Canto I-IV (kuwatro kantos) Works on paper from my 1st solo show ‘Blindspot Machinery’ at @thedenmanila. Catch the works live and online at The Den Escolta. — We witness the wreckages of history and reclaim the remains of the collision that still haunts us today. In Blindspot Machinery, Gonzales presents relics of the past that hum a familiar sound and ring true of the Last Song syndrome. These relics, drawings -framed by steel shaped to look like the exteriors of jeepneys, with wood from ancestral homes - signify that these banal objects were once and still are vestiges of a forgotten past. Gonzales reconfigures these into artifacts that ask us to meet the subject's gaze, acting as a mediator between the archive of imperial ephemera and an audience. He sits with the image and deliberately renders it "line by line and weight by weight" analyzing and emphasizing these forgotten figures' faces that were subjected to fear, violence, and forced to become benevolent. In times of turmoil, we might see ourselves as being critical in rejecting hope. But in a rush to denounce it, we would be missing the point. Hope is spawned from a critical investment in something that is not yet here. Which is often cast aside as naivete, instead, it can be a means to resist the numbing conditions of our present. -Nash Cruz