philvisualarts

Ricky Ambagan: (Put Your Name) Was Here

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 01:03:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

We are familiar with the power of music to revert us to when we first heard it. What is vividly striking is how enticing its rhythm could make you look back to who you were with, where you were, and even what were you feeling when it was initially played.

Award winning artist Ricky Ambagan’s recent exhibition, From Here, at the Salcedo Private View attempts to characterize what music is--only visually with his distinct iconography in subdued colors and fine brushstrokes. Continuing his artistic foray that Ambagan started with his earlier I’m Coming Home exhibition, Ambagan customizes bespoke canvases in the form of travelling bags as an effective graphic handle to eschew wonder and imbibe deep reminisces as he permits us to voyage back in time--when we were young, restless and capable of imagination.

In From Here, Ambagan purposely renders the most scenes with the heaviest emotions induced with themed songs favored by random people. Equally-note-worthy is how Ambagan has carefully thought of and arranged his settings in a theatrical manner as he directly composed them on canvases.

Huling El Bimbo remains to be most popular masterpiece as it captures what it was growing up in the 70s. One never fails to sing while observing the ongoing clip taken from the video transferred to the canvas. As a child before the advent of gadgets and computers, we used to live in our own worlds where even unrequited love affairs existed--holding hands. We All Live in a Yellow Submarine can be as psychedelic as it is reminiscent of the popular tune when the Beatles sang it, in sync. Ambagan relishes the magic and mystery as it induces the presence of the eclectic arcana showed in the painting.

In Old Friends we all have the longest chums in our favorite superheroes (or barbie dolls), we were never separated from them. In Wooden Plane, we are so enthralled and imitated their actions complete with wearing their masks and capes. We even sleep with them and bring them wherever we go.

By nature we are all anthropologists and historians--as we tend to hoard meaningful things--that reminded us of our valued relationships. They could be bus tickets, corks from a celebratory wine bottle and even old clothes worn by a departed loved ones. In Kept Things Ambagan narrates as we grow older the more stories we have of each other the more fullness of our lives lived. Lost in Paradise is Ambagan’s concealed way to tiptoe to how secrets remain as they are that in this age of Social media we should be careful not to reveal confessions that happened only in their respective places. What happened there, stays there in oblivion.

The Flaneur in the Filipino

When Ambagan was ten years old, he envied his many classmates who owned a particular trendy bag given upon patronizing a certain fast food chain. His grandfather saw his grandson’s lamentations and created a replica of the same bag—only Ambagan’s was made of hardwood. This story never fails to instill pride in Ambagan from being the poorest student in class he was the most envied because his bag was sturdiest and man-made.

In a previous show, the travelling bag symbolized Ambagan’s personal burden—an excessive emotional baggage he tried to solve as a parent and able citizen of this country. From Here is an allegory of adventure, in adventure. By portraying a literal bag complete with straps and handles, Ambagan has created an out-of-the-box experience. Notice the boy-adventurer featured as he has been in many Ambagan canvases. He sees each and every of us in the boy as he is present in every painting in this series.

Aside from music, arcana and even toys have the strength to elicit memories. He never throws away what his children play with as he had none as Ambagan played with other kids in the rowdy streets of Pasig. As media of remembrances, this thinking artist has ventured into the what-ifs, of living as he crosses the path of nostalgia. He wanted to remember at least for the last time—before he grows old suffering with amnesia.

Bucket List reminds us of the many places we want to visit with our loved ones. The saddest moment is arriving at your destination without them in tow. Similar to the film, Up, we should travel like in a hot-air balloon while we are still healthy and able to do so. Road Map shows sometimes it is enjoyable to get lost in a maze. Ambagan revisits his old visual style of a bygone exhibit. Ever the critical, Ambagan wants continuity from his past aesthetics as he moves forward in creative direction.

Beyond Borders and Saga Continues displays the unicycle as it makes surprise guest appearances while it wobbly treks around. An Ambagan fixture, it takes confidence as well as an old-fashioned soul to be able to ride one. Somewhat autobiographical he is Ambagan grappling for reasons for his existence.

From Here is a promising gestalt of remembrances stitched together like custom quilts where Ambagan weaves stories narrated to him by various people. As an sensitive artist he translates them into common tales understood by many, juxtaposing them with contemporary concerns and past memories while interpreting them in the most authentic and realist way.

Whether monstrous, repulsive, beautiful, comely, or alluring, his paintings register our fears and longings, as well as our anger and faith, as a collective living in previous moments we wish to return to, Ambagan allows us to take a back seat--let us look back--as he brings us closer to truths we never still define.

From Here opens today until December 18 at the Salcedo Private View.

Billy Bagtas: The Good Son

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 02:18:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

“His figures are un-anatomical, his work more evocative than literal. Aside from these we think De Guzman is recording some metaphysical insights by means of his personal mythology," written by then Cultural Center of the Philippines Director Raymundo Albano on Gomburza Martyrs (1971) by Jaime De Guzman (b.1942) which prominently hangs on the second floor of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Building.

It was in Pasinaya, the CCP Open Arts Festival in 2015 that Billy Bagtas first caught attention to this visual masterpiece which was De Guzman’s artistic ode to the three Filipino priests who inspired Jose Rizal to write the El Filibusterismo. For close to an hour Bagtas was enthralled and unmindful of his friends who were with him--intently stared at the mural which features a distortion of the three priests as martyrs done in feverish brushstrokes and emotive colors.

Bagtas was immediately transformed by Gomburza Martyrs as these Filipino clergy ignited the clamor for Philippine revolution during the 19^th century. And every chance Bagtas gets to visit the CCP he would never fail to see the De Guzman mural like a venerated image with religious devotion.

From the Gomburza Martyrs Bagtas would learn and gain the confidence that paintings can be dark both in theme and in composition; that one can include one’s anger, doubts, dreams with the surreal historical and bespoke myths and legends as Jaime De Guzman proved it can be done in black and red. In his first solo exhibition God Bless Our Home Bagtas introduces us to his beloved family and provides a tell-all tale of the inner workings of their Caloocan household.

Luha at Pangil

In the Name of the Father

Our story starts off fresh in a bakery in Orion, Bataan where Bagtas’ parents, Crisanto and Cory met. Cory was working there when Crisanto chance upon her and introduced himself. He then asked her employer if she could go out with him on her next availability. Cory is seven years older than Crisanto but the age did not matter and soon they were an inseparable couple.

Soon Crisanto would accept an offer to work in Saudi Arabia for their common future. By the time he finished with his working contract he went home and married Cory and eventually settled down.

Crisanto, being a natural tinker and works well in a junkshop, is the one Bagtas thinks he owes his creativity to, imbibing his meticulous attention to detail. Crisanto’s biological genes however may be his only contribution to their blood relations. Deep within him is a man exuding with false machismo. He was once a philandering husband leaving his family for another woman. Being ghoulish and full of deceit, Bagtas paints him as is with protruding horns and hanging pangs in Bukal ng Buhay, Tatlong Sungay. Despite Crisanto’s shortcomings, this painting occupies the biggest exhibiting space not only in the gallery but in Bagtas’ heart in his honor. Their ongoing relationship is one wrought in love-hate. Bagtas remains to be a true Christian and as a dutiful son, Bagtas still accords him with the greatest respect.

In Aso Krus Bagtas even strikes a pun intended only for him as he calls to attention Crisanto’s four unruly dogs who furiously roams around the house during the day. They even spread their litter everywhere. No wonder Bagtas sees his father as being a dog himself later on.

In Luha at Pangil Bagtas is elegiac as he hopes his father will still humble himself and repent for his past sins not only as a husband and father but as a mortal being. As tears freely flow, one day he will weep, ask forgiveness and maybe be proud of what Bagtas has already accomplished as a visual artist.

And of the Son

The Bagtases are a brood of three children with Bagtas being the middle child. They are your typical Filipino family barely surviving their daily struggle with the economics of life in the suburbs of Caloocan. In fact they were once saddled and lived in a former pig pen with only curtains as decoration.

Cryam is Bagtas’s elder brother and one he is closest with. In Panalangin ng Laman Bagtas believes that he will find heavenly favor and be converted from his earthly ways as his stigmata suggests. Last April, during the intense lockdown, Cryam’s girlfriend suffered a miscarriage. This fortuitous event has affected the whole family and overwhelmed Bagtas who was already preparing for his show. He timely marked the sad milestone in Anghel Gabay (Bulaklak) mourning for the baby’s passing as Buchokoy (his name) was already two months in his brother’s girlfriend’s womb as evident in Anghel Gabay (Kaluluwa).

Anghel Gabay (Kaluluwa)

When Bagtas become Born Again Christian his works became darker yet he introduced other colors particularly violet and pink signifying acceptance as a leap of faith. He will often use them to mean it is done and a gentle reminder to remember them only in memory. Such is Tao (Alaala) where he immortalizes his dearly departed nephew and never to relive the pain again.

And of the Holy Spirit

Yvonne is Bagtas’ youngest sibling. She was adopted from an aunt who almost sold her because they lived in dire poverty and could no longer support her. Yvonne was adopted by Bagtas’s parents and treated her as their own. She is the first to be renewed as a Born Again Christian. One day, when Bagtas was so distraught and needed help after a failed suicide attempt, it was Yvonne that he reached out. Bagtas pleaded her to bring him to the Lord.

Two years ago, 18 year-old Yvonne got pregnant by her boyfriend. Sa Pagiyak at Pagtanggap captures that moment when the family found out her delicate condition. Garbed in white Yvonne gets emotional as Cory in her floral aura anguish with her. Succeeding this scene is Apoy at Dugo where Yvonne and her baby Ishang have already strengthened their bond as mother and daughter. In Salitang Dumurog sa Sariling Puso Bagtas reminds Yvonne’s boyfriend to keep his promise to marry her and provide for their better future.

Apoy at Dugo

Before Bagtas was saved by the Lord in 2017, he was experiencing many pains both physical and emotional in nature. He had a recurring ache on the chest and lower abdomen. In fact during his graduation with a Fine Arts degree from EARIST he almost could not muster himself on stage and collect his diploma. Because of its recurring presence, he had to beg off being in the first batch of the Tuklas Program of Eskinita Art Gallery to be mentored by Alfredo Esquillo and Renato Habulan.

Since he became a Born Again he was relieved of whatever negative he was constantly feeling. He also summed up that practicing kindness will always make you feel light and happy. Another installation is Trono ng Awa which is about conquering pride and let mercy rule our bare existence. In Di Purong Tinik Bagtas pays homage to the epitome of mercy, his mother, Cory. She exemplifies stability in Bagtas’s life, the calm before (and even after) every storm of their lives.

Expect Bagtas to unapologetically explore the defining mood to a certain sentimentality to his own self-portraits. In Wasak Loob he is at his lowest depression being heart-broken. It is as raw as done in spontaneous strokes. He was badly hurting from a girl who just took him for a romantic spin. He thought she loved him--to think she was of the same faith as he is.

Wasak Loob

Espiritu ng Hayop reflects his softer side as a cat lover. As a young boy he will often bring home stray cats from the streets. Often fascinated with their eyes and fur, he is always surrounded by their feline comfort while painting and even when asleep beside them.

For Bagtas one has to trust the Lord and He will make everything beautiful in His time. Then maybe his family will finally come and see themselves in his paintings. In the end, home is where the art is.

Pagiyak at Pagtanggap

Note: God Bless Our Home, first solo exhibition by Billy Bagtas opened at the Eskinita Art Farm on November 22 until December 20, 2020.

Marco Banares: Paint to Tell

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 09:54:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

At a young age, Marco Banares stared at life straight in the eye and grabbed its head by the horns. Losing his father at five years old, Banares and his brother were left under the guidance of their grandparents growing up. They eventually became orphans when they lost their mother to asthma causing her failure to breathe before she was even brought to the hospital. Banares had to endure his already topsy-turvy life by working on the side--taking odd creative jobs--while still studying to survive in dignity.

Adversity made Banares appreciate the ordinary and be creative in the everyday. He valued a simple act of kindness as it manifested manifolds most especially for hardworking beings who untiringly labored to bring food on the table for their families’ daily sustenance with committed devotion as he has never felt being safe and secure—up to now when he has a family to support.

For his 5^th solo exhibition, while still in the midst of the pandemic, Banares thought of honoring these plain but worthy mortals as Unknown Heroes by featuring them on canvas enough to be emulated at the same time feted with utmost pride from the honest toil that they do and the unconditional love they possess.

Magsunog ng Kilay, Mata Nagliliyab

First among them---Banares starts from afar--the untold diaspora of our overseas Filipino abroad. It is said there is a Filipino everywhere and in Home Sick he sums up the sordid feeling of alienation of the Filipino who will sacrifice his existence just to fend for his loved ones. Battling loneliness, Banares laments there are even those who continuously work, without a day off for generations yet still end up poor and miserable.

