In Make Believe, artists Brave Singh, Is Jumalon, and Mariano Ching deal with forms which are perceived as alternate realities when visualized on different media. With the attempt to transport the viewers to the artist’s imagined world, the works depict verisimilitude rather than deception.

Brave Singh, taking inspiration from his recent travels, looks beyond the horizons and reflect on the experience of leaving and reuniting with the people in his life. The artist examines his being and other potentials by looking at the burnt frame in his works as a representation of the window of opportunity that stimulates interest in discovering, understanding and learning more about his existence.

In her series of works, Is Jumalon draws at the edges of her rectangular canvas and attempts to make meaning out of the empty space in the middle, which appears to be pieces of paper from a distance. The artist plays on the idea of trompe l’oeil wherein one perceives an image of something despite its absence, paralleled to our notion of the unfathomable such as the Holy Trinity and in relation to how we view an artwork. As per Jumalon, she is “taking away what’s in front of you [and] drawing on the sides that you all overlook” in order to convey the tendencies of the viewer to become fascinated with the central image, while failing to notice its surrounding elements. It is also important to note how Jumalon deconstructs our perceived concept of the Holy Trinity through her works which she identifies as the Mother, Daughter, and the Spirit. The blanks, which seem to extend to the edges, create the surrounding panoramic landscape– it is the artist’s way of alluding her works to the story of creation and, in one way or another, recognizing the omnipresent Being.

Mariano Ching depicts in his “soft places series” what seem to be a wasteland lined up with dead trees– an imagery of drought and yet the intense earth colors seeping through the vein-like branches in the paintings have become a picture of life. Ching, in establishing visual paradox, paints the layers of earth and crystal-like ice mountains. The artist may refer to “soft places” as a state of chaos in one’s mind and, at the same time, a place and a cradle for beauty.