The lively flora and fauna of a tiny Filipino island commingle with harrowing memories of California prisons in the surreal works of Gil Batle. Entirely self-taught, Batle honed his skills while incarcerated over the course of 25 years, drawing and eventually tattooing in a clandestine practice. Today, he’s immigrated to his parents’ native country, where he continues to reflect on the decades he spent in confinement.
Batle’s Double Life is a new body of work that explores these dual experiences. On white porcelain plates, the artist renders strange, unsettling compositions in which violence and a desire for freedom pervade every inch. Bird cages—common symbols for incarceration— are aplenty, while chains, barbs, and shivs haunt the scenes.
Utilizing such a commonplace, fragile, and even prized material, Batle sets a poignant backdrop for considering his blue acrylic paintings. The delicate porcelain both nods to the precarity and breakable nature of life, while also symbolizing traditional ideas of civility and propriety. Juxtaposing these domestic objects with scenes rife with struggle and brutality offers uncanny insight into one of humanity’s continually barbarous acts.
Double Life is on view through August 21 at New York’s Ricco/Maresca, a contemporary gallery representing outsider, self-taught, and folk artists.
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