Wala Akong Sinasanto, Pero Isa Akong Deboto

The pursuit of excellence knows no boundaries such as the indefatigable Saint-maker who may not be as rigid religious but is highly spiritual as well as artistic churning out imageries for devotion on a daily struggle. Evident in Walang Sinasanto Pero Isa Akong Deboto exemplifying its own commitment to the craft is close to faithfulness to his family but not to a particular god or the patron saint he configures.

On hindsight, Banares can identify with his subjects. Another profession wrought with irony with the same kind of passion are witnessed in circus clowns—those make up clad blokes who always put up a smile and entertainment. The kind of selfless vocation is evident in Walang Bahid ng Kalungkututan, Pero Huwad Naman ang Kasiyahan where a clown who is in the business of making people feel good are they themselves foregoing their own. Alone they face depression of being behind rent and not paying the bills on time due to infrequency of parties as social distancing remains a health policy by the government. He longs for normalcy but uneducated he cannot apply for employment. Such cycle of quagmire is how most of us are involved in. Banares depicted him as reflecting in the mirror yet it alludes to the viewer who could be the one looking intently at the canvas.

Padayon

Masks have once again appeared as an ongoing graphic ploy for Banares not only to conceal identity but to evoke pun intended for the audience. A signature fixture, masks are his way of lightening the burden of the advocated cause. A kind of support system that makes his subjects cope up in the constant fight to stay alive. A kind of fitting tribute--as well—as we still wear masks as a precautionary sign to combat coronavirus we are reminded that we are heroes in our own right as we survive to protect every Filipino and safeguard ourselves from being infected to being healthy for tomorrow.

Garbage Content

Witnessed in Libre Lang ang Mangarap Pero May Bayad ang Sangkap is how Banares leans towards the suffering and downtrodden. Shown here is a polio vctim who still walks by the mile just to sell the taste of comfort when they themselves are not comfortable with their own disposition in life.

Aesthetically, Banares reminds us of a bygone era when hyperrealism was the norm and art reacts to how society is signified. These days art has been relegated to shock the new--the simpler the brushstrokes, the louder the colors—that would already be sellable in the art market.

Libre Lang Mangarap Pero May Bayad ang Sangkap

A natural story-teller, Banares gathered his tales from the common folk some he even intimately know as he encounters them every day going to the grocery or while commuting. He is most serious in his constant search for meaningful narration of heroism. He would even invite them for a chat and even photograph them to model for his further composition on the picture.

Such is the garbage collector whom he depicted in Garbage Content. Being an old timer in the art scene, Banares summarizes at the convoluted load of crap his fellow artists are irresponsibly producing and dumbing down their artistic calling. Mired by auction results and pricey art fairs, glitz and glamour are preferred rather than social commentary and positive values. Being Filipino foremost, Banares still advocates that paintings should afflict the comfortable as it comforts the afflicted.

Wala Mang Bahid ng Kalungkutan, Huwad Naman ang Kasiyahan

Siding with the afflicted, Banares recalls a story of a balloon vendor who was ignited to flames and suffered third degree burns by a group of teenager who prank him just for fun. Banares felt for him as he knows how it is to be ridiculed and even bullied. In Padayon he reclaims his position and rescues the vendor from further humiliation by remembering him.

Banares is a blatant realist at heart, looking up to Elmer Borlongan and Alfred Esquillo as his influences for visual style. He has always the last say by even honoring himself in Nagsunog ng Kilay, Mata Nagliyab. He identifies himself with his artistic passion--working more than 12 hours a day. With intense vision, he paints every day, with only light sleep to relieve him once in a while. His only respite is seeing his sons play freely while he intently paints for their future.

Banares has immortalized his heroes who may have ordinary tasks but living extraordinarily in their chosen or even forced endeavors. Some do not need a cape or don a costume, or wear an amulet but their valor is effective for another day as they earn decently without taking advantage of someone—often dealing with the corrupt nature and the evil ways of men.

Banares is at the emancipating cusp of his personal and social learnings. He continues to hone his craft since becoming full time six years ago. He remains sensitive to his brushstrokes while finding his fruition in every framed parable he toils into.

Unknown Heroes is ongoing at Village Art Gallery in Alabang Town Center.

Anthony Victoria: Repeat While Fading

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 12:19:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Born with lower limb deformity, Anthony Victoria has always relied on his aluminum cane to function properly. As an extension of his body, he would reach out to it immediately upon waking up and sleep beside it upon retiring at night.

Shooting Targets

Like a trusted best friend, his aluminum cane was a constant witness to the vicissitudes of surviving his daily existence. They both hurdled and even endured every ordeal together. Victoria even nervously confessed it is hardest when it rained because the floor will be so wet and slippery making the rubber on his aluminum cane unavoidably slide—it never failed to make him eventually slip.

Through the years, the aluminum cane would bear scratches that has become fixtures to its impressionable metal surface. Victoria had become familiar with them that he knew all the behind-the-scenes stories how he got them. As a sensitive artist these marks made an impression on him that he wanted to replicate the certain fixtures like tattoos inked on one’s skin for posterity. Eventually this made his dabble with aluminum etching and in his solo exhibition, Hindi Kami Mamamatay he emerges from his comfort zone and takes a pun intended at what is happening to his surroundings and in our social history.

Victoria merges the mechanical, the graphic and the political into a lyrically composed picture. In Robot Victoria testifies his industrial prowess as Victoria proves that we have been bred artificially and controlled all through our postcolonial sojourn.

Robot

In Chainsaw, Victoria illustratively implies more than the plea for the environment but an appeal for growth and decency and return of basic freedom in our contemporary midst—to think and to feel for our destiny as a nation. A powerful tool this weapon has become the symbol of the earth’s demise and Victoria’s lateral evocation on metal is surefire to make its presence feared and felt by fallen witnesses.

Chainsaw

Garbed in turn-of-the century attire, Victoria’s women are sly and does not possess anything but timid. They stare intently in your eyes like putting up a fight and instructing you to follow and obey what was demanded of you. Victoria has immensely appropriated them using the real intentions of the colonizers upon us. In short, the sepia or rustic finish of the metal may emanate yet they get back and amplify visual revenge in sync with solid message contained in the coldness of steel.

They say Antonio Luna’s men were the sharpest of vanguards. In Shooting Targets however betrayal was the culprit as these soldiers were collateral damage as Aguinaldo navigated his power to cause the tragedy of the revolution. We were the incidental victims of military operations not of our instigating. They were about two colliding empires and we were just the spoils of war.

Consider Oil Well where Victoria digs deep to the root causes of our economic miseries lie beneath the earth and the quest for oil is the culprit. Energy is power thus corrupt absolutely. Petroleum rules the economy and that rollbacks are basic as right to education and shelter. In the end, there is no poor third world country since they have been exploited many times over—through generations.

Power Grid

The brilliance of Victoria is how in sync is his mechanism as he mixes while he nixes the political with graphical. In Back Hoe he employs his women with mechanism connoting subversion and ploy. Not a hard sell imagery, his revised iconography is so convincing that you want to turn on the switch to start it to play.

Slot Machine

World War II has also been on Victoria’s mind ever since he had been reading that up as a child. We really do not have our own battles and we always sided on the wrong side of the fence. In the end, it is the Filipinos who bury the brunt and worse suffer the consequences. Victoria does not see himself as a messiah but simply as a concerned artist who is a product of his times.

Man of Steel

Educated in advertising at the University of Santo Tomas, Victoria professionally and trained in animation versed in the corporate world. For ten years setting aside the visual arts, Victoria was once again invited on group exhibitions being a member of Kalye Kolektib. In his first exhibition, Coping Mechanism, two years ago, he paid homage to every nook and cranny of his personal life--as he has been fixated with metal as an ode to his aluminum cane.

Victoria prefers aluminum etching and he has been effective in using it. He relies heavily on research and appropriates his image to suit his desired iconography. After painting the appropriated form with enamel, he soaks them in resin to resist. The final process he uses aluminum brush to add texture to the rough finish.

The emanating Chinese presence once again makes its presence felt as evident in Victoria’s Destroyer Type 052 as in 2013 the Philippines initiated international arbitration against the People's Republic of China (China) regarding its territorial and maritime dispute in the South China Sea – known as the West Philippine Sea in Manila.

Type 052 Destroyer

The oldest and largest Chinatown is in Manila and the Chinese have been a cultural presence even before any colonizer came. Another sordid reminders are the pogo persistence in Slot Machine. Everywhere we go there is a Chinese who is gambling in our shores.

Context and memory play powerful roles in Victoria’s masterpieces. Hindi Kami Mamamatay may yet be Victoria at his most political yet it is him at his most innovative. Borne out of years of trying to contain himself, Victoria focused his energies to uplift his spirit and and graphically found light at the end of the tunnel. In a way, we are clearly at a long overdue moment in history where we look at ourselves and reclaim our future that was ours.

Hindi Kami Mamamatay is a constant refrain to our song when fading. One could picture Victoria like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing while it is still dark—when metal shines brightly.

Hindi Kami Mamamatay is ongoing at the Eskinita Art Farm in Tanauan, Batangas

Jason Delgado: Pillow Talk

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 22:41:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

In Molo, Iloilo most of the youth do not sleep soundly these days. Their constant exchange of bric-a-brac violence among gangs have heightened tension and caused anxiety among its members. Evident of which is how they sleep with knives tucked in their pillows to protect them--in case the inevitable happens.

Though Jason Delgado is not directly involved yet they are all his friends, as he has been witness to this grim forced habit. As an artist he is sensitive enough to paint what bothers him. It was for a group exhibition in 2017 at the Museo ng Iloilo that he showed his first pillow as theme masterpiece, he titled it The Struggle Begins When the Day Ends.

Delgado went to develop further this bespoke visual style all relating to his anxieties and issues affecting his young life. He has painted them all, as When the Day Ends has now become the title of his first solo exhibition at Art Verite Gallery.

An obvious culprit why Delgado paints pillows is that sleep has eluded him in his preparation to be a full pledged artist as he looks back to his life in these past months of the ongoing pandemic. He is even more active when he forces himself to rest—this is where his mind grapples with artistic concepts and he reminisces his past experiences and its painful lessons. To commit in this art practice, even simultaneously pursuing to be a licensed architect, Delgado is committed to that it is worth doing and engages it in his own terms.

An irony lies that there are a multitude of practicing artists in Iloilo yet there is a dearth of Fine Arts schools in Iloilo (there is only one). Like Delgado, many take the creative path through architecture or even architectural draftsmanship.

In Overtime Delgado provides you with a glimpse how he mixes painting and architecture together. The architect in him reveals how he carefully plans his pieces by random sketches anticipating whatever foul ups that come his way such as in considering the electrical, plumbing and structural in architecture. In painting, he is meticulous to detail as painstakingly how the creases folds up or is thrown in the air that makes up his emphatic composition exacting.

Notice the ants as they signify hard work and consistency to purpose to be the true measure of success. Other fellow Ilonggos have done it, so can he be architect-painter in the future.

Empty revisits a recent episode Delgado was faced with on his road to being an architect. Last January, he and three other architect hopefuls started attending review sessions in Manila. As the covid pandemic worsened, however, they were abruptly halted when the national government declared a lockdown come March 16. As the runabout scourging for tickets on their flight to go back home they found a cheaper available one but they had to take it at the Clark international Airport. Cash strapped and already emotionally-drained, they had to hurry and catch it on the day before the nationwide lockdown was imposed. It will only mean they have to spend the evening of the 14^thof March to catch it. With a fully occupied lounge, they just settled on the floor along the airport corridors with their bag bearing a few clothes and architecture books in tow. The experience so marked Delgado he decided to paint it in stark black and white.

Plain, Pure and White

Delgado is the youngest in a sibling of four. His mother, Erna, is the epitome of faith having devoted her life to the service of the Catholic Church. Plain, Pure and White reflects her abiding religiosity as seen in the embossed cross.

Their family traces their roots in Bacolod however it was in Iloilo that his father, Ronaldo, found his calling in a rattan furniture venture. Delgado honors him in Sharp and Polished as how he remembers his father who passed on after a lingering bout with cancer. His father spent his dying three months in Bacolod under the care of Delgado’s sister who was a nurse in a hospital there.

Sharp and Polished

Using his father’s tool as a protruding device, in rattan industry sharpness of skill is key and how one’s finished results is polished that impresses customers to patronize him. The flowers are Delgado’s way of adoration to the great man his father is.

As Delgado is most secretive, pillows have been most vulnerable--his silent confidants—as he lays his head down in his bed. They have become his creative venues for possibilities of form and meaning. It is the lieu of his sensitive internalization of the things around him.

Overtime

After sketching his thoughts, he finalizes the set up as he composes the objects on canvas. He attempts to be as hyperrealist on his images as possible. He is even tempted to lay down on his references after painting them. The value of a visual representation in an occurrence through a concealed object can be juxtaposed by suppressing it.

