SHADOWS BETWEEN THE LINES
21 June–6 September 2025
Art Director
Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz
Exhibition Team
Gabriel Abalos
Roy Abrenica
Mariela Araza
Jose Joeffrey Baba
Patrocino Aguirre
Thess Ponce
Franco Zuñiga
Graphic Designer
Daena Dizon
Cover Art
Jonidel Mendoza
Exhibition Notes
Angel Velasco Shaw
This publication © 2024 by Galleria Duemila is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Artist Statement
In my works, the human figure—though often faceless and undefined—emerges constantly. Through a deliberate interplay of light and shadow, these figures exist in a liminal space: distant yet familiar, anonymous yet intimate. I invite my viewers to engage with the ambiguity, prompting them to fill in the gaps with their own memories, perceptions, and emotional landscapes.
Silhouettes, unfinished faces, and fragmented forms dominate the visual narrative, challenging the viewer to question what is seen versus what is suggested. By withholding certain details, absence is turned into presence.
Driven by a fascination with materiality and transformation, I incorporate unconventional materials such as organza silk, metal mesh, voltage wires, and other industrial elements. These materials—often cold and utilitarian—are reimagined through layered painting techniques and immersive installations. The result is a tension between delicacy and strength, the organic and the industrial, the seen and the obscured.
What I offer is the idea that identity and memory are not fixed but fluid—shaped by what we remember, what we forget, and what we choose to reconstruct. Through my work, I offer a space for contemplation, encouraging viewers to confront the fragmented, shifting nature of the self.
Jonidel Mendoza
COP - 20556
Face To Face Between The Lines
acrylic inks, acrylic relief paint, water-soluble graphite pencil on canvas and plywood
122.00 x 235.00 cm / 48.07 x 92.59 in. 2025
COP - 20553
Yesterday And Day Before A Portrait Of You
91.00 x 122.00 cm / 35.85 x 48.07 in.
2025
acrylic inks, japanese ink, acrylic relief paint, water-soluble graphite pencils on canvas and plywood
184.00 x 122.00 cm / 72.50 x 48.07 in. 2025
COP - 20555
Self-silhouette
acrylic inks, acrylic relief paint, acrylic paint, water-soluble graphite pencil on plywood and fiberglass mesh
- 20554
Evidence Of The Convert acrylic inks, japanese ink, acrylic relief paint, oil solid markers, cotton threads on canvas, nylon mesh, silk organza
95.00 x 126.00 x 4.50 cm / 37.43 x 49.64 x 1.77 in.
2025
COP
Echo of the Reflection in the Window
high-voltage electric lighting cables
181.50 x 81.00 x 39.00 cm / 71.51 x 31.91 x 15.37 in.
COS - 20569
SHADOWS BETWEEN THE LINES
By Angel Velasco Shaw
“The artist must be true to himself and his vision without worrying about the expectations of others.”
Diego Rivera
Self-silhouette
Interceptions of Reflection
Face to Face Between the Lines
Yesterday and Day Before A Portrait of You
Evidence of the Convert
Echo of What We Are There In What We See…
Echo of the Reflection in the Window
In the Midst of Evanescent Society
Anonymous Silhouette Whose Life, Along With Ours Passes, Dies, and Endures
Venezuelan artist Jonidel Mendoza’s exhibition titles read like meditative lines in a poem. The ephemeral and contemplative qualities of his oeuvre presented in his first Manila exhibition at Galleria Duemila appeal to our visceral senses conjuring an inquisitive desire to touch, feel, listen, and enter into the totality of each mixed media painting and sculptural installation. Upon encountering the artworks, one may feel an impulse to interact with them. Physically move from one side to the other, wander with one’s eyes in motions that reveal multidimensional layers of aesthetic and social meaning. Discoveries into the artist’s psyche and perhaps one’s own traverse existential questions of one’s being; purpose.
Traces of the words SOUL | TRANSPARENCY | LEVITATION | IMMATERIAL | SILHOUETTE dis/appear in intuitive, yet controlled lines of hues of blue acrylic paint and black Japanese
ink; free-flowing lines of graphite applied on combined layers of canvas; organic silk fabric; and anti-mosquito fiberglass mesh. Apparitions of one or more genderless face and human figures promote interactive looking in liminal spaces. Ubiquitous ambiguity abounds. Who is re/presented in these pieces – the artist, you, me, us, them? The ghosting effects emulate shedding skins and a convergence of fragmented selves in these wondrous mood-scapes.
