“I grew up as a child at the old Penguin Café Gallery in Malate,” says acclaimed young painter and poet Maxine Syjuco. “My ninang Ami Miciano (Penguin’s owner) would treat me to free scoops of ice cream, and I’ve had some of my fondest memories there.”

 

“Oarhouse is pretty much the new Penguin,” Maxine continues, “so I am excited to veer away from the formalities of traditional galleries, and to exhibit there for the first time.”

 

Her parents, the famed experimental artists Cesare and Jean Marie Syjuco, made their reputations showing at various alternative exhibition spaces in Malate, and in that sense, Maxine is clearly their progeny.

 

But she is also her own artist—and her dark, eerie and mystifying works in mixed-media straddle the line between fantasy and reality, conjuring a netherworld where ghostly images inhabit a gray area neither here nor there.

 

“My creative process begins with photography,” she explains, “…from there, I draw, color, erase, scribble and paint on the photographs. In this manner, I begin a rather violent conversation between the photographer and the painter within—a push-and-pull struggle of mediums filled with accidents, recoveries and revelations.”

 

Maxine Syjuco’s “Noises from a Locked Room” opens on May 7, at 7:30 p.m. with live performances by the Electric Underground Collective. It runs until July 4.

 

Oarhouse is located at 1688-B Jorge Bocobo St., Malate, Manila. Call +632-5167296, or visit www.oarhousepub.com, facebook.com/oarhousepubmanila.