A pillow has all the possibilities to suit one’s need. It is a poetic conveyor of our senses as it is Delgado’s propensity to de-familiarize things with allegories and alluded definitions. Delgado’s brilliance is how he meticulously paints folds, creases and hidden figures in relief to reveal his intended purpose. The shapes that he embosses intimate the object; it is this tension between revelation and concealment that the greater significance states the obvious.

Poverty did not hinder Delgado in inspiring himself that he can fulfill his dreams. He often inspire himself by pushing himself to strive more. In his Soliloquy series Delgado reminds himself to excel and be the best version of himself whatever life offers. The running texts are like him whispering to himself.

Soliloquy 1 captures the damp feeling while being tossed up as he stared intently at the fearsome waves of the Guimaras Straits. As soon as his father bid them goodbye Delgado was on his way back on the boat to Iloilo to arrange for his wake and funeral. A comforting text runs across: Close your eyes a miracle may happen.

Meanwhile Soliloquy 2 counters his bad luck with the feng shui of polka dots as bringer of fortune marked by the red dots that connote abundance and luxury. Like a post-it note smack in the middle to remind him: You are a seed. Wait.

Soliloquy 2

Expect Delgado to end with a high note and Soliloquy 3 is a perfect rallying cry for him--both as an artist and when he finally hurdles the architecture licensure board in June next year: Catch your breath. No retreat. No surrender.

For Delgado, pillows are our most personal accessory--next to underwear and toothbrushes. As you lay yourself to slumber, the continuation of your existence depends on it. They are soft and light yet pillows carry with them your darkest secrets and deepest longings. Pillows are pure comfort. At the end of the day, you long for it. You can rest but not quit on living.

Soliloquy 3

When the Day Ends is ongoing at the Art Verite Gallery at 2/F Shops at Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

Kim Hamilton Sulit: Beauty of Impermanence

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 04:12:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Art is but a preparation for that bigger art—the art of Living.

Ananda Coomaraswamy

Indian Curator

For Kim Hamilton Sulit creating art has been an effective way to cope up with his insecurities, anxieties, and struggles in life in a decade of art practice. His creative becoming has made him survive afloat—barely grasping for breath--despite harsh realizations of espousing the contemporary as an artist based in the cultural town of Angono. How his past solo and group exhibitions have displayed his authenticity to the way his life phases have evolved both in his personal memories and direct experiences towards the community around him.

Weight of Time

When Sulit started conceptualizing for this exhibition last January, as if by circumstance, Taal Volcano erupted and caused chaos all throughout. For ten days, the fortuitous event killed 39 people and affected most people living as far as Ilocos Region, Central Visayas and displacing folks from towns in Batangas near Taal Lake. Everyone was at a standstill causing Sulit in extreme anxiety and doubly checking on his artistic realities.

Cement Garden (in detail)

By March due to the circumstances beyond our control, the ongoing coronavirus epidemic became full blown world-wide. It has placed the entire country on various stages of community quarantines by the national government. There were times when Sulit would wake up early, put on his mask on his face, walk up to his studio only to straddle in front of his stretched white canvases. He would blankly stare on them for hours and just be with his paint tubes and brushes. Amidst temporary work stoppage and optional work from home scheme Sulit’s went on with his intensive creative foray. And this is what the exhibition Weight of Time unravels.

Blemish Series, The Wall and Cement Garden

Upon entering the gallery spaces, one is greeted with The Wall, a concrete ambience recording the pandemic--a gentle reminder how Sulit’s waking hours were well spent during the lockdown.

Taking the form from a cast of his right arm, The Wall imprints scenes during the past months in a tattoo-like manner. Filling it up like a street graffiti it is a raw statement of how we have adopted to the “new normal” and how we were fit enough to still be alive. Seeing The Wall makes one grateful and value that Sulit has lived to paint these cherished moments and eventually raised our arms testifying that we are still surviving through unscathed.

A recurring theme for Sulit are the Blemish series which are intimate take on mortality and vulnerability. Often emanating ghoulishness he approximates how the images would result when they decayed or even exaggeratedly distorted.

Blemish Series

started in 2012 under a different title when he saw the album cover of Bjork’s “Medulla” and later found some old photographs from the Victorian period to be too perfect and archaic. It was too enticing for Sulit not to take a pun at the intended idealist portraits. Years later he did another Blemish Series reacting to paintings by the Old masters. He had a fresh attack on them, portraying them pale with black blood oozing from their weary eyes.

Blemish Series III

Blemish III Series has been percolating on his mind for a long time. He knew the moment has come as he invited family, friends, fellow artists, and even his collectors to submit their mug shot photos. Concurrently, he also sought their permission if he can have a free reign to alter its form.

Sulit contends that his Blemish series vary on every occasion he churns them out. Blemish Series reminded one certain artistic reactions upon the saturation of a particular art movement. Such as Mannerist tendencies reacted in the High Renaissance during the 16^th century before Baroque ushered in. For Sulit they simply exude the beauty of impermanence; that we are susceptible and will eventually perish someday. A kind of memento mori so to speak.

Expect Sulit to unapologetically explore the defining mood to a certain sentimentality in every Blemish portrayal there is. After looking long and hard, he takes a swipe using his own figurative interpretation based on one’s resemblance. His Blemish Series seems his direct reply to these trying and difficult times. Sulit further dwells deeper and more emphatic in every portrait he does creating a multitude of rogue-like ghosts peaking at the gallery’s onlookers. In a way it comforts Sulit that he is not alone in his paranoia as he becomes disturbed with the ongoing covid-19 crisis while indignantly creating them in his studio.

Evolving further around memory and loss is Cement Garden, an assemblage of found objects mostly discarded toys, dolls, cars, wooden figurines. Using a custom-made brick-maker Sulit appropriates and pours cement on them mixing them with volcanic ash from Taal to exude framed parables scattered all over the floor.

Cement Garden affirms Sulit’s penchant with representation through his use of found, discarded and even used mostly mundane objects prevalent in our everyday lives; how their relationship with one another—placed side by side--in a meticulously crafted assemblages enables new definitions and meanings. Similar to tombs of curiosities including partitions, Sulit pays homage to the core of materiality by integrating them into a new order, providing their rebirth in another context wrought through time.

Veering away from pure painting, Sulit experiments, even escapes, with temporal things and their possibilities in forms taking different metaphors. Sulit has an ardent propensity in seeking de-familiarization of context into fresh perspectives with their new integration. Consider it an aftermath following the Taal misfortune.

Sulit has crafted idea of containment through assemblages each pertaining to a thematic mood. The more objects there are, the more stories they yield. There are no titles to each receptacle as their provenance vary from his personal stuff to children’s toys to broken down figurines. Some objects are fragments from constant usage--creating an eerie feel like a cinematic finish Sulit envisions.

Spontaneity is key in Sulit composition. He espouses some basic tenets in what art exhibitions could aspire for—constant acceptance of flux, repetitions and cycles, and relinquishing all complex attachments. It is raw and visceral focusing more of the play of the real and unreal.

Sulit has been influenced by American photographer Sally Mann (b.1951) who also happens to dwell on mortality and vulnerability using subjects such as herself and her own immediate family as subjects of her portraits. Her haunting human form and hometown landscapes done in platinum prints and polaroid still lifes are bold, lyrical and captured in near abstraction. Sulit is as intensely emotional as Mann. Both of them are enriched by their treatise on the tragedies of the human condition.

Weight of Time provides the viewer the necessary pause from an overloaded art scene. It has an in-your-face aesthetic as Sulit unloads his burden by eschewing on materialist permanence. One is led to a bare essence when things are broken down and starkly simple. There is art when there is life.

Self Portrait

Weight of Time is ongoing at the Blanc Gallery until November 28.

Toti Cerda and Erwin Mallari: Keeping the Faith

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 08:54:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Master visual artist Toti Cerda and watercolorist Erwin Mallari were both born, bred and continue to dwell in their respective hometowns near the proximity to the metropolitan center. As significant contemporary artists they have bear witnessed to the radical change of progress in these dwellings evolving from once being idyllic and pristine locations to the ever bustling these localities are today.

Cerda, who was born in Talim Island near Binangonan, saw how in the last 30 years the lakeshore towns of Rizal have evolved the fishing enclaves and farming villages being partitioned into the commercial districts and residential subdivisions at present.

Na-Amorsolo II by Toti Cerda

Mallari grew up in Malabon when it was still a fishing hub in Rizal until the 70s and observed when it separated and became part of Metro Manila. Fishing still remains a major source of livelihood in the area because of the interconnected of its river system. This development attracted people to reside in its low lying flat terrains making Malabon densely populated through that it floods and have worsened in recent years. It constantly becoming submerged in water most of the time, as it became known.

Foot Bridge (c4 Malabon) by Erwin Mallari

In Paghilom, Cerda and Mallari have meticulously documented the visual changes in their beloved abodes and the surrounding setting around them that are fast changing. More than just putting their thoughts on their canvases and papers, they have however kept the faith in their beloved places of origin and remain hopeful that there is still a light at the end of this ongoing pandemic situation--as seen through the affirmative outlook of these recent works.

Cerda, of late pays homage to Philippine masters, and continuous to do so in rigid manner. He has honored the great 19^th century realist Juan Luna and the poet of the palette in Carlos “Botong” Francisco in his previous outputs. In Paghilom, he highlights the master of folk genre in our first National Artist, Fernando Amorosolo, appropriating his hardworking farmers in the rice fields and women fetching water in clay pots. He churns out the gray and burgeoning factories as backdrops to Amorsolo’s colorful rural scenes as Cerda saw how rapid industrialization has slowly sprouted in vast expanse of his adopted region.

Paghilom is Cerda’s direct in-your-face clamor in support to agriculture for our own food sustenance and basic survival mode to the future. He expresses the quaint predominant metaphors of Amorsolo such as sturdy farmers toiling the soil and the beautiful provincial lasses cooking their meals against the solid concrete of gravel and the hustle of building economies as featured setting. Cerda has effected an experimental illustrative handle by using the soft yet distinct subjects of Amorsolos’s period evocations against a social realist and urban tableau. Cerda’s remains confident yet sensitive in these brushstrokes in adhering to Amorsolo’s masterpieces by inducing Cerda’s promising visual language and in finding new approaches to realism in painting. The result is a dramatic theater in paints.

Banga ni Amorsolo by Toti Cerda

In his previous life, Mallari was once part of the commuter life having to endure two hour bus rides from Malabon to Pasig where he used to work as a graphic designer. In Paghilom, he mends his old and tiring ways and heals from the painful remembrances caused by impatience to get a ride, inhaling smog caused by a polluted volume of transportation vehicles resulting into a perennial traffic. As a fine watercolorist, there is a certain charm when the colors and the tones of a scene is captured in watercolor. Even how Mallari renders the red lights from the bumper-to-to-bumper of cars has a certain romance when evocatively painted and hanged on the wall.

Meaningful to Mallari are the LRT 1 stations like Roosevelt, Balintawak and 5^th Avenue which he is most familiar with and accustomed to its related commuter ordeal. He also favors bridges while doing his rounds documenting them for posterity. The Bitbit and Centennial Bridges and the Foot Bridge (Malabon) are prominently featured in this exhibiton. Mallari even finds beauty in the chaos in construction with faulty wires of electric posts included. There is relief for him in getting from where you came from to your point of destination. For Mallari that is progress of life and the joy is in the journey. Sometimes he who dabbled into photography, takes a photos and in framing his images translates them on larger watercolor paper when he gets home.

Bonifacio (Caloocan) by Erwin Mallari

These days Mallari advocates a return to riding bicycles as a means of transportation to ease traffic as he once had to endure it on a daily basis. His regimen now he become a city chronicler who goes around, with art materials in tow, documenting these memorable moments and secrets corners that he fancies along his bicycle routes around the metropolis.

Mallari is a constant fixture in the streets as he documents spaces by opting to paint outdoors (plein air as the French impressionists popularized it in the 19^th century). While making his rounds he stops at a beautiful site that captures his eye and puts out his paper on boards and attempts to catch the fleeting moment. He hurriedly sketches them as he wets his paints and renders them in his desired compositions. He has special fond experiences with every piece he creates from bystanders as he prefers painting daily scenes of ordinary life on the spot.

Sometimes Mallari escapes from the city, immersing himself in rural landscapes such as Dingalan (in Aurora) and Alcala in Cagayan. Here he basks in its pristine sunlight and unfiltered air to recharge his artistic soul. Providing rest for the eyes, he know a lot of desperate people long for these framed painterly accents for as city folks many are trapped in the current quagmire of our urban jungles.

Paghilom is both a celebration to the city life as it stresses the value of spontaneity, appropriation and relevance in their artistic pieces, as most paintings even establish inherent tension and issues. They may not be commercially-eye candy pieces but in their subtlety or even harshness that convey the sense of wonder in the painters’ free reign of imagery and meaning. Depending how one would come to view the collective significance of these two artists, they are both positive in their creative output--that is all that matters.

