ARNDT Catalogue Manila

MIKE ADRAO
In an age enamored with installation, conceptual, or performance
art, does good old drawing still have a chance to be recognized?
Artists like Mike Adrao show that draughtsmanship still matters
and that drawing remains a dynamic and unexhausted field.
His large, charcoal canvases depicting anthropomorphic and
biological forms show control, rigor and imagination. These
images—each one teeming with intricate detail—are first born in
his trusted sketchbook. On a large canvas inside his tiny studio
above an Internet cafe, the mild-mannered Adrao lays them
out and pieces them together in a slow, deliberate, physically
demanding but sometimes meditative process.
For this show, his ruminations on the sinister qualities of the city—
the decadence, the corruption, the environmental negligence, the
temptations of wealth and power—yield a charcoal, chiaroscuro
work that is an allegory of life in the Philippine capital. It shows
how little by little one is consumed by the grip of its structures and
systems. Integrating Philippine currency vignettes and lacework,
exploding manunggol jars and reptilian elements, the work can
be turned upside-down, mimicking the topsy-turvy manner of
existence in a desperately dense and chaotic setting.