Humans are creatures of habit, a repetition of activities bound by several patterns. Many of these patterns go unnoticed due to the bustle of our daily lives. Some aren’t seen at all. The Oxymoron of Patterns attempts to visually represent the balance between the order and chaos using everyday objects we tend to ignore. The exhibit brings to the foreground what we store in the recycle bin of our minds: the universality and inevitability of patterns. These patterns may elude our senses, but dictate the very essence of life.

Found in a secluded hallway of the fourth floor of CCP, the exhibit showcases Studio Solum’s explorations as a laboratory for visionary and speculative architecture. The end product is a collection of assemblages categorized into the pattern of the birth of color, the pattern of structure, and the pattern of chaos. First to be noticed is the birth of color section, which is mainly composed of representations of the visible spectrum. This is a simple collection of works that show how one color transitions to another.

Building and Destroying

The next collection of the exhibit, the pattern of structure, is a group of pieces which are mostly strands of wires arranged geometrically. This includes the Collision of Rhythm series, and Distortion. Distortion is a piece of abaca cloth skewered by multiple metal stakes. As these pierce the cloth, pulling and manipulating it in different directions, the subject is thus distorted. The orderliness of the structure is reflected in the geometrical arrangement of the stakes, but not evident in the focal point of the stakes, the subject.

Behind a Facade of (Dis)order

What stands out (if not only for the sheer space it takes on the floor of the exhibit), is the third collection depicting the pattern of chaos. The collection will leave the viewer questioning what he or she knows: is chaos a product of order, or is order a product of chaos? Which governs life? Consumption, a piece made of numerous empty soft-drink and beer cans, standing in random groups, show the reality of man’s wasteful nature through his consumption. Though the cans are arranged in no apparent order, each is uniform to another, showing perfect, unvarying order. Another piece, Tempus Edax Rerum (Time devours all things), is a collage of roughly-hewn pieces of wood. Again, it has no apparent order and is made of several different pieces and kinds of wood, but all it’s parts are cut in the same manner, just as time wears all down.

The assemblages that are part of this section are not limited to sight, as some pieces carry strong odors. Among them are Hingalo, which is an assemblage of cigarettes glued by their butts and their ends burnt off, and Love in Asphyxiation, a red box hanging, as if suffocating, in an entanglement of rubber hoses. The stenches, though threatening to overpower the viewer, powerfully deliver their messages, both showing perspectives of chaos, (perhaps the ugly evil of cancer cells ravaging through the body and the swirling storm of violent emotions of obsession, respectively) into death, the only inevitable uniformity of life.

The exhibit is strikingly unpretentious, using common items (some no more than plain garbage) to make profound observations. Because the exhibit presents more questions than answers, it leaves everyone to make his own observations from the pieces, everyone to dig his own treasure.

The Oxymoron of Patterns will be available for viewing until November 21, every Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the fourth floor of the CCP’s Main Theater Building.

Wrtitten by Earl Roxas and Mark Sarile