Bukid ni Amorsolo by Toti Cerda

Unfazed by the possibilities of media, mixing three or more coats of paint is still the proposed materiality, whether it be acrylic or watercolor, be it done in reverse or even traversing the creative process. Cerda’s brand of realism has always constricted and countered the traditional visual styles of his forebears for it to redefine itself into new actualities of his own right. Often rejecting the banal and sacred, it defies fixation with the tested norm. Mallari, on the other hand, wants to hone his watercolor skills through strict discipline and mood. Despite it being the most difficult medium to handle among artists, he prefers the fresh perspectives and evocative expressions it imparts. Even as Cerda and Mallari are open to more raw approaches to art, both still value that paintings should be created for its social function and not lost for its own sake.

Bitbit Bridge (Narzagaray) by Erwin Mallari

PAGHILOM is ongoing at the Galerie Anna, Bldg. A, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City.

Otto Neri: Yesterday Once More

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 09:08:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

In keeping up with his bespoke visual style of juxtaposing the historical with contemporary iconographies, Otto Neri becomes more personal for this exhibition Jukebox, as he merges two of his prime obsessions--Philippine art history and popular music.

Hey Jude, Come Together

Being both a self-taught painter and musician for more than half of his creative life, Neri happily grew up in a realist neighborhood of Caloocan where he was honed as the willing apprentice by senior Mabini artists. With paint brushes in tow, priming their every canvas at any particular day of the week. All the while listening to the music of the bygone years spanning at least 30 years would naturally be heard in Neri’s entire household even extending in the midst of their neighborhood ambience.

Moonriver

Through all those years, Neri listened intently, imbibing the smooth crooning of Frank Sinatra, the blaring trumpet of Louis Armstrong, the yeah, yeah, yeah of the Beatles by heart, even backsliding to the danceable steps of the elevating moves of a gyrating Michael Jackson. The strength of these pieces is evident on how Neri is well-versed with the musicality of these tunes that even their respective memorized lyrics were literally coming out of his ears as he was painting these masterpieces. It was in the silence of the ongoing community quarantine that he heard them all at their loudest.

In Jukebox, Neri relied heavily on nostalgia as he deeply reminisced his own memories when life was plain simple and grossly fun. It is in remembering one’s significant past that we lighten up and learn a value or two. Suddenly through Neri’s paintings we are transported back in time when we first heard these songs and remember that first kiss, that first dance, how we felt alive and who we chose to be with. Neri was in his usual being as an artistic provocateur, with his own visual language bordering on irreverence and humor. His appreciation for beauty is boundless as his sense of composition is organic and not theorized by any rules in art school or movement. Think of free form jazz in a kundiman overture.

In Come Together Neri situates “the most written about, the most listened to and the most imitated” band in the world staging a performance before rural folk in an idyllic Amorosolo-inspired setting. An obvious and even oblivious ode to the National Artist as he was always been an influence to Neri.

Another Amorsolo appropriated scene is replicated in Billie Jean. This time Michael Jackson is joined by the seductive Marilyn Monroe while entertaining in front of the people celebrating along the church patio in what seem like a Fiesta revelry.

In merging pop icons in Philippine landscapes, some are familiar and other actual places he frequents, Neri has gone bold and more whimsical with his images. He always borders his “what-ifs” with an impactful pun intended to the situation. Admittedly, there were many artists who also induced popular culture in the visual arts yet it is only Neri who upgrades the discipline by using Philippine culture as soundboard for a primer. He explores our identity rooted in postcolonial jab in brushstrokes while retaining a painterly jest and light-spirited.

Neri highlights that Filipinos are music lovers and songs have a way of remembering the milestones in our lives. These soundtracks are deeply embedded in our heritage and in honoring these memories Neri paints them with layers of influence. He even titles them in accordance to the titles of the songs themselves.

Marilyn Monroe, representing Hollywood glitter and the imperial beauty of the Blonde, has been a recurring fixture in Neri’s past shows, in All About Eve makes another appearance. This time in front of the native tribesmen. A strong nationalist sentiment that will not go away. Neri admits we are immersed with popular culture by sentimentality that it overshadows the indigenous inherent in us.

Neri is an old soul trapped in a modernist body. He watches old films and favors to listen to old songs in his spare time. He even wears a fedora hat as part of his overall packaging. While watching these films or coming across a memorable image, it completely overwhelms him. It is the image that speaks to him. At the right time comes, when there will be an accumulation of images, Neri will remember it and compose his elements around this main subject.

Moonriver is Neri’s take from what was the theme song of the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This piece features Audrey Hepburn on top of the moon, together with an amalgam of personalities highlighted by General Antonio Luna with roses. Louis Armstrong makes a cameo role serenading what is supposed to be a romantic elopement between two diverse icons.

Billie Jean

Reshuffling history, popular culture, and the contemporary is Neri’s preoccupation with new world order on canvas. Mind you, he is not preachy, he just proposes you with an inquiry towards our identity and politics in an impasto textured manner. Through Neri’s paintings he wanted the viewer to reminisce what he was and how far we have become since he heard these songs. Then maybe we will feel good about ourselves for a while especially there is still no vaccine for the virus in site. Despacito is Neri’s reaction that we will survive this quagmire. Reminiscent of how we surpassed the Spanish influenza during the early 20^th century, the current pandemic may even unite us as we heal in unison.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Everyone can identify with this Louis Armstrong classic What a Wonderful World as it contemplates on the grievous mishaps that happened in our midst—that the coronavirus has altered the way we live and prioritized what is significant and meaningful in our lives, in the end it still is a life worth living.

All About Eve

Just Another Woman In Love provides a light banter of a situation wherein a gambler got enticed in a squalor. As he was about to send money to his wife, he was lured to betting for a red rooster only to lose in the end. The red here not only symbolizes love but also of fury when the wife fumed mad at the wasted situation and opportunity.

Jukebox seeks to return to the past not just for the sake of memorable longing for what has been lost but as a presentation of a story of the Filipino that has since evolved and emancipated. In so doing Neri takes the plight of musicians most of whom do not have a record label anymore. All can be heard on Spotify or any digital platform, at a time when record collecting is making a comeback. My Way is self-reflective in a way that if we want change it should start with us—as depicted in the road leading back to where it began: you.

Don't Stop Me Now

Don’t Stop Me Now finds Freddie Mercury with The Beatles crossing along the busiest intersections in Antipolo. It is that junction where Neri frequents while doing his errands and going to the market. Similar to this is that Neri is now at his own crossroad as a mid-career artist that he longs for relevance. He is always on the lookout for new ways of seeing that will speak the times. That one can appreciate contemporary Philippine art while viewing rock and roll on canvas.

Dave Alcon: Too Close for Comfort

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 12:32:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Dave Alcon was obviously mesmerized while listening to Upuan by Gloc 9 when as if by instinct--piece by piece--he illustrated chairs on top of one another in a voluminous effort to create an artistic statement. Sign of the times as the contest theme stated--this painting was his entry to a prestigious national painting competition back in January 2019. With the national and local elections upcoming in May, uncertainty was prevalent in the air yet Alcon was too certain of what he was creatively preoccupied with, unmindful of the repercussions of leaving his former job as a graphic artist to fulfill his calling of becoming a full time artist.

While listening to the popular rap song, as if being hypnotized, Alcon instinctively devised chairs as a graphic handle in discovering his new visual direction. True to his gut feel, his own Upuan earned a Special Citation in the Metrobank Arts and Designs Excellence Painting Category. It was the affirmation he longed for, setting it aside for almost nine years.

Courage

A chair in your dreams represent the many roles you play in life, as the saying goes. In Beyond Comfort Zone, Alcon’s first solo exhibition at the Boston Gallery, he continued to essay various metaphors of chairs as boundless and as a visual effect, “insurmountable” to our better appreciation. His unique proposition is to transgress chairs as more than just resting place of the body but rather elevating its aesthetics to focusing the mind of the matter at hand. With an all knowing awareness, Alcon’s chairs are remarkable for their infinite emblem of taking to form what his intended concepts can be. The little hours he has invested in them shows how meticulously skillful he ascertain chairs as immortal symbol of self-actualization anointing the social space with their presence.

Consider Courage where his chairs takes to task the heart-shaped image--done in a series--curated into a diamond. Alcon espouses a layering of values renegading discomfort and negativity. Notice how he ends each piece with a different colored chair like proof that everything was manually done by hand with good intentions--ending with an exclamation form.

Empathy is diptych complimentary shows how man and woman need each other to survive. Each colors are reflective in each other’s canvases. His whimsical play of colors are commendable enough proof that one cannot exist without the other.

Empathy

It is good to note that these pieces were done at the onset when there was still no pandemic and they crossover and were shown during the extreme lockdown. Still Alcon inculcated positiveness in the prevalent gloominess abound. He desired to inject hope like a shot in the arm. His chairs multiplied and became sturdier as they are well-stocked up and filled up his canvases.

It All Starts Within You (A)

Alcon believes whatever change must start with the bearer. It All Starts Within You are portraits of people who could be everyone and anyone advocating "forward action." How Alcon does it is he makes everything as a series that results in a multiplier effect and curated side-by-side one is visually blinded that they become unavoidably contagious. The simplicity of his pieces is overwhelming by their meticulous rendition. Alcon proves this point, in actuality, everything starts with him.

The most basic is the most profound. Six columns in Pillar exudes stability as a show of sheer force. Together they are bound to be an immovable force relating to the sacredness of life. But bound together can extract power of the many.

An Ivatan by decent, Alcon grew up in Batanes with a farming family that sustained them. He too has consistently been planting using his brush and oil paints as his canvases are similar to his fields of dreams. He wants to fill them up so as not to shortchange his viewers even flexing his artistic prowess at every masterpiece he churns out. Preparing for this exhibition, however, was not without trials. He remembers running out of oil paints and his stretched canvases and frames were delayed while he was in the heat of his creation.

Alcon’s visual style are fresh that it eschews prevalent realism and social themes in the art scene yet one admits enthralled by the concepts they emphasize. These recent works shuffles a new order—a kind of going back to basics with a less is more adage. Alcon’s strength is his consistency to his creative purpose in getting his message across to his viewers.

Pillar

Alcon’s approach to art may be more of a craft than a holistic aesthetic formation yet he has achieved pure spirituality in rendering the visual nature in a convoluted realist content in art in these trying times. As the months preceded after the exhibition’s duration last April, it will be up to Alcon’s viewers to remember and as final arbiter of his familial images if they are as infectious as to their relevance during the time of the pandemic he created them.

Michael Delmo: Painting on a Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Sat, 25 Jul 2020 11:45:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Sakiyo

Oftentimes to espouse the contemporary, artists painstakingly create alternative realities of their own making. From organic cast of subjects, to ethereal settings, even backing them up with personal myths and mythologies as main conniving narratives.

In his second solo exhibition AMPO (Hiligaynon for prayer) Michael Delmo contemplates further his artistic direction on this ongoing pandemic and pursues his faith in an inner spiritual vision wrought by whimsical creatures in eerie landscapes.

Tanghaga

For Delmo, art-making is a form of an in-depth religious undertaking--manifesting your full potential as a way of coping and even surviving these difficult and trying times. These seven paintings reveal a long hollowing narrative how Delmo has interpreted the coronavirus as a menace and as a imaginative tactic of revenge that the inherent good in people will eventually prevail.

The story goes there was once a world where inhabitants were living in harmony. In Sakiyo (steal) an alien creature arrives and imposes a grim influence of greed and terror to the community. The alien creature resembles how the coronavirus has appallingly enveloped our habitat. At the same time he has started to paint for this exhibition, Delmo cleverly establishes the similar parallel act to how even the coronavirus today also came from a foreign country.

Iwag (light) features a mysterious ray of light that has alerted the inhabitants signaling there is gravely something wrong with their surroundings. Pangayam (hunt) announces a cause for alarm as it portrays that one cannot anymore get out of this social quagmire threatening even the outside the world.

Sablok

Tanghaga (mystery) pushes the plot further by showing the alien creature painstakingly spreading the bad menace on the entire planet. The scenario is overpowering in a sense that the alien creature has completely ruled over his evil agenda. Banlod (confine) causes a sense of fear as one distrusts each other because of the predicament favoring the alien creature. A distressed angel is seen crying for help because his friend was one of those affected and infested with the manipulation as seen in Tanghaga.

Pangayam

Sablok (yearn) witnesses the lamented angel reporting to the abled guardian of the society that his kinfolk was caught and already manipulated by the alien creature. While holding his child the angel complains to what happened as the abled guardian compassionately listens to her. On a positive note, Sagukom (embrace) succumbs as goodness triumphs while the world is at the height its peril. The situation brought out the caring instinct of the inhabitants with one another. The inhabitants begin to be responsible for their upkeep and protection--as long as one remains vigilant and look after beyond himself.

