Geometry of uncertainty: Jeff Siscar’s ‘Squares of Water’ explores the architecture of suspended decision

SPRUCE Gallery opens Squares of Water, the first solo exhibition of Filipino visual artist and architect Jeff Siscar curated by Ric Gindap, on April 11. The works hold structure in place, then deliberately withdraw its authority. 

Jeff was trained in architecture at the University of Santo Tomas and now practices as a principal architect and co-founder of Celllo Design Collective, following his tenure as President of Stroca Design. 

His discipline demands resolution. Buildings must stand. Lines must hold and decisions carry consequences. In his paintings, that contract loosens. Structure remains, but it no longer secures clarity. It sets the terms for uncertainty. 

The spaces appear legible at first. Planes align. Surfaces suggest depth then something resists. Direction does not settle and perspective hesitates. What appears resolved opens again. What seems clear begins to turn. Jeff allows and heightens the disruption.  

There are traces of influence from the paradoxes of M.C. Escher surface in the handling of space. Giorgio de Chirico’s psychological staging appears in architectures that hold unease. René Magritte’s refusal of logic echoes in moments where the familiar shifts just enough. A restrained elasticity of perception recalls Salvador Dalí.

Jeff’s figures enter intermittently, often alone. Suspended within thresholds that do not resolve. Their gestures remain incomplete and they occupy the interval before action settles. Where Marc Chagall’s figures drift in release, Jeff’s hesitate and remain within a decision that has not yet arrived. 

Water moves through the works as both presence and condition. It behaves less as substance than as a proposition. One senses an affinity with Gaston Bachelard’s thinking that water as a site of memory and projection, holding interiority. 

Geometry anchors the compositions. Circles, squares, triangles. Forms long associated with stability and essential order, echoes of Bauhaus reduction and Constructivist discipline. 

Call it psychological spatialism, if a name is needed: spaces that register states of mind rather than fixed locations. The works remain open as they hold their position without resolving yours. 

In Squares of Water, meaning does not arrive on command but stays in suspension, where looking and deciding collapse into the same act. 

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