the orbiter

source: facebook

The hiatus is over as Secret Fresh reopens its doors on August 4,2013 with the launch of Mark Justiniani’s first designer collectible, the Orbiter, as following through Secret Fresh’s visionary dedication in showcasing art through designer collectibles. In its reopening, Secret Fresh shall be bringing more designer collectible launches and exhibits by well known local and international artists in its ground floor gallery, while its second floor will be host to urban lifestyle retail brands and to works by various artists.

The launch and release of the Orbiter will just be one among other collaborations that Secret Fresh will be producing with esteemed and multi-awarded visual artist Mark Justiniani.

The Orbiter, which stands at 3ft and 6ft is made of Resin and Metal. The 6ft edition shall be produce in limited 7 regular editions and 1 special edition, while the 3ft edition will be shall be produce in limited 50 regular editions and 10 special editions.

The Orbiter embodies the scholar/student of life who seeks answers to age old questions of “who we are, where are we, where are going”. It is a figure astride on a unicycle, surveying a compass on his left hand and with a spy glass clenched behind his back. A figure ever cycling in his search, but in a precarious balance to be in equilibrium between two moving bodies, the Orbiter’s and the world he traverses on, a world in constant motion, and him on a unicycle who must retain his balance just as well in constant motion, abiding by laws of physics and guided by his moral compass, and to evolve as one moves in space, just as Justiniani himself has constantly reinvented himself by exploring different materials and formats as an artist – from painting mural-sized canvases to working with jeepney decals and steel to fabricating sculptural versions of his allegorical figures, and now to exploring the mechanics of animation and the physics behind mirrors and visual perception.

Aside from the Orbiter figures, on display as well will be two trademark pieces of Justiniani’s that explore the conundrums of illusionistic space, as he makes visual palindromes of the paradoxes of surface and deep perspective. Mirroring these conundrums to each one in proposing trajectories of introspection and retrospection. Transposing his long fascination for language palindromes to 3D in excavating the correlativity of meaning between words, his mirror box assemblages however shows the correlative paradox of space and time with movement, forming the basis of suspended animation and for how praxinoscopes work.

Mark Justinani, originally from Bacolod and a BFA graduate of UP Diliman, has represented the Philippines in various international conferences, workshops and exhibitions in Japan, Denmark, Australia and the USA. A CCP Thirteen artist awardee and a founding member of the seminal art collective in the 90s Saling Pusa, he has also designed the cover of the Eraserheads’ Circus album.