Growing up in Iloilo, Delmo was already exploring these anthropomorphic characters in high school. Delmo was visually honed doing masks and costumes every year for the annual Dinagyang Festival every fourth Sunday of January. Several months prior to the event, he would tag along with choreographers and musicians, they would travel every town researching on local lore, legends and the indigenous expressions of a particular tribe or people. He would hurriedly sketch as they brainstorm on the spot to concoct the plot for the 10-minute at the prized At-Ati dance competition. Each artistic tableau involves history, religion and culture of how the Sto. Niño is venerated to seal the pact between the Datus and the locals. Delmo was able to imbibe the various tribal instincts of the performers. He wanted his designs to be as primarily natural as possible using feathers, beads and sequins and blend well with the audience and environment. Through the years Delmo has acquired his deep Hiligaynon roots and conceptualized his paintings similar to the scene per scene of the Dinagyang epic. This way of story-telling comes second nature to him. No wonder every pictorial frame he churns out is a staged performance in live color. Even his titles are Visayan in origin and scope.

Sagukom

Delmo devises his own paint brushes, sourcing them from discarded chicken feathers. Depending on their application they satisfy his precise brushstrokes and translate his bespoke iconographies. Although his visual style is homegrown he remains to be authentic despite the current art practice today that has evolved into a coy and crass creative exercise.

He is by nature an initiator—wanting to be a trailblazer on his own, away from their conventional modes of mixing paints. With no drawing reference, he usually illustrates from his subconscious straight to an inviting blank white canvas. An early riser, initially he does not yet figure the image yet he knows what it is all about. Delmo is inspired by Hiligaynon words as titles in expounding his ripening world-view. In explaining further, Delmo supposedly feels relief for every concept finished off on canvas—a figurative pierced thorn is taken out of his worries—like an unloaded burden off his back.

Delmo’s realism counters the traditional genres for it to redefine itself into new actualities in its own right. It adheres to that old school of eye to hand skill in service of the imagination. Often eschewing the banal and sacred, it defies fixation with the tested norms. Looking up to his fellow Ilonggo artists as influences, practicing art in the peripheries has taught Delmo new and fresh perspectives he has immortalized with his own distinct and evocative expressions. As if enlightening the viewer, AMPO is striking for its diversity and spontaneity—an in-your-face figurative theater. It has no shared style or desired intentions yet a common thread persists that individually Delmo is capable of imagination and commitment to the craft. His paintings are organically breathing, ethereally impermanent and fixture of contemplation. They continue to grow on you--long after seeing the exhibition and the ongoing pandemic maybe over.

AMPO is ongoing at Art Verite Gallery until August 6, 2020

Quizon’s Game

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Sat, 16 May 2020 11:23:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Alter Ego

For the living imagination of visual artist Marvin Quizon, it has always been the struggle between rationality and passion--a bitter war against maneuvering clichés—ever since he started mixing paints on canvas for seven years now. His third solo exhibition, Interception, culminates with finality what has been evenly fought for in his previous two exhibitions dealing deeply on positive realizations of pain and suffering like flowers emanating from a rubble.

With the extended lockdown looming at large, Quizon’s sense of time resulted in a moment of temporal unity for these binary opposing forces. Against a contemporary art scene of restlessness, churning out paintings after paintings in every auction, art fair or biennale that comes along, Quizon offers a pregnant pause of the sublime in these six paintings.

There is something in the midst of Bulacan that transposes a poetic element in Quizon. Even with a short distance from Manila, the allure of the province draws the melancholic and even recluses like him. The vast expanse of the remaining rice fields or sudden change of the season—that misty still unpolluted air while cumulative clouds slowly parade—allows one to find sanctuary and immediately seek contemplation. This lieu seems much more conducive to creative people such as musicians, writers more so hungry young artists.

Interception

Quizon visualizes purposely how the mind and heart interchangeably return to their constant engagement in the self-titled Interception--a work on paper with three-dimensional cut outs. With radical and energetic determination, Quizon has roamed freely from that conventional into an internal existence of wonder and fantasy. Using tentacles to symbolize the enticing even teasing flirtations of the consciousness, Quizon philosophically quizzes the viewer how man can surrender to himself, give in to temptation, and ultimately succumb to overthinking in a single arrested development.

We are oftentimes hapless victim of our own faulting that we create our own tentacles that continue to rob us blind leaving us in misery. We are trapped by our own making or even our hands become the very tentacles that wallow us. There are times Quizon gets utterly torn as to what his mind says from what his heart feels although deep within he has already made up his heart. Shown in The Antagonist as it tips the scale for once with the brain overwhelmed by his tempting limbs. The figurative brain forms the subliminal octopus which has the ability to protect, defend, overarching itself to cling on something it focuses itself into.

Discordant Comfort Zone

Although everything exists in the brain our deepest desire, and ultimate longing is what our heart wants. The brain is physical while the heart is your soul. The fictitious tentacles envelope the man even becoming the man himself in Alter Ego making it the closest portrait Quizon can depict the blatant personified quagmire he becomes.

In Discordant Comfort Zone Quizon configures idleness as a solitary enemy. Lounging is a feeling of repose, a vacated sofa lingers comfortably while his creativity is held hostage. Done in raw sepia-finish, one is seemingly invited to jump in the comforting pillow-like palm of a giant.

Everyday reality has been distorted, exaggerated, brought to excess, dressed up and supplanted. Time Intercepted is evident to the mechanical call to order by a clock. In his profound solitude Quizon produces exemplary parallelism in counting an infinity of the little hours while painting in lockdown, he reduces the brain to logical rationality and the heart to its purely visual function. It is necessary to purge thought of all that is not in relation to ideas, ridding it of all the myths with which the senses overlay the truth.

Quizon interprets the uncanny in surrealist brushstrokes as Nature of Mind and Soul is a masterpiece rendered in a dream-like manner. In what he interprets as an experiment in psychological layering, found at the dead aim center is a man caught in flames signifying he is in a peril state of saturation. The confusion overwhelms him on whether to be rational or hear the pulsating beat of his heart. The resolution remains evident by the where flowers in bloom.

Time Intercepted

Quizon favors ongoing dialogues of strange objects into a new visual language. These explorations of incongruousness in existence are often highlighted by intricate details and unusual perspectives. Notice the brain and how it is highlighted to represent knowledge. It is inherent that we think what is right for us through where the light leads us. Often he distorts his space using hyperrealism marked by rustic finish and in raw and limited monotone palette often depicting his mood. Quizon is fond of depicting symbols, allegories and odd juxtaposes of objects. The heart is in a dim part but it still glows as it grows. Proof that the heart wants what it wants, it is the soul that benefits. Quizon has even left ample space in the foreground for the viewers to interlude as Quizon opens up the invitation to look intently on the canvas. There is an open clamor as the viewer could even get burned by his fatal indecision.

Compared to his contemporaries, Quizon prefers his slow creative process to be long and arduous. Quizon paints everyday leaving only a day to regain his momentum. He usually does rough sketches and writes his thoughts. He continues with unfinished studies as he conceptualizes further on canvas. Quizon is organic in approach that he usually ends up adding from what his initial studies were. He accepts this as his visual style—a way of surrendering into his subconscious. Sometimes Quizon ends up with a different yet more improved version of his initial studies.

The Antagonist

He then proceeds to photograph his references even edits them in his computer as he is well-versed to be. He proceeds to layer his oil paints how the way masters like his influence Rembrandt of the 17^th century Dutch Golden Age does it. He finishes off by color glazing much like the way his fellow artists from Bulacan do theirs as well.

Upon careful reflection on his pieces, Quizon subdues his colors to suit his intended emotions. Quizon is an old soul at barely 26 years old, his commitment to his craft and his pursuit for artistic emancipation reflects within his soft-spoken character. In the end, he believes we can love completely without even complete understanding.

Nature of Mind and Soul

Interception by Marvin Quizon is an ongoing virtual exhibition at the Art Cube Gallery. It can be viewed through Art Steps. Log on to artsteps.com/download the Artsteps App.

Marco Banares: Notes to Myself

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 01:41:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Takot sa Sariling Multo

The nation-wide lockdown revealed what people value the most—safety, family, food—necessary in that order. And artists, similar to medical frontliners, felt the strongest impact and their immediate impulse is to creatively react at their inner core putting their sentiments using acrylic and oil paints on canvases.

In the seven paintings comprising Inbox by Marco Banares, his first solo exhibition at Secret Fresh Gallery, he becomes deeply-disturbed with the ongoing covid-19 crisis while indignantly returning to his truest sense of realism. This time Banares eschews hyperrealist fantasies, appropriation and speculation that have initially characterized his previous collective output captivating his viewers’ and collectors’ appreciation. By spending more time in solitude these past weeks, Banares bared out his soul while intently reflecting, imagining and aesthetically innovating his learned values and basic character--first as a human being, next as a contemporary painter--as he attempted to make interesting ordinary and everyday occurrences.

One Day

In what could be his most intimate pieces in almost a decade of art practice, the framed parables of Inbox uses the visual pun of masks (derived from the medical kind) as a concealing device for many of his character metaphors. Banares does not have the illusion of waiting for his muse to paint. He lives the working class existence, painting every day--starting early in the morning and finishing overtime late at night. He struggles daily with his art-making in dignity for his family’s survival.

Being a father to two boys, Banares interprets the relevance of his responsibility being a father churning out creativity for a living. His Law of Attraction sets the tone for this exhibition. If one is positive and faithful to God one imbibes hope beaming with goodness. In a contemplative stance, portrayed is an image in deep thought pushing kindness forward as one’s positive deed will never be put to waste.

Banares has taken this elder role seriously, Kung Ano ang Puno, Siya rin ang Bunga is a testament that children become who and what they want to be as seen in their elder’s example since they have already seen the bad side of life in their own growing years. While offspring are young and impressionable we must already correct their initial wrongdoings. Notice how Banares renders his subjects in a tableau-like stage with the father disguised as a Philippine eagle--acting his part. On a clear blue sky, Banares has done a dual role advocating the saving of the Philippine eagle in near extinction; how as parents our stay on earth is also the beauty of the temporal.

Kung Ano Ang Puno, Siya Rin Ang Bunga

The Show Must Go On sternly takes his defense on persons with depression, disability and those helpless victims being bullied—issues close to his heart. Showing a boy on a broken bicycle, Banares encourages that they blindly pedal forward leaving and setting aside those who put you down.

The Show Must Go On

Time and again masks used in art have appeared in various scenarios for different periods. Most popular among them are used in protest or with surreal pronouncements. Banares use of mask may be similar to how one’s conscience influences one’s perspective in awareness. It may hide the identity of the wearer but for Banares mask empowers his subjects aiding his messages and simulating theatricality as an operative norm as he desires to put up a show for us to be entertained while being educated than visually preaching from a high chair.

Takot sa Sariling Multo reminds us to think before we act and warns us of the negativity of being a thinker-doers—people who are evil enough to find fault in others when they themselves are at fault.

Humility is something inherent in Banares and pride being the virtue he abhors. Mga Dunung-Dunungan Pero Wala Namang Alam sums up all his pent up emotions and takes a pun on men full of themselves, as if they know it all. In a fit of disgust our hero holds up his bare horns in desperation of hate.

One Day is his clamor for change. If one is disillusioned with the way events are happening in the world, we would just have to look through the eyes of a child and invest in the uplifting of their future. In the end, Banares is optimistic and this painting affirms this belief that everything’s going to be fine as long as one trusts the process. The clean air and nurturing foliage are signs of better days to come.

Mga Dunung-Dunungan Pero Wala Namang Alam

Comfort Zone is a portrait of Banares daring himself. More of self-realization as he was painting these pieces, it was a feeling of confidence and comfort that he was able to pull it through. For an artist to grow one must force himself to get out of his box and flex his muscles and explore his basic freedom to be a poet of the palette.

Comfort Zone

Banares was on lockdown himself in his studio when he was able to contemplatively probe and freely express the episodes of his life. Perhaps it can be argued that maybe he decided to make up for the utter convenience and sheer commercialism of his previous visual style that his isolation was beneficial of what painterly language he wants to return to—now he is at home. As plurality reigns in the current art scene, Banares seeks to be relevant than be popular this time--his two boys were watching him while he painted these.

Arel Zambarrano: Construction Ongoing

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 03:32:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Calm in the Surface, Intense Underneath

A deep abiding faith on one’s creativity often comes in the most abstract of expressions and artists like Arel Zambarrano often turnaround something ordinary (this time from his workplace) even bordering on boredom they only know how—using imagination and available mixed media.

