Shapes of Almost

Gary Custodio’s paintings begin with order but do not end there. Lines are measured, planes carefully placed, and shades of gray arranged with a precision that hints at a mind comfortable with numbers and sets. Yet something in these compositions resists being settled. Forms fold into forms, spines score surfaces, and volume seemingly rise from the flat. In WIP 2, Custodio continues to test how a painting can suggest space without surrendering to the image of something else. His geometric forms may recall buildings, beams, or blueprints, but their real subject is the making and unmaking of space itself. Warm grays meet cool grays; one plane advances as another recedes through translucent layers. The shifts are subtle, the movements measured, the effect calm but never quite still. Beneath the restraint, something stirs.

And we take a particular pleasure in looking at these works. The longer one stays, the less certain the boundaries become. Do those triangles create a shield, or an ati mask remembered from the artist’s Kalibo hometown? Is that a kite, a billowing sail, or parachute seams? Custodio’s careful constructions make room for such uncertainties, allowing one possibility to lead to another without insisting on a final destination. There is a logic to the work, but also a willingness to let that logic wander.

WIP 2, short for Works in Progress, becomes more than a familiar label or a convenient disclaimer. It is a condition, a conviction, perhaps even a way of life. The paintings remain in dynamic motion in stasis, and so does the painter with his relentless passion to produce. Each work can grow from what came before, carrying old questions into new configurations, old habits into unfamiliar territory. The artist, his art, and the life that sustains it are all works in progress, shaped by what is learned, what is left behind, and what is yet to take shape.

Kaye O’Yek