Textural allusions to fine embroidery, braille, Morse code, a matrix of staples, and soldered metal imply a cache of moods enhancing the viewing experience. Mendoza’s mixed-media paintings–Face to Face Between the Lines, Yesterday and Day Before A Portrait of You, Evidence of the Convert, Anonymous Silhouette Whose Life, and Along With Ours Passes, Dies, and Endures Echo of What We Are There In What We See…, and his self-portrait Self-silhouette–exude vulnerability, nakedness, and whispers of a life lived without closure. The illusive nature of these words or if they are even seen as words at all is up to the viewer to ponder. There is a playfulness to this invitation to meditate on one’s findings as s/he/they visually meander through the paintings. It is in this moment that the viewer may enter into the artist’s state of mind now externalized in the push/ pull sensations of experiencing the familiarity, disorientation, melancholia, and comfort that these works evoke. And as such, potentially enriched engagements with Mendoza’s creative process and connective kinetic energy can occur; testament to Mendoza’s commitment to self-expression as a means to captivate his audience.
Explorations of these introspections from all angles, close-up, and from afar invigorate experiential readings of the artworks’ tacit universality. Such impressionistic connotations can also be reflected upon in Mendoza’s serial sculptural installations Echo of the Reflection in the Window and In the Midst of Evanescent Society. Literal readings of these minimalist abstractions/ “windows” with hints of human faces sculpted from highvoltage wire prohibit the opportunity to enter into their profundity which this writer experiences as “soul-speak.” And like his paintings, movement is inherent within each of these works. Albeit, of a different kind as the viewer’s frontal/side shadow fill their vacant “frames.”
Interceptions of Reflection, a stand-alone wall-sculpture perhaps best exemplifies Mendoza’s skillful command over his choice of materials to address complex ruminations on humanity and one’s place within it. The homogenous life-size figures made of
malleable heavy-duty industrial galvanized mesh appear to be in everyday motions that suggest convergence and divergence. Once again, a question arises as to who this figure/s may be – the artist, you, me, us, them? These open-ended spaces containing shadows/silhouettes in dialogue with a viewer offer a kind of self-reflection that can be calming, jarring or a combination of both.
In an interview with Mendoza, he shared that the ideas that informed these ten artworks stem from being ‘stranded’ in Manila during the CoVid-19 pandemic while waiting for his visa to return to Seoul, Korea where he had been residing for five years. Such precarity of times in which we lived, expanded his motif of interplay with shadows/silhouettes, and sense of aloneness in one’s inner and outer worlds that also speaks to a pulsating connectivity with the self. Mendoza’s diverse materials – traditional arts, fabric, and industrial wire metal – used to create these pieces embody the sacred fragility and strength of one’s inner being. In essence, the artworks presented in SHADOWS BETWEEN THE LINES are portals into the un/conscious awakenings of the human spirit.
COS - 20557–20568
Interceptions of Reflection
galvanized mesh material
dimensions variable
2025
- 20527
Of What We Are There In What We See...
x 187.00 cm / 49.64 x 73.68 in. 2025
COP
Echo
acrylic paint and ink, japanese ink, relief paint, anti-mosquito fiberglass mesh, matte organza silk on canvas and wood
126.00
COP - 20528
Strange Shadows That Come From Afar, From Where It Is Not, From Encounters With No One
paint and ink, japanese ink, relief paint, anti-mosquito fiberglass mesh, matte organza silk on canvas and wood
126.00 x 187.00 cm / 49.64 x 73.68 in. 2025
acrylic
COP - 20529
Anonymous Silhouette Whose Life, Along With Ours, Passes, Dies, And Endures
acrylic paint and ink, japanese ink, relief paint, anti-mosquito fiberglass mesh, matte organza silk on canvas and wood
187.00 x 126.00 cm / 73.68 x 49.64 in. 2025
In the Midst of Evanescent Society
high-voltage electric lighting cables
109.00 x 306.00 x 8.00 cm / 42.95 x 120.56 x 2.17 in. 2025
COS - 20570
- 20574
Silent Lucidity Of The Silhouettes.
76.00 x 56.00 cm / 29.94 x 22.06 in.
2025
COP - 20576
Reflection In The Rain. acrylic ink and relief paint and fineliner on cotton paper
76.00 x 56.00 cm / 29.94 x 22.06 in. 2025
COP
acrylic ink and relief paint and fineliner pens on cotton paper
fineliner pens
COP - 20577
Faded In The Mirror. acrylic ink and relief paint and fineliner pens on cotton paper
76.00 x 56.00 cm / 29.94 x 22.06 in.
COP - 20575
Silent Lucidity Of The Crowd. acrylic ink and relief paint and fineliner pens on cotton paper
56.00 x 76.00 cm / 22.06 x 29.94 in. 2025
COP - 20571
Silent Lucidity. acrylic ink and relief paint, fineliner pens, and fiberglass mesh on cotton paper
23.00 x 31.00 cm / 9.06 x 12.21 in. 2025
In A Single Being acrylic ink and relief paint, fineliner pens, and fiberglass mesh on cotton paper
31.00 x 23.00 cm / 12.21 x 9.06 in.