Aside from being an award winning visual artist, Zambarrano has always been a licensed architect. In his 4^th solo exhibition, Flexible Nerves Zambarrano narrates how he found inspiration among construction workers, basic industrial tools, and architecture materials transforming them into framed parables using them to explore important themes such as joys, anger, challenges and inconsistencies through espousing our emotions, acceptances and resolutions in life. Zambarrano firmly establishes his personal concepts and creative philosophies--his relentlessness and inventiveness in the visual arts--in these composed and solitary pieces, as he addresses social realism in our most basic human condition.

The Molting Stage Will Soon Be Over

The contemporaneity of Zambarrano’s visual approach as he essays his art is in the simplest way possible not in complex coded language but in clear semantics of life: because he believes each contemporary artist should tell us about current life and the world we share at the moment.

Calm in the Surface, Intense Underneath represents Zambarrano’s 34 grappling years of existence. Greeting the viewer as one enters the Ilomoca premises, each concrete sculptures was prefabricated from his own legs. This is how intensely personal Zambarrano intimates his art practice—art and life are enmeshed to one another. Using fiber-reinforced concrete, he installed them upside down projecting grace and temperance as an artist amidst many contextual professional pressures. He got the idea upon seeing ducks swimming, tranquil and soft while arduously paddling. They are serenely floating while settling their survival underneath the deep water.

Boy-Boy (1/4)

Zambarrano has always induced the element of wonder. His materiality dictates whatever mood he is in depending on what he perceives be it blades, knives, nails, level bar, used shovels and rubber bands. Zambarrano firmly believes artists were blessed with talents, as they are expected to be responsible human beings first in society than the confines of a gallery. As his daily preoccupation with insurmountable work attending the building of two island resorts, commercial establishments, and even creation of artist studios whiling away his time, Zambarrano has found creativity with his industrial surroundings. This time he favored to prefabricate everything before he even primes his canvases and overlaying them with another image using acrylic glasses. Exposing texture he attaches bullet slags, burning leatherette and even pouring crushed gravel on his site-specific installation. These resources reflect the ordinary, discarded, unused, and broken materials enabling every brushstroke as diverse like the different days where Zambarrano worked on his pieces.

Purya Usog

These pieces appear as visual symbols of unseen realities rendered in pictorial rhetoric through cultural signifiers that only Zambarrano can comprehend their symbolical meanings such as knives in Artificial Hindrance. Knives have always been a constant in Zambarrano’s past exhibits. It represents fear and uncertainty which is a given in reality. He reclaims what is lacking in its aesthetics and mayhem whether he renders realist strokes or veers into abstract transparency of forms and solidity of shapes define the quintessential Zambarrano. One cannot be overwhelmed by his art pieces, often employing rhythm and harmony in composition his dimensions draws a thin line in between softness of acrylic glass and harshness of paint rendition yet they are carefully controlled and vary at certain points from another not because they are nice to look at but because they are painstakingly conceived in rendering. Double meaning ensues as Zambarrano is fond of diversifying perspectives.

His paintings are also sensuous variations of collective narratives, memories and dreams. The fascination in rough-like surface in his works is evident in time. It is metaphorical in depiction of this world we live in as paralleled by a slowly decaying, human body that is deteriorating and will turn back into nature’s dust--our ashes. Consider Purya Usog which is his ode to his daughter. Not everything is raw and melancholic yet it is fear conveyed on his positive vibrations on his daughter as trials and challenges that make him more human. He and his wife as parents on acrylic glass purifying the image with bullet slag attached through to be able see its real essence in our already gruesome and violent world.

Clinched Ethereality

Zambarrano moves freely inside the painting as he probes his inner self and explore contours and variations of colors, paraphrasing the mortal world and beyond in less fanciful embellishment or distortion. His thoughts and feelings as an artist are astounded in each of the four canvases in Boy-Boy and nine canvases in the Magnanimous grip series. They feature the images of common people he has accustomed to--construction workers, pedicab drivers, labourers, farmers, porters, fishermen, etc. He expressively painted each figure allowing them to stand out against obscurity. It is being overlaid with transparent acrylic glass etched with outlines of juxtaposed ants intended to receive numbers of actual bullet slags on informal frame which in turn holds the dysfunctional level bar. With the reflection of Zambarrano, magnanimous grip series portrays courage beyond social injustice.

Ever the grateful, The Molting Stage Will Soon Be Over pays homage to an early influence, Allain Hablo. The celtic pattern overlay on acrylic glass is reminiscent of Hablo's previous masterpiece, I am Who I am. Hablo symbolizes those first and second generation of Ilonggo artists who stayed awake when it was still dark in the Visayan art scene. Hablo holds a stature in Iloilo--how one can be commercially successful without compromising one’s art. Hablo has been their pride in Visayan art as seen in the rawness and integrity of his being an artist at the onset of his career. He chose to stay in Iloilo because this where the “creative war,” without the benefit of convenience or the luxury of appreciating their art--to survive one must tell our own stories from our own experiences. Zambarrano does not want to lose his bearings and keep his feet rooted on the ground. He continues to stay in Iloilo as the conflict surges.

Post Inner Torment (using blades)

One can almost smell his coloration in Clinched Ethereality wherein rubber bands are actually landscapes dwelling intuitively into his subconscious mind. His composition of colors range from cool to earthy hues, these are vivid projections of his dreams and aspirations. Skulls have always figures in Zambarrano’s iconography, they value living like a memento mori despite prevalent poverty all around. This represents the beauty of impermanence.

Given the current art scene’s infatuation with hyperrealism, auction-bound, emo-ridden parlance, Flexible Nerves has an in-your-face realism coming at you. Against the hushed solitude of Ilomoca, Zambarrano’s pieces shout out loud and roughs up bad your composure. They may not be polite and pleasing to the eyes, he then proceeds to rearrange your sense of reality and positions to make you feel what it is to be truly human.

Noel Elicana: Firestarter

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 02:24:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Finished Duty

Opting to thrive as a practicing artist in Iloilo, eluding far off the imperial art center on purpose, is not about sheer luck or burgeoning talent. Blood, sweat, and tears are offered on a daily grind. As one physically labors alone the long hours, he must stay focused and be dedicated to perfecting one’s raw craft for the rest of his life. There has never been a secret formula for a struggling artist to test in; one has to make his own space and translate it to his own visual language.

For award winning artist Noel Magallanes Elicana--to be poor and homegrown--the art world may not have yet existed for his creativity until this day. And even before he accomplishes anything, he already looks back and acknowledges those who were there for him in the past. As Elicana flexes his artistic sensibilities, he extends his hand in gratitude to all his benefactors—those whose hand fed his mouth to satisfy his hunger to survive, replied to his queries and nurtured his creativity on the edge, continued to pat his back and held a light for him when it was at its darkest—paving the way of his imaginative path.

His first exhibit, Tayhop, professes this authenticity, discipline and grit before he pursues his uphill battle in the Philippine art scene.

Tayhop is that turning point in the vernacular—the act of blowing through a tube--when starting a flame on the ember in the tinder bundle until fire catches. Elicana belongs to the current crop of Ilonggo contemporary artists advancing their Hiligaynon lineage yet expounding on their own visual style. Tayhop is his indigenous analogy relative to all the inspiration, guidance, disciplines, as well as the struggles that he went through making him stronger, more confident and expressive as he is today. Tayhop highlights the importance on giving value to the people who paved the way for him stemming up from all of his misfortunes, drudgery and sham he encountered. And the exhibition pays homage to the people who created a dent to his life and eventual art making as he pays it forward. It showcases his tribute to his guardians, his beliefs, as well as aspirations. It tackles Elicana’s meaningful life changing events and childhood memories that gave his current motivations as an artist today.

When Day and Night are One

Being the only boy in the brood of three, Elicana was her mother’s favorite despite being the cry baby and an in born shy-type. He was barely five years old when she passed on due to difficult pregnancy and a lingering heart ailment. He and his siblings were adopted in Iloilo leaving his father to work in Manila. From then on Elicana skipped playing in the streets and matured early. He was even forced to gather wood in the forest during weekends to sell for their sustenance. He stared poverty on its face that he became numbed with hunger and got used to having only life’s barest necessities. Elicana and his sisters experienced a topsy-turvy progression of being adopted by various familial relations in Iloilo, some more painful than the others while his father worked in a knitting factory in Manila.

Drawing positively inward, becoming more personal than social as his visual language progressed. The paintings of Elicana has been churning out what constitute as attaining positive wrought with values, exploring metaphors in artistic freedom, organic favoring lush iconographies, abiding religious faith in his struggle overcoming tragedy through self-sacrifice.

Engraved Yesterday's Silence

Against rust and mold-like hues resembling trauma with a hint of hope, Engraved Yesterday’s Silence is Elicana’s canvas of his “first childhood memories.” The white dress was what his mother wore while lying in her coffin while the smaller one recognizes his sister who only lived for a measly ten minutes. There was never a day Elicana did not long for them. It is barely a semblance as he saw the purity of white as a sign of hope one day they would be together once again. The knife represents how strict his father became after they lost his wife and their mother. One traumatic time, at an instance, in drunken fit of disappointment and rage, Elicana’s father pointed a knife at them. The three white eggs are Elicana and his siblings reminding him that you cannot hold them too tight or too loose as any which way it will break them. The good son that he is, Elicana may not have gotten over the scene yet he continues to love and respect him until this day when he is old and sick with tuberculosis.

A Father's Journey

His father has been recurring image for Elicana. A Father’s Journey is attributed to him who has been Elicana’s source of strength in his words “from seed to growing tree.” Elicana has depicted him as a fierce, over-protective, ever-ready paternal figure like a dog who is always there for his brood. Yet he is the most loving creature as evident by the flowers overwhelming him--as if Elicana praises him to the highest degree to no end.

Elicana’s prowess comes in his painstaking details. Notice how he added white flowing lines as texture in all of his paintings. Similar to the bark of a tree, the harder the tree, the more textured it is. A gentle reminiscent of his familiarity with the forest gathered woods that survived him and his siblings. He did not join other kids and play in the streets rather he was holding a bolo and cutting branches from trees. That is why Elicana values every canvas he fills up to perfection reflecting this early work ethic.

Altar of Blessings is attributed to the seven guardians who took care of Elicana and his siblings in their formative years—his father, Uncle Ruby, Auntie Didet (Manila), Papa Dreg, Mama Celia (Jaro, Iloilo), Tatay Rudy and Nanay Mercy (in Oton, Iloilo during summer). His background depends upon the level of his affections with each of them, it is also Elicana demonstrating how he could be as illustrative as an hyperrealist he can be. This is the extent of his rendering of human anatomy. There may be no traces of facial renderings which Elicana veers away from stating the obvious on the contrary however he waxes sentimentality without featuring their facial representations.

Altar of Blessings

Elicana owes a big debt of gratitude to Papa Greg and Mama Celia, his uncle and aunt who took care of them as they were growing up in lieu of his father. When Day and Night are One and Finished Duty observed how they both sacrificed and often times taking two jobs just to fend for their brood. Oftentimes they barely sleep due to their work load. Depending on the season, Papa Greg is both a farmer and jeepney driver while Mama Celia who was a seamstress until she could no longer handle the sewing machine due to health reasons.

With this first offing, Elicana increasingly featured in a diverse range of realism and defying standard categorization of his works. He starts with raw brushstrokes emitting abstract expressionism before depicting his main image. Then he compliment it with supporting cast or meaningful amenities around it. Each painting is an experimentation and hybridization even blurring boundaries which is purely Elicana’s. His sphere of expression has become a breeding battleground that viewers can relate or re-appropriate to having similar experiences and one’s felt incident. Elicana is an innate storyteller and in his connived narratives there are no fixed answers or preachy sermons but only stories well-told and truth well-painted. In the end, his style is his substance.

Faith and Holy

Fire has always been symbolic to Elicana and a constant in his works. Even the title of the show is related to fire which has many representations to him. It could be his passion, or it could also mean in high spirits as eternal power in Faith and Holy. Elicana is a spiritual being, glorifying the Almighty God who he gives credit behind the wind to produce fire. Another staple in an Elicana painting is his fixation with keyholes as source of unlocking truth and imagination. For Elicana it is only faith that is the key to the mystery of living.

Found in the centerpiece of the exhibit is Enlighten which is about a big tree casting a silhouette of another tree that grew within overbearing with lush branches loaded with ethereal memories. As Elicana honored his parents, all the more he honors his forebears as well--who never got tired of imparting his valuable lesson after lesson as they aged in wisdom. This is evident in the flowers that grew from the branches. There are thorns everywhere as there are many challenges. The bones are reminders of our parents’ sacrifices. In a surrealistic urge, Elicana implants various molar teeth around as he got used to life’s struggles experiencing their gnashing dilemmas in between us. Mortal beings are represented by the flames and the burning clock at the center specifies our lives are ruled by God’s own time and not the rhythm of our world.

