Exhibited: Exhibited: Ayala Museum Artist Space, Pulo, Makati Cty, 2017.

ABOUT THE WORK

Contemporary artist Martin Honasan explores the concepts of culture, identity, and individuality in his works featuring the human face. In these portraits, he juxtaposes a realist depiction of the subject’s face with abstract folds, textures, and treatments. This approach is one of his ways of presenting a novel way of utilizing the expressive qualities of the face. In Pihak, a portrait of a Capiznon burlap worker, the man’s face seems to merge with the textures and folds. It also displays the subject’s penetrating gaze, evoking a sense of distress, as Honasan uses the face as a canvas that shows the human condition. Honasan is a graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (Psychology and Communication Arts clusters). He worked as a visual artist and art director in advertising, then as managing partner in his own design firm, before he became a full-time artist. He has held shows and participated in group exhibits and art conventions in the country and abroad, and participated in an artist residency program in Osaka, Japan, where his completed works were exhibited at the YOD Gallery