2025
In The Lucid And Silent Reflection. acrylic ink and relief paint, fineliner pens, and fiberglass mesh on cotton paper
31.00 x 23.00 cm / 12.21 x 9.06 in.
2025
COP - 20572
COP - 20573
Artist CV
Jonidel Mendoza (b. 1975 in Maturín, Venezuela) studied at the Eloy Palacios School of Plastic Arts and later at the Armando Reverón Institute in Caracas. He lived in Seoul from 2006 to 2007, then returned to Caracas to participate in several exhibitions. From 2013 to 2019, he lived in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Macau, and has been based in the Philippines since 2019.
Solo Exhibitions
1998 The other skin, Roca Zamora Art Gallery, Eloy Palacios School of Plastic Arts, Maturín, Monagas state
2002 Revealing beings, Mariano Picón Salas Room, Central University of Venezuela (UCV), Caracas
2004 Forms of the covert, Churuguara Athenaeum, Falcón state
2004 Tight skin, Artepuy Gallery, Caracas
2007 Mobile reflection, Gallery Bellarte, Seoul, South Korea
2010 Chiaroscuro, GBGARTS Gallery, Caracas, Venezuela
2011 Chiaroscuro, Art Nouveau Gallery, Miami, USA
2011 The Multiplicity of Shadows, Art Nouveau Gallery. Maracaibo Venezuela
2014 Chiaroscuro, Gallery Bellarte – Ara Art Museum. Seoul, South Korea
2025 SHADOWS BETWEEN THE LINES, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City
Select Group Exhibitions and International Fairs
1999, 2001, 2003 Juan Lovera Hall, Municipal Council of Caracas, Arturo Michelena Center for the Arts, Banco Industrial de Venezuela Foundation
2004 I International Painting Contest, Views of Latin America 2004, Maracaibo, Zulia state
2004 LXIV Arturo Michelena National Art Hall, Valencia Athenaeum, Carabobo state
2005 VIII Salon CANTV Jóvenes con FIA (Ibero-American Art Fair), Corp Group Cultural Center Foundation, Caracas
2006 50 Years of Abstraction in Venezuela, Re’Drawn Spaces, Corp Group Foundation Odalys Group, Caracas, Venezuela
2006 International Art Fair Miami 2006, XVI Edition, Artepuy Gallery, Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami, United States
2006 Korea International Art Fair 5th Edition, KIAF, COEX Pacific Hall, Seoul, South Korea
2006 Bogota International Art Fair ARTBO, II Edition, Artepuy Gallery, Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá, Colombia
2006 V Biennial of Watercolor Viña del Mar International, Exhibition Hall of the Viña del Mar Casino, Chile
2006 63 Biennial Arturo Michelena, Valencia Athenaeum Hall, Venezuela
2006 AUCTION 06 Contemporary Latin American Art, Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, California, United States
2006 MANIF Seoul International Art Fair, Seoul Art Center (Hangaram Art Museum), Seoul, South Korea
2007 International Art Fair Miami 2007, XVII Edition, Artepuy Gallery.Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami, United States
2007 Arteamericas: The Latin Americas Art Fair, Artepuy Gallery, Miami Beach Convention Center, United States
2007 Korea International Art Fair, 6th Edition KIAF, COEX Pacific Hall, Seoul, South Korea
2008 Arteamericas: The Latin Americas Art Fair, Artepuy Gallery, Miami Beach Convention Center, United States
2008 Latin American Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art in New York, Pinta, Metropolitan Pavilion, II Edition, Artepuy Gallery, United States
2009 Arteamericas: The Latin Americas Art Fair, Artepuy Gallery, Miami Beach Convention Center, United States
2009 New Painters, Fivars Gallery, Alicante, Spain
2009 Ibero-American Art Fair (FIA), Artepuy Gallery, Tamanaco Internacional Hotel, Caracas
2009 Latin American Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art in New York, Pinta, Metropolitan Pavilion, III Edition, Artepuy Gallery, United States
2010 Arteamericas: The Latin Americas Art Fair, Artepuy Gallery, Miami Beach Convention Center, United States
2011 Houston Fine Art, Art Nouveau Gallery, Houston, USA
2011 PINTA Art Fair, Art Nouveau Gallery, NY, USA 2011 International Art Fair Miami Art Nouveau Gallery, Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami, United States
