99%, in its ascent from data to symbol, from figure to image, is the representation of something that is almost whole. It is a picture of fullness that is not quite there yet. It takes its observers across the hard line between completion and the stubborn remainder—the exemption that will not fall into everyone’s expected category. It is either a deceptive portrait of strength that lies in numbers, or a stark reminder of doubt that resonates from the immovable 1%.

In Gary-Ross Pastrana’s art of incessantly breaking down objects by quantifying them against their equivalents: through measure—in volume or time intervals, through value— monetary or historical, he continues to re-create entities and occurrences by transforming them into what can be construed as their equivalent substances that can either be as concrete as matter or mineral, or as abstract as music or language. By acquiring a piece of wreckage or an unusable article such as a broken-down car, he stretches out the idea of wholeness and the prevailing essence of what can be understood as a lost asset, a thing removed from its ordinary function as perceived by the majority of society, to turn it into art within its own set of valuation.

Through this approach, Pastrana’s belief lies in his statement that “all objects are in fact, provisional ...their identity, materiality, image, and usage, all depend on a mass consensus which in itself is a construct.” It is therefore, the approval that we bestow an object to become this certain object instead of that is what Pastrana has placed under questioning. It echoes the same cry of assimilation when movements by society’s underprivileged made the claim that “we are the 99%,” and bared the stark realization that the world might be built the wrong way, and that perception, truth, value, data, and all other measurements that define an entity rest on the fragile notions of wholeness and the ruling order. In the world of art and objects, Gary-Ross Pastrana uses the same dogged methods of percentiles and extraction to reconfigure certain realities, and becomes a transformative agent for the world we have grown accustomed to.

Words by Cocoy Lumbao

Gary-Ross Pastrana’s art has been one of the most persistent in terms of combining concepts with objects. His conceptual pieces, although loaded with poetic intensity, remain unobtrusively subtle and even almost quaint in its appearance. Coiled or folded photographs, his woven tales from found pictures in the internet, the sawed off parts of a boat shipped to another gallery, his shirt tied into a pole to commensurate a flag, these are the slightest of turns Gary-Ross has his objects make to create a new text within. Born in 1977 in Manila, he received his Bachelor’s degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines and was handed with the Dominador Castaneda Award for Best Thesis, and was granted with residency programs in Japan and Bangkok.

Gary-Ross Pastrana, who was also a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award in 2006, participated in Pulse New York and Pulse Miami in 2011 and 2010 respectively. He is also the country’s representative for the New Museum in New York’s 2012 Triennial ‘The Ungovernables.’ He is one of the co-founders of Future Prospects Art Space in Cubao, Philippines and has regularly curated for shows both here and abroad.