DELAYED GRATIFICATION
The Pursuit of the Instant and the Protracted
Does the length of the pursuit of a goal give price to the prize? Is it true that the longer you wait, the better the reward? “Delayed Gratification” looks into the nuances and articulations of the pursuit of pleasure, contentment and triumphs.
Time is a marker of value but value is subjective, dependent on the one appreciating it. For the vulnerable, the precarious and the insecure, time is of the essence. When tomorrow is an uncertainty, one finds pleasure in the immediate and whatever is there for the taking. But there are also things that one must wait for, to pace and calculate one’s actions and decisions.
What is more important then? Small achievements or ultimate victories? The process or the objective? The instant or the protracted?
Gratification is the experience of contentment when one realises a desire or an ambition. The works of Carlo Gernale, Frelan Gonzaga, Amer Mira and Tristram Miravalles, manifest means and ends. The exhibition delves into the particularities of the search for satisfaction and success of each artist. At the same time, it looks into the raw and processed experiences of the four Filipinos chasing private and public goals and the complex forms attaining them.
Gratification in their accounts rely not solely on time but the calibration of duration, process and intentions. For there are moments where the immediate is necessary and there are moments where patience is crucial. These pursuits are rendered more to answer the questions to whom we do the things we do and why we do them to account the length of time we choose to spend. In both cases, they are contingent on timing and other modalities and motives. In this exhibit, the complexities of what drives the artist gives meaning to their endavours and even the instant can seem to last a lifetime when confronted with obstacles.
Thus, gratification sometimes and for others can become delayed.
- JA