9 - 24 March 2024
temu house, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia
In his second solo exhibition, Violent Delights, Gomes’ narrates the anxieties and expectations of reconciling the dual timelines of a 30-year-old artist versus a 30-year-old adult. Through the mediums of sculpture and installation, Gomes raises concerns of long-term stability and sustainability with consideration to conventional responsibilities such as filial duty and self-care.
The necessitation of cost to one’s self in relation to creative output is called into question in works such as All That Glitters Isn’t Gold, a series of skeletal unicorn pinatas, gutted with almost comically oversized pink plastic cake knives, offering up sweets to viewers as they bleed rainbow hues.
Text also plays a significant role in Gomes’ presented works, combined with objects into amalgamations that confront the viewer with moods oscillating from mania to melancholy, such the exhibition’s namesake: VIOLENTDELIGHTS, a spiked baseball bat with soft embroidered text, hinting at roots of tenderness in self-destructive behaviours. Gomes continues down this line of inquiry in works such as Echo and Spaces Once Held, posing phrases in familiar objects that express feelings of avoidance, yearning and loss.
While whimsical and playful with an emphasis on birthday paraphernalia, there is an atmosphere of world-weary heaviness to Gomes’ sculptures, this body of works are presented as equal parts a tongue in cheek commentary on millennial woes; and a sincere expression of existential angst, self-doubt and vulnerability.
Installation shot of Violent Delights