Waves Like Mountains, Mountains Like Waves

September 20 – October 11 2025
By Kristone Capistrano

Produced by Luna Wenxin Xu
Poster design by Ivy Chen
Supported by
No.9 Space Design Studio


Catalogue Essay by Emma McLean

Natural light streams into Kristone Capistrano’s Sydney studio, illuminating a large drawing on his wall made up of undulating charcoal lines. This studio space is quite different to his working environment in the Philippines, where he periodically shares his time. In the coastal town of San Juan, La Union, Capistrano periodically works at the residency space Emerging Islands, surrounded by trees and surf. As he began working in this community, his work gradually started to turn from portraiture towards landscape.
Capistrano’s large-scale charcoal portraits are double-sided, allowing an audience to walk around as the light spills through his paper. The ability to participate in his artwork continues in this project for PUZZLE Art Garage. For this exhibition, Capistrano takes the approach of an installation with the assistance of wood sculptor, Christian Tablan. Three freestanding structures support suspended sheets of paper in shades of white and grey, which the artist has collated from the Philippines and Japan. As the exhibition progresses, Capistrano will move paper around, create new drawings, and utilise the structure as a hanging device. The idea for this moveable artwork sprung from a temporary installation he created in the Philippines inspired by sampays (outdoor clotheslines). Strung in taut lines throughout the landscape, his drawings played with the light like never before.
Working predominantly with charcoal and ink, Capistrano thinks of his practice in terms of its natural origins. Speaking to the medium of charcoal he says, ‘A piece of coal isn’t just a drawing pigment, it’s really a piece of the sun. I look at it in a more cosmological sense. You’re holding something that used to be a tree, and that tree was fed by sunlight and rain, and the nutrients of the earth.’ There is a synchronicity between working to capture the effects of light, and working with materials grown from its influence, such as paper and charcoal. ‘Drawing and painting, black and white shading. It’s still sunlight you’re trying to capture’, he says.


Capistrano’s influences are wide-ranging, from Pierre-Auguste Renoir to Katsushika Hokusai. He is drawn to sumi-e ink painting – its decisiveness and use of negative space. As a way to engage with ink, he has been using cleaning brushes and brooms dipped in paint to create his own iteration of this style. ‘It all started from the point when my grandmother passed away’, he tells. ‘I wanted to collaborate with her, and so this idea came to the fore.’ He was conscious of her manual labour, her continuous brooming and cleaning, which was an act of love and care. He draws on implements such as these to honour his grandmother and to find an entry into the medium of ink. As his practice develops, there is an increasing engagement with movement – that of his collaborators, of the entwining lines on his page, and of himself, working in broad and active gestures.
This affinity with mark-making also speaks to an engagement with ephemerality. ‘You make marks, and obviously you can change them, but you’ll never make the same mark twice,’ he says. There is a process, then, of creating and letting go with each stroke of the brush or line on the page. ‘There is a phrase in Japanese called komorebi, about how light filters through leaves and creates ripples,’ he explains. ‘It’s about the beauty in the passing of time, and a tinge of sadness and nostalgia.’ This too speaks to Renoir and the impressionists, and their obsession with capturing an unrepeatable moment in time. Today, Capistrano finds himself drawn to natural movement and ephemeral states. He looks to the seasons, ‘to clouds, waves, moonlight, that’s enough for me,’ he says.
Change, everyday acts of labour, and steady momentum are central to this exhibition. As the installation itself moves (on wheels), so too do the works on paper, as the artist re-arranges, re-creates and re-installs them over the duration of his show. As you move around the artworks, so too does sunshine permeate the paper like dappled light through leaves – a moment of peace, not quite repeatable.