Words Madeleine O. Teh
October 23, 2024

I paint flowers so they will not die. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo said these words to her lover, Josep Bartolí, in 1946. Kahlo’s life was marred by tragedy and constant reminders of her mortality. A childhood bus accident left her with serious internal injuries and bouts of illness throughout her life. Yet, through painting, Kahlo found a way to explore mortality and immortalize lives cut short. The act of painting to immortalize a person, a thing, and a moment in time isn’t exclusive to Kahlo. The genre of still life painting, especially among Dutch artists in the 1600s-1700s, has concerned itself with the transitory nature of objects around us, such as flowers and fruit, as a reflection of our humanity. Filipino artist Jonathan Ching continues and expands this tradition in his solo show, Sometimes we even see miracles, on view at Finale Art File, from August 30 to September 23, 2024. This show expands on the initial group of paintings made for Art Fair Philippines in February 2024.

Ching, who studied engineering and practiced web design, has been a mainstay in the Manila art scene since his first solo show at West Gallery in 2008. He is most known for his large-scale oil paintings rendered using an impasto technique, where he applies paint using a palette knife to create a raised texture.

In Sometimes we even see miracles, Ching revisits scenes from his personal history and heritage. His mother, a practicing Buddhist, would leave flowers and fruits in altars. Ching paints these flowers after they’ve been offered and are about to be discarded to make room for new, fresh flowers. He also displays wax paraffin sculptures of fruit to accompany the paintings. The result is an unexpectedly ruminative and breathtaking approach on the still life genre.