Images Under Strain at SPRUCE Gallery: Kevin Pineda’s Fragmentia

By The Arts Editorial Team

SPRUCE Gallery in Ortigas Center, Manila, presents Fragmentia: Oculations of Reality, a new body of work by Kevin Pineda. On view from May 22 to June 13, the exhibition’s primary focus is photography, but decidedly moves beyond the medium. Discarded frames, blurred shots, and near-deleted images are returned to the surface, altered through tearing, folding, and suspension. Steel appears throughout, interrupting and holding the image in place. Reflecting the metaphorical theme of beauty under pressure, each photographic work feels handled and unsettled, caught somewhere between image and object.

Select works from Fragmentia: Oculations of Reality by Kevin Pineda, featuring altered photographs and steel interventions. SPRUCE Gallery, Ortigas Center, Manila, 2026. Images courtesy of the artist.

Pineda’s practice centers on what is usually removed or overlooked. In these works, the rejected image is given weight, reworked until it carries a different clarity. Fashion and editorial references remain visible as faces slip in and out of focus, bodies fragment, and surfaces shift under stress. Trained in interior architecture and shaped by an artistic practice that moves across design, photography, and object-making, Pineda approaches the image as an object that can be cut, pressed, and reassembled. The result is a quiet tension: beauty that holds, but not without resisting the gaze.