Enlighten

Tayhop weaves Elicana’s concerns not merely as a conscious interlude of colors, illustrations and other media but as something that is originally perceived in his fertile imagination. His manifestations confront validation as his own inherent artistic intents and permutations stressing the value of spontaneity, appropriation and relevance. Establishing tension, solitude or equilibrium, his spatial yet lyrical pieces may be subtle or harsh yet both convey the sense of delight in his free reign of imagery and visual style. Elicana is proof that we do not need inspiration to create grand masterpieces. Your own struggles can be the content to complete your own body of work. And from the limitations imposed by that discipline breeds new ideas. In so doing Elicana uplifts himself so others can inspired and be uplifted as well. Tayhop is a kind of revenge against all these mundane circumstances surrounding our fates. And Elicana’s boldness comes from the realization that he too want to influence others. What is life about after all if you cannot do something of influence, like gathering fire to spread some more.

Don Bryan Bunag: Stranger Things

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 04:42:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone, and some remain

In My Life

The Beatles

For his 5^th solo exhibition, Sa Tabon, Don Bryan Bunag returns home once more. Picking up from where he left off in his first show, he becomes more personal and dwells deeper by capturing bygone scenes that reprise meaningful stages in his life.

Situated in Bulacan, Bulacan, Baranggay San Francisco is what is popularly known as Tabon. It used to be vast expanses of fields where farming sustained the people living there. For the longest time, Tabon maintained its rural culture--which came alive only when a religious procession is being observed or a local carnival is set up--to mark its annual festivities. Away from his parents, Bunag grew up here when grandmother took him under her loving care as he was about to attend pre-school. Spending his entire formative years with his extended family and life-long friends, Bunag was accustomed living simple way in a rustic manner.

Compared to his contemporaries in the art scene--whose fascination revolves around the floral, the grotesque and the macabre--Bunag does not want to be boxed in a format or be loud with his brushstrokes. His visual style may be academic with processes influenced by Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt, he prefers and is well- versed with fleeting moments and impermanence of nostalgia evoking silence. The ambience of Tabon sets this tone for the exhibit depicting memory with what was familiar and ethereal for this award winning visual artist.

Tabon series are eighteen scenarios--each capturing the meaningful moments Bunag got to spend around people in his most sensitive self and what was most memorable to him. He reminisces his time spent perched on a tree with his sister or on a swing while flying kites with friends; his riding bicycles, playing basketball and swimming in the pristine rivers of Tabon are faintly recorded.

His intimate bonding activities with his family such going to mass or being carried just to touch Jesus’s feet in a chapel wrought by his mother’s abiding spirituality can also be witnessed. Even how his grandfather brings him to school and taught him to play the drums are informally documented. He once saw an old farm with a herd of lambs sparked on him the dream of having the same space to take care of such genteel flock.

Typical to the young and melancholic Bunag he was often seen laying on the ground looking at the heavens—sometimes on a fence, in a bench or lying on the grass whiling away his time, observing the images formed in the clouds. His own quiet time is also impressed upon here—staring at a pond or looking up in the sky while imagining things--are mutely embedded. These were his initial manifestations of the kind of art practice he is espousing now.

Done in loose textures of impressionism, there is evident stillness in Bunag’s subjects--with only a hint of figuration involved—as if he leaves to his viewers to situate themselves in them. Only the truly experienced artists like Bunag could impart a mood piece, which is quite universal to the viewer, yet leave something distinct into them. Each work is anecdotal, rich in meaning and symbolisms--an ode to time and how it moves together with the heavens all at the same time. Placed side by side on shelves, they are like one long reel of film marked by Bunag’s own passage of realities. He has adopted filmmaker’s tools in these small paintings marked with cinematic aesthetics.

Bunag left Tabon when his grandmother died and he was a year short of graduation in 2012. When Bunag came back early this year he could barely recognize the sense of place Tabon was. Prodding him to question: Can one physically leave a place yet preserve how it once was in one’s own memory?

The encroaching vines and tall grass represent Bunag as he saw himself in the lush vegetation grown through time as depicted Tabon 1 with him in mind—a kind of portrait of Bunag as foliage. Bunag was waxing sentimental upon seeing how much Tabon has changed since he last been to it. Tabon 3 is a mossy testament to that--an ode to the last remaining lot beside the factory in Tabon. It speaks of the plight of Tabon it is purposely misaligned to connote much change.

Tabon 2 remains the mysterious gate where old people were saying a Chinese lived beyond the wall from the gate. He was warned whoever trespasses will be killed. Until this day Bunag has not unravel if the story is just a myth since he saw rust already eating the gate and untended grass has embraced it--only shows no one has entered it after a long time.

After a well-thought-of process Bunag likely starts with a sketch—sometimes hurriedly as his hand tries to keeps up with his imagination. Then he channels them on tweed fabric. For two years now Bunag favors how acrylic is reflected upon it. A signature Bunag is the monotony of a single color--what was once sepia has now become more basic in charcoal gray. What is more important to Bunag is the narrative of the story than any suggestive hue.

Layering like old school classical painting, Bunag usually prefers water-based paints having started out as a watercolorist. He favors acrylic and graphite as under painting to glazing. Sometimes finishing off with oil paint. His work typically has 7-9 layers depending on the different tones of consistencies. Each layer has an effect--he wants it raw and textured in strokes in the end.

Tabon 1

Bunag relied most of these Tabon images to his memory since most of the locations he is familiar with no longer exist--giving emphasis on unmediated sentimentality. It is only now that Bunag realized he left Tabon but it did not leave him. He wanted to depict Tabon of yore in the sincerest way and most mature rendering since he started painting. He wanted a room full of memories and he has done that. More than the lost rice fields and pristine rivers he wanted to capture Tabon as a feeling, as a mood like a longing sigh or and accidental swoon, as if he feels for the viewer. At a young age he is already an old soul by how he has gathered a plethora of memories to paint them in a lifetime.

For now, Bunag is finally home—as if he never left.

Jason Moss: Pun Intended

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 09:29:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Lost Highway

In these often difficult and dangerously distracting times, when even the art scene has unclearly been demarcated by spectators and speculators, there lies as many levels--on how people react to things happening around and within us--as there are many layers of reading a Jason Moss painting. And depending on how much you are familiar with his aesthetics one gets to know the extent of his creative, spiritual and sexual take on our ongoing torments and traumas.

In Silence and Other Fiends, Moss reiterates his witty bespoke ways of dealing with issues, as he is well versed with many diverse and imaginative skills as an illustrator, animator, and editorial cartoonist rolled into one: the personal becomes political, as the public is private deepening farther on which frequency one adjusts how the hanging of these four artworks are set to be intensified.

As Moss continues to use spaces devoid of figures and figurines, rather than focusing more on a particular mood or feeling, he impressively paints with his mind as his landscapes rationalizing his ongoing disappointments, despair and depression as a call to action. In so doing the viewer voluntary situates himself in the imageries, taking in all portrayals hinted at him or with him in mind (emphasis on the masculine).

The Sectional

The Sectional is set against an off beaten path of lush rice fields with nipa huts behind looming mountains along a pristine river in front done in crass Mabini school of painting. An unidentified flying object (UFO) by the powers that be blatantly violates the semblance of the picturesque and starts dividing the land, literally and figuratively. Signifying the government’s false promises, policies and programs that divisively wreck the havoc to our nation’s progress, Moss wakes/wokes us up with this warning that not only are vast expanses of lands are being converted into housing subdivisions, they are also turned into shallow graves of farmers who till these fertile lands. The Sectional is a war against clichés and takes a pun at the blatant realism in the currently convoluted Philippine art market marked by art fairs and auctions.

Hall of Strabismus

Significant to Moss is how his visual elements align with his hidden messages conveying them in the most suggestive way possible adding to their acquired lyrical value. In Hall of Strabismus the viewer’s gaze is unsettled and confusingly drawn by the two paintings on both corners of the paintings yet one’s attention is even led to that writing on the wall--written in Ilocano, inked by blood. One would have to decipher the suggestive semiotics to be able to grapple the lieu of its signifier to unravel what is being signified.

Moss’s discipline is that he draws every day filling up his notebooks whatever it is that affects him personally like the back of his hand or socially how clouds form the cumulus of his anger. Currently fixated with colors and textures as seen in Message of the Medium. However now that ethereal ambience has quietly permeated the viewer, look closely to decipher what it implicates in-your-face.

Another mood swing by Moss is Lost Highway as referenced from an actual photographed his friend took. As if it is delivering his sentiments around that something is awfully wrong with society to have a loud phallic symbol like this being paraded and concurrently leaving it all to oblivion. With a firm statement attached to it—one just has to stand up on what you think is right.

Moss’s concern for other people’s silence are brought about by their fear of being isolated. They will just keep opinions to themselves rather than voicing out or be shut down (and be deleted forever). Media is an important factor that relates to both the dominant idea and people's perception. The assessment of one's social environment may not always correlate with existing reality. This is where art plays a key role in revealing and being trusted to express the truth--even in codified forms that Jason wittily draws upon.

The Medium is the Message

Organically Silence and Other Fiends portrays the kind of chill out state Moss is embracing/embarking himself in--as the world turns and the current events happening by the moment. It could also be the lamentations of an artist who has found fulfillment in opting out of the upgraded process of art-making. From posting your artworks on social media to having videos of your new exhibitions, to participating in the next biennales.

As Moss celebrates his silver year as an artist, he just can’t keep up with the demands of his trade. He just wants to continue drawing every day and would only exhibit if he has something new and loud to say on canvas.

Ricky Ambagan: Connecting the Dots

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 11:30:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Wind of Change

In these trying and often troubled times, when even a body of water or a group of islands is gravely being disputed, Pangaea by Ricky V. Ambagan reiterates what we have been and knew all along—that we are one and universal. As evidenced in geography marked by the broken connections of land masses in coastlines of what used to be a super continent, Pangaea simulates this united treatise through a shared cultural vocabulary through visual arts.

Ambagan’s themes revolve around science, culture, religion and even philosophy. He celebrates man’s greatest sociological and historical issues infusing them into our most personal sentimentalities. If Ambagan honored unknown Italian masters the last time in Omaggio, he concerns himself in present-day realities in Pangaea. Contemporary anxieties like global warming, environment degradation and cultural amnesia seriously occupy his canvases of varying sizes. Using omnipresent children, lamps representing souls, and luminosity as a positive graphic handle as signature in his works, Ambagan is a poet of the palette combining the local and global, the ethnic and cultural, in adventure-filled settings-- mixing naïve and sophisticated testimonials--straining out what limits the imagination. Ambagan has brought back storytelling by painting narratives into what our collective memory is--we are all shared beings. What appeals to us also affects other peoples from the other side of the earth.

Hidden Gem

His figures are often stuck in a moment—pausing an action—bravely appropriating with abandon popular and critical iconographies from diverse milieus. An interesting dialogue emerges among his subjects. Witness two kids in Hidden Gem, as they are in wonder while in search of something. Both are beside Bansky’s Girl with Balloon with the Easter Island statues and the Stonehenge looming in the background. Ambagan has taken risks in depicting his images and confidently attempting at playfulness. Consider Fix You which has the elements in a traditional Chinese luck signifiers; in Chosen One where our hero favors an imperial soldier in the afterlife; and Happy Thoughts which reminisces on lightness and impermanence of our being, as exuded by Japanese carp kites representing courage and persistence. They become dragons once they hurdle the current--all these adventure relate to Ambagan’s oriental take on civilization, as it happened through cornucopia of classic archeological findings and popular icons.

Chosen One

Mortality and the future of existence affects Ambagan’s consciousness as witnessed in Sleep Tight wherein the presence of a panda is a cause for alarm as flying lanterns provide a semblance of dismal hope in the prevailing darkness; the man in a unicycle has always been a recurring Ambagan creation in his previous shows. It denotes temporal suspension of belief while awaiting for a reversal of fortune of bigger things to come. It makes an appearance in Wind of Change in what appears to be a broken clock signifying twist of fate. As one is facing uncertainty in life’s constant events, one just has to move in order to be still. Cool Change speaks of post-apocalyptic scenarios that may scare the viewer but mind you these are not Ambagan’s intentions. More of a constant reminder as observed in Deep Peace ushering a grim reminder that the world is much darker and deeper than what a jellyfish experiences in the ocean—that we should practice contentment and live within our means to be at peace.

New Beginning

Dramatic interpretation of birth and constant re-birth are depicted in New Beginning and Against the Flow. New Beginning revisits a more cryptic Noah’s Ark as evident in the fossilized animals representing ancient times which blended well in the famous Biblical wrecked ship submerged in water. Against the Flow follows the circle of life as a boy freely floats like a baby featuring that there are more intelligent people born--despite the critical mortality caused by hunger and poverty--while at a young age they are faced with monsters of age-old curses. Puff ushers in sentimentality as that 70s song by Peter, Paul and Mary beckons eschewing nostalgia taking us back to bygone days filled with nostalgia. Finally, I Surrender finishes off Ambagan’s longing for equanimity and transience as it summarizes his faith for humanity. It overwhelms as it grabs your attention showing the scale of man as a mere speck compared to the towering cross. It is as spiritual as Ambagan can get without favoring any religion.

