Mano is a self-taught Manila-based artist exploring materiality and form. Influenced by history, film, photography, and fashion, his work spans drawing, product design, and styling. He also collaborates in advertising and film as a costume designer and has worked in retail and publishing as a style editor.

Raised in Ilocos Norte and Isabela, Gonzales developed an early interest in art, experimenting with materials to explore meaning. His Sociology background informs his curiosity about visual narratives. Using found objects and historical imagery, he reconstructs vernacular forms into contemporary expressions, emphasizing texture, composition, and memory.

The Sea So Deep, the Earth So Dark explores the fleeting nature of time, capturing the tension between movement and stillness. Through intricate perforations on dark surfaces, the images come alive when held against the light—ephemeral, shifting, never fully graspable. Each piece is a meditation on transience, a moment suspended between past and future. The interplay of shadow and illumination mirrors memory itself: fragmented, reconstructed, and deeply personal. By inviting light to complete the work, it blurs the line between presence and absence, permanence and impermanence. In this suspended moment, time does not pass—it lingers, waiting to be seen.