A work gets made by conflicting ideas. In Ferdz Valencia’s case it’s a conflict of conviction and vision, a by-product perhaps of a knee-jerk response to situations outside of creation but invariably affect its outcome. Yet this goes against the grain of the required precision of his other craft – skateboarding – where hesitant moves lead instead to painful consequences. In painting, these consequences open rather to compositional possibilities, the resulting picture a puzzle of mixed readings, ambiguity from ambivalence, teeming with doubts, shrouding it in the occult of the artist-creator-mystic. Ferdz Valencia have mined from his background of comics and skateboard graphics illustration to draw out in ink mystic visions that reverberate from the cacophony of a mash-up religiosity that combines superstitions, folklore, urban mythology, UFOlogy into a fatalistic polytheism. This time he applies these symbols in a personal attenuation of everyday situations and personal introspection of the duality of creation
and non-creation, and fence-sitting in either of these binaries.
Valencia is a self-taught artist who was involved in the underground comix scene in the 90s. Together with fellow artist/illustrators they formed the group Alas Dose and released the self-published Quatro comix series. He also came up with his own skateboard line Incubator and currently does graphics for Muckefuck skateboards and Black Label as Grudgebait Designs. He also does collaborations under Crocogator with Victor Balanon where their stop motion animation video-installation was featured in the 2012 Jakarta Biennale. Ambivalent Gestures is his 2nd solo exhibit.
Lena Cobangbang
