"FTW"

Where boys fear to tread
by Siddharta Perez

FTW - the counterculture mark of bike ruffians that meant “Forever two wheels” evolved to accommodate a more universal dropout dismissal, a sentiment of frustration and doldrums: FTW became “Fuck the world”.

From that departure point of the famous antisocial slogan, Froilan Calayag and Dexter Fernandez shift the weight of the acronyms. The scale bears down more heavily on the “W” - the WORLD, rather the cussy “F”. As in Dexter's Hi, the fuck and such variation of rudeness merely inhabit and float about almost surreptitiously? their worlds instead of affronting? and shaping them. The “F” really meant to be a lowercase character for FTW as Froilan and Dexter's exhibition is a roaring ride out to their cityscape/innerscape and back.

Known for his candy wander/wonderland of animal creatures (that seem to be in perpetual flight because of with their wide-eyed look), Froilan tones down the vividness of their color and loses the perspective of the landscape in FTW. As ever, his pieces are more autobiographical than anything. Reflective of his immediate emotions and the spontaneity of his psycho-symbolic creation, his works are a cross between the world as we know it and a world where he flees to. A limited backdrop for narrative sequences inherent in his works, and exemplified in Run...son!, show that the mentioned worlds are not necessarily two different realities. Froilan portrays a fixed space of frantic activity where the entry and exit points paradoxically co-exist.

Color is his special fuel. As much as each character is an individual inhabitant of his world, their originality lies in the fact that their form or narrative is secondary to their hue. Here comes hope with soft chaos, a creation story gone a little awry, proposes this dilemma. It is this element, color that captures a state and a landscape and thus brings about this nagging feeling that the events that are taking place are subservient to another element in a painting. Yet, if color holds the reins, it is still so that a red is never just a red, nor a yellow never just a yellow. In the spectrum of symbolism that each color holds, it is in this infinite make up through which we can enter and leave endlessly. Chaotic characters are camouflaged in his world, because color is his bane and boon. Froilan pays attention to this principle because his race is on a highway that begins, runs and finishes in an inspiration that is constant (to move into, around and out of it is a prerogative).

Also departuring from an autobiographical direction, Dexter on the other hand conjures his narratives on to larger than life sculptures. The stiffness of their stance and contours aptly allow his whimsical images to surface, giving the impression that the thread of his tales meet and extend to more unspoken ones. Crowding his strange I feel like nausea (which is actually the translation of the Japanese characters on the sculpture) are mythological gods and creatures of chaos battling each other, battling together. Strange pop culture references inhabit his spaces too, but not entirely in a friendly way. These characters seem to point to sweet screaming demons emerging from the other-conscious as personified versions of a dispirited mental state. Swears appear in various facets of his sculptures, in text and in gesture. 

Another occurring element that is significantly descriptive of Dexter is the house. On the bulky feet of I feel like nausea are bungalows of assorted features – pointing to Dex's nomadic course through life to find the right abode. And as houses make up the parts, the whole structure of his pieces are also a house with their triangular heads and the strange members they give shelter to. With themes of displacement and unsettling nomadry – in feeling and in real time, Dex produces a Janus-faced world (also literally) of normality and hybridity, a landscape where he continues to wander like a renegade version of Johnny Appleseed.

Culminating in their collaborative work bearing the same title as their exhibition,
Froilan and Dexter lay the weight on the WORLD, for the win. “F” has become a blank to fill in. In the work FTW, the objects of nourishing can let F stand for FEED while the compactness and lack of space for error can make it stand for FILL. Likewise, FTW is their invitation to the world as they know it. Almost like beckoning, “come FEEL the world as we fuck, fail and fascinate it.” FTW is Dexter and Froilan - punk pilgrims into places where other boys fear to tread.