ABOUT THE WORK

An archaeology of experience. From the world of everyday materials that surrounds our lives, Lino Severino recasts experiences of time and place. Through his works depicting the crumbling of our domestic moorings he reaches beyond the singular, individual experience to one that embraces a universal awareness of life and change that touches all of us. At the very heart of Lino Severino’s art is the reality of memory and the ephemeral nature of life. His Vanishing Series started with the historic houses of Ilocos Norte, Vigan, Iloilo, and Silay City, where he was born. The artist rendered their architectural and ornamental features in close detail and made their textures of wood and stone come alive at the time when they were showing the strain of half a century of existence. Soon enough they were fading fast and giving in to the processes of time, as they succumbed to inexorable gravity. Severino’s ancestral houses continue to dematerialize, becoming etherealized, hovering between this temporal world and eternity where no one may yet draw from the inexhaustible stuff of memories.