“I have to change in order to stay the same,” said Willem de Kooning, the great American abstractionist of the first generation of the New York School, who greatly influenced the Filipino abstractionist, Edwin Wilwayco.
The paradoxical remark is a sentiment and a stimulus that is much evident in Wilwayco’s Octo Gravitas, clearly derived from their root words — the Latin octo for the figure eight, and gravitas, for weight, heaviness. Created at the tail end of Wilwayco’s previous Circles series, the numeral looking like two circles ringed together — the viewer is treated once more to Wilwayco’s brush-wielding bravura, in what may be termed a “heuristic” technique of picture-making.
Thus, heuristically, Wilwayco did in fact find a method of painting with the help of a “substrate” — a word used by the American critic Josephine Fatima Martins, who has written much about the works Wilwayco has produced while based in Providence, Rhode Island.
The same use of the substrate was made prominent in the Fractals series, which propelled the artist to unexpected heights of production. The substrate takes the form of a pre-designed canvas or commercial fabric, submerged in the background but insidiously makes its presence visually, serving as a fulcrum or catalyst.
Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Manila