases that had collected residual paint. From this expressionist exercise, Honasan lets his mind find facial characteristics from random patterns in a psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia. Like his art style, the expressions of his portraits are complex and multilayered, exuding pensiveness, melancholy, concern, and contempt. He draws inspiration from the faces of family and friends, the people he holds close. “I’ve ascribed so much meaning to the minute details of their expressions, to highlight the subtleties of their faces,” says Honasan. Honasan begins his work by scrutinizing textures, cutting up canvasses, and producing folds and wrinkles before putting brush and paint to work in rendering faces in the chaos. Through this, he admits to examining the contrast between freedom and boundaries — the freedom to find familiar images where there are none, and the boundaries of a blighted canvas.