Kim’s art is talking back
Everything has a beginning. Every beginning has an ending. And after every ending is another beginning.
Kim Hamilton Sulit’s pieces, which were included in the group exhibition entitled “Beginnings and Endings” at Galerie Roberto, follows the journey of mankind—its start and its end.
His art is made of bits and pieces of things found around us such as wood, cement, charcoal, LED, among other things.
Sulit’s full-time adventures with art began when he became a Fine Arts student at the Far Eastern University. Upon graduating in 2012, he set out to become a painter. He has been exposed to art in his hometown in Angono, Rizal. Now, he practices various media in his quest, from drawing, painting, and assemblage to object-making, each inspired by his experiences from childhood and even now.
In the year of his graduation, he became a finalist at the 2012 Metrobank Art and Design Excellence Award. The following year, he mounted his first solo exhibition “Dancing in the Shadow” at Blanc Gallery in Makati City, Philippines. In 2015, he displayed his Remnant, made from wood and wood carvings, at the “Imago Mundi” at Fondazione Giorgi Coni in Venice.
In the exhibit, “Beginnings and Endings,” the works of the modern and contemporary artists are everything we know of reality, from the natural to the manmade. Sulit wrestled with the concept of beginnings and endings with his mixed media using symbolic imageries to express everything that goes through his mind.
His art is basically a mirror of life as we humans live it, creating various metaphors from various things, putting things into a new perspective. In his This Timeless Turning, two individuals seemingly yearning for each other are blocked by piles of coal. The atmosphere feels dark and gloomy, that no matter how many times the earth rotates, the piles of coal they’ve built to block each other can no longer be destroyed. The coals became a metaphor for broken trust, turned dark, and cold like dead embers.
Concrete Wood by the Angono-based artist is made of cement, a wooden mannequin, wood shaving, and a wooden box frame. It represents a man so boxed in his own world that the real world has left him alone.
THE BIRTH OF THE NEW WORLD IDOL, oil on canvas, 2020 
THIS TIMELESS TURNING, acrylic on canvas, charcoal and led light, 2021
In Sulit’s art, the stories take a few minutes to register, a process similar to strangers becoming friends. From there, once a relationship is established, the work takes you to the deepest part of its heart—and yours, too—where it reveals its real face and, perhaps, as well as your own.
‘I want to leave it to them but I also want them to reflect and try to make their own personal connections with my work.’
When asked what he wants the audience to take away from his art, Sulit says, “I want to leave it to them but I also want them to reflect and try to make their own personal connections with my work. I hope they won’t just focus on its technical aspects but on the content that they will be able to form. I used a new medium for this exhibit so it’s pretty exciting for me. Each piece holds its own important meaning for me,” says the artist.
There’s no question that Sulit intended his collection to be looked at and stared at hard enough for it to start talking back to the viewer, as well as to his insecurities, anxieties, and struggles. What’s moving is Sulit’s exemplary way of utilizing his materials to personalize his art, making it his and the viewer’s own.
“Beginnings and Endings” provides the viewer an idea of the inner beatings of the human heart. It is a necessary pause on everything that’s happening around us while we are all surviving apart.
Galerie Roberto is located at Molito Lifestyle Extension Bldg. Madrigal Ave. corner Commerce Ave.Alabang, Muntinlupa City. 63 905 314 6448 or 63 998 595 5765 | Instagram: @galerieroberto } Youtube: Galerie Roberto | [email protected]