2012 Houston Fine Art, Art Nouveao Gallery, Houston, USA
2012 Fair Ibero-American Art (FIA), GBGARTS Gallery Hotel Tamanaco Internacional, Caracas.
2012 Pinton Past, Fresh Painting, GBG Arts Galería, Caracas, Venezuela
2012 Iberoamericana Art Fair (IAAF), Hangaram Art Museum, Ara Art Museum, and Sejong Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2012 DIALOGUES WITH ART FROM THE COLLECTION, Contemporary Museum of Caracas, Venezuela
2013 Houston Fine Art, Art Nouveao Gallery, Houston, USA
2013 Pinta Art Fair, Art Nouveau Gallery, New York, USA
2013 LEVEDITY – DENSITY, (CAI) Center for Integrated Arts, Caracas, Venezuela
2013 Iberoamericana Art Fair (IAAF), Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2014 ENCOUNTERS OPEN HOUSE 2014, Brighton, England
2014 AMAZON COLOR, OULIM ART MUSEUM, South Korea
2014 NATIONAL PARLIAMENT OF SEOUL, South Korea
2014 LATIN OF COLOR, GYEONGNAM ART MUSEUM, South Korea
2014 PANORAMA EMERGING ART, TAC Paseo Las Mercedes, Caracas, Venezuela
2014 Iberoamericana Art Fair (IAAF), Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea
2015 Encounter Latin & Korean, IDB-IIC, Busan, Busan Cinema Center, South Korea
2015 BAMA 2015, Busan Art Market Affair, BEXCO, Busan, South Korea
2016 Sejong Art Center, Special participation, Sculpture in Space, Sejong Art Center facade. Seoul, South Korea
2016 DREAM FOREST MUSEUM, Seoul, South Korea 2016 LATIN CAREER. GBGARTS Galería, Paris, France
2016 I LOVE VENEZUELA FOUNDATION, AUCTION, Ideobox Artspace, Miami, USA
2017 SWAB ART FAIR GBGARTS Galería, Barcelona, Spain
2017 CARRE LATIN. GBGARTS Gallery, Paris, France
2017 International Art Fair Miami Art Nouveau Gallery, Miami, United States
2018 PARC Art Fair Lima, Art Nouveau Gallery, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Lima, Peru
2018 I LOVE ART FOUNDATION, AUCTION, GBGARTS Gallery, Miami Design District, Miami, USA
2018 CARRE LATIN, GBGARTS Gallery, Paris, France
2019 Encounters/Disencounters, INCASA Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2024 – 2025 Xavier Art Fest, Xavier School, San Juan
Awards
1997 Honorific mention, XVIII Art Salon December 7, Mayor’s Office of Maturín, Monagas state
1998 Primer Painting Prize, XVIII Ateneo de Carúpano Painting Hall, Sucre state
1998 Prize Stimulus, XXVIII Aragua National Art Hall, Museum of Contemporary Art (MACMA), Maracay, Aragua state
2000 Honorific mention, Philips Art Prize for Young talents, Art Gallery, José María Vargas University, Caracas
2000 Honorable Mention, XIX Municipal Visual Arts Award, Juan Lovera Room, Council of the Bolivariano Libertador Municipality, Caracas
2001 Big prize, X Francisco Lazo Martí Visual Arts Hall, Dungeon, Guárico state
2001 Eduardo Lezama Drawing Award, SAW Regional Hall of Young Artists of the East, Barcelona, Anzoátegui state
Galleria Duemila was established in 1975 by Italian born Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz. Duemila means “twentieth century” and it was this vision that inspired the gallery’s advocacy in promoting and preserving Philippine contemporary art. To date, it is the longest-standing commercial art gallery in the Philippines maintaining a strong international profile.
Galleria Duemila takes pride in being the only local gallery to publish and mount retrospectives of artists as part of its advocacy in pursuing art historical research and scholarship.
210 Loring Street
1300 Pasay City, Metro Manila
+63 908 307 9972
+63 2 8831 9990
+63 2 8833 9815
gduemila@gmail.com
art@galleriaduemila.com www.galleriaduemila.com
With the collaboration of institutions, Galleria Duemila has mounted the retrospectives of Roberto M. A. Robles (Ateneo Art Gallery, 2011), Duddley Diaz (Vargas Museum, 2009), and Julie Lluch Dalena (Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2008). It has also published a book on Diosdado Magno Lorenzo (National Library of the Philippines, 2009) and produced a major Pacita Abad exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2004.
The gallery is a presumed important cultural property through Article III of the National Heritage Act of 2009 (R.A. 10066) and is listed as a local cultural property of Pasay under City Ordinance No. 4624 series of 2019.
Gawad Parangal para sa mga Alagad ng Sining ng Pasay (2023) Plaque of Local Cultural Property (2023)