Against the Flow

Ambagan’s long and arduous process of art making starts off with words as he reflects upon them while listening to audiobooks or watching documentaries on inspiring men such as Machiavelli, Alexander the Great and Gengis Khan. Early in the morning, as soon as he wakes up, he inspires himself with he calls as his “quiet time.” Upon recharging his thoughts he then gears up as he recreates his words into images sometimes translating them in 3D fashion even sculpting them on paper. Upon careful scrutiny on his pieces, Ambagan finds the appropriate colors and emotions rendering them in textured brushstrokes. His palette may use bright or subdued colors as deemed necessary. Ambagan wants subjects shouting their tempered brilliance in silence. His commitment is to his craft and his pursuit for emancipation runs deep within his subjects’ character.

Ambagan is versed in carefully composed stories on his masterpieces. He has no regular pattern and prefers to deconstruct images from various sources. Lately he assumes the role of a cinematographer in the way he presents his artistic scenes. His prowess lies in his moments of delight-- being theatrical on canvas is his aesthetics.

Pangaea is a hopscotch where you can customize how you would like to connect Ambagan’s framed pictures to comprise your one big bespoke exhibition. It disturbs your peace as you do your rounds in this year’s Manila Art. It is interventionist against convention done in Ambagan’s in-your-face realism—a kind of counter culture being introduced into the mainstream. It is an adventure with challenges wherein the hero wins in the end. Like a chess game, viewers can either take the lead as king or queen or be a pawn rooting in the sidelines. No matter what we shall overcome—as we are all in this together.

Michael Delmo: Game of Thorns

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 00:32:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Lingi, 2019

Oftentimes to espouse the contemporary, artists painstakingly create alternate realities of their own making. From organic cast of subjects, to ethereal settings, even backing them up with personal myths and mythologies as main narratives. Tunok by Michael Delmo pursues this direction and attests to his belief in an enchanted inner vision wrought by fantastical creatures in eerie landscapes.

Growing up in Iloilo, Delmo was already exploring these anthropomorphic characters in high school. He remembers filling up his notebooks with these spontaneous drawings with sheer delight. One time, an obviously disappointed teacher, in fact, threw the notebook in disgust when she saw Delmo’s renderings instead seeing of academic notes.

Suhong, 2019

The first thing one would normally wonder in a Delmo piece is how well he does it. He is by nature an initiator—wanting to be a trailblazer on his own, away from their conventional modes of mixing paints. With no drawing reference, he usually draws from his subconscious straight to an inviting blank white canvas. He does not yet know the image but he knows what it is all about. Delmo uses Hiligaynon words as titles in expounding his world-view. In explaining further, Delmo supposedly feels relief for every concept finished off on canvas—a figurative pierced thorn is taken out of his worries—like an unloaded burden off his back.

Delmo has even invented his own paint brushes, sourcing them from discarded chicken feathers. Depending on their application they satisfy his precise brushstrokes and translate his bespoke iconographies. Although his visual style is homegrown he remains to be authentic despite the current art practice today that has evolved into a coy and crass creative exercise.

Sum-ok, 2019

Hulbar, 2019

Delmo’s realism counters the traditional genres for it to redefine itself into new actualities in its own right. It adheres to that old school of eye to hand skill in service of the imagination. Often eschewing the banal and sacred, it defies fixation with the tested norms. Looking up to his fellow Ilonggo artists as influences, practicing art in the peripheries has taught Delmo new and fresh perspectives he has conceptualized with his own distinct and evocative expressions. As if enlightening the viewer, Tunok is striking for its diversity and spontaneity—a performance on canvas. It has no shared style or desired intentions yet a common thread persists that individually he is capable of imagination and commitment to the craft. His paintings are organically breathing, ethereally impermanent and continues to grow on you--long after seeing the exhibition.

Tunok by Michael Delmo was the culminating exhibit of his three-month stay at the Artletics' 22 Narra Residency Program. It was held at the Tagaytay Contemporary.

Ejem Alarcon: Paws and Reflect

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Tue, 28 May 2019 10:52:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

In the Beginning Ejem Alarcon strips down all complexities possible in a painting. Against a stark gray background, he leaves out only the barest essentials espousing the most basic core of human nature--love for one another, nurturing our family, and how simple kindness still matters. A fine arts graduate Alarcon had to unlearn what he was taught in college by breaking conventional artistic norms paying little attention to perspectives and perceptions. His canvases are void of people as outsized animals relate to one another, blurring realities as subjects are depicted in direct visual impact. For Alarcon, in a blatant reversal of fortune, furry creatures—some endangered, endemic and even personal--are his preferred images. Devising his own visual language, he concerns himself more with what they signify and how their inherent character relate to daily aphorisms.

In this third solo exhibition, Alarcon continues to be fixated with animals endearing to him as they are better in expressing what seems concealed and obvious in our outlook in life. These paintings were also inspired by lessons learned from watching documentaries and real experiences marked by imagination, memory and longings.

As early as seven years old Alarcon’s fondness for dogs started to grow. He even opted to become a dog trainer himself and has multiple bites as badges of honor in keeping them. Canine for him symbolizes guidance, faithfulness, loyalty and alertness. He extended his passion by illustrating them on canvas.

A Doberman is morphed into a father who protects his home, as guarded under the stability of a wooden stool. For Alarcon the game changed when he became a husband and father of two girls himself so did his approach to life as his family became his utmost priority. An omnipresent eye remains a constant as it symbolizes love, reality and respect in Greek mythology while some cartoon character like Donald Duck and Tom and Jerry make cameo appearances, adding a bit of pop while endemic birds from Palawan flutter to decorate and complete the picture. Evident by his being aggressive as he is king of his abode, this fiercest of dogs wears a crown.

Depending on his intentions the sizes of Alarcon’s dogs vary. Humility is emphasized as such that Bloodhound is bigger than a St. Bernard. The Cocker Spaniel, which is the Queen of England’s pet is evidently unmindful of his royal lineage is permitted to interact with them. Alarcon wants his canvases light and fun to the hilt. Notice how his signature party hats put smiles to his subjects--life is a gift and every day we should use it to spread the good cheer that we are alive and well. Fond of nostalgia, as a bringer of happiness, he fills in his canvasses again with animation of yore from Bugs Bunny, Garfield, even two of Snow White’s dwarfs are featured on another canvas.

Contemporary art has the power to observe life in another dimension and step back in candid defilement as an alternative viewpoint. Alarcon’s sizeable pieces are more like graphical parables. Each scene has a lasting positive effect for viewers. Only Alarcon can come up with a kaleidoscope gathering of the vulnerable Zebra, the endangered reindeer, the care-free butterfly, the pristine stork, the playful whale, the stubborn goat and the critical cat to co-exist harmoniously with each other, reminding us that we all breathe and share as one brady bunch. All must adopt/adapt with one another in our common habitat.

Of the four brother who are all practicing artists, Alarcon is the most senior and a natural initiator. He wanted to be a trailblazer on his own, away from their conventional modes. He even invented his own paint brushes sourcing from make-up kits and construction tools to satisfy his precise strokes and translate his bespoke iconographies.

Inspired by documentaries Alarcon sketches his studies as big ideas strike him. Upon translating them on paper he composes further on the computer before finalizing his images on canvas. Of his long and arduous process he finds painting his subjects’ diverse furs most soothing. Alarcon certifies each artwork with a seal-like vintage coin as signature.

In the end although humans have bigger brains than animals it is their gift of language to communicate their immediate joys and fears that makes them different from us. Although we allow the development of reason and morals, animals appear more ethical in most considerations. Alarcon has clearly proven that we even can learn more from animals than we are from ourselves.

These pieces are wrought with behaviors and attitudes similar to amalgam of virtues. For the viewer they may be of unstructured pop surreal imagery, for Alarcon each canine and other creatures were carefully chosen amplifying values worth emulating. The strength of Alarcon’s imagery is how easy for the viewer to imbibe his messages like it is offered in-your-face for the taking, leaving the exhibition more learned and feeling better about yourself.

Beginning is ongoing at the Art Verite

Michael Froilan: Painting to Stand Still

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 10:47:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Day Off

For most artists one’s first solo exhibition is his carefully conceptualized visual statement to a rather complicated contemporary art scene. Like an illustrative shout out, it beams as his coming out party to the world after lurking on group shows after group shows for quite sometime. Countering this usual trend, award winning artist Michael Froilan opts to go reflectively inward this time. Against the artistic tide, he shuns away from political impulses and avoids wallowing deeper into historical occurences. On the other hand, it is form that is his substance, then his statement is his medium. By displaying simplicity of his messages, he is like an old timer with paints.

The direction of Still Moments seeks to surface/resurface what he is capable of creating; how much of himself can Froilan put up with these recent works. Furthering into melancholia by becoming more reflective, he focuses on his real life situations by reflecting empathy as mood, amplifying it with bareness of space and pausing time in a capsule. The brilliance of Froilan lies how he instills solitude of action, as if the viewer arrived too late or even too early to the scene. Injecting the personal he leaves many clues but no specific answers as he forces the viewer to complete the narrative of his story.

Froilan’s interest lies in simple domesticity of things with minimum action, without any signs of mobility. Commencing with his interior spaces hinting the viewers peeking in, they exist in flat planes placed side by side in voyeuristic cutaway dollhouse motif. Froilan uses interior rooms of his mind at his domesticated abode with his family members and close friends as characters.

As a fine arts graduate of EARIST he is a true contrarian--deconstructing proportion, and artistic perspective. His spaces set the appropriate mood while favoring sparse colors that are not too glossy, yet very natural which gives solitary figures to stand out.

Complex

Consider Complex which is Froilan’s intriguing self portrait. The heirarchy of floors discusses the many facets of his existence. At the ground floor is a landscape painting which represents what he painted at an early age to earn his keep as a painter; the second floor are his classical paintings and portraits reflecting his desire to copy the masters; the lion at the third floor is an epitome of aggression, not the angry kind but his eagerness to achieve his dreams. Froilan is the swimmer reflecting the times he wanted to quit life.

Continuing his narration is The Dreamer which dwells in the psychological realm of inner life. For Froilan he does not see himself not an artist. He longs to mixing his paints while holding his brushes up high to convey his images on his canvases.

Another creative tactic is how he allows classical paintings to emphasize the moment. They are either decor or devices that amplify the situations. Ranging from his influences from Johannes Vermeer, James Whistler, Peter Paul Rubens, to Claude Monet with the progression situating from Baroque to impressionism. However it is David Hockney, Edward Hopper, or Rene Magritte that he wants the audience to emphatize with at this ongoing moment. Froilan studies even the circumstance or context of which the master has painted.

The Faithful, The Undecided. The Unbeliever.

Woman in White pays tribute to his wife whom he praises to high heavens for being symbol of strength and resiliency but at the same time exudes purity of the spirit and femininity. In fact she is so strong to be alone in her life, without him on his side. Torn pertains to her dual being as a loving wife yet capable of wholeness, void of affection from the other gender.

Before he took up painting full-time, Froilan and his wife would converse about anything while partaking their favorite wine. When Froilan became in demand as a painter, he saw hiw wife les and less, reasons why she longed for his company. These are evident in the paintings I’ll be Seeing You and In the Presence of Absence where one can almost feel her longing for him. One feels the isolation and being disconnected. In his desire to make up for his loss, Froilan churn these out and let her know his shortcomings making him less guilty in return.

With the presence of flames, Space Between Us evokes tension to viewing audience. The existential complimentary nature of man and woman persists that one cannot survive without the other. As conflicts may arise, as seen in the two stairs on the sides, in the end they mend and reunite to one another. One loves because one needs.

The ongoing Sao Paulo Biennial has discarded well-worn themes and usual revolutionary ideas in guiding their artist-curators on what to exhibit. Rather it prioritizes on feelings and emotional response of viewers in generating attendance in the sixty seven year old world’s second oldest biennial after Venice. Froilan has paralleled his masterpieces with this premise that art must seek emotional response rather than be high brow rhetoric. Art must make you feel foremost.

In music, rests is as important as notes in constructing musical composition. In fact, the silent notes are oftentimes more deafening yet their significance as loud as notes connote. Froilan has painted what seems to be restful in both space and time we are all familiar with. For art is capable of presenting what life is cannot.

In the Presence of Absence

Melvin Culaba: Like a Refrain in a Song

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 10:27:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Ang Konsecia ng Pintor

Unlike most artists who prefer utmost solitude award-winning artist Melvin Culaba listens to the teleradyo while mixing paints on canvas. With an immediate distance from the squalor of Baclaran he is in sync with the goings-on, with the trappings of grime and construction around him. He would witness vendors being rounded up by the civilian police or be mesmerized by the glittering neon lights of recent gambling hotels. That is how affected he is to his subjects, Re-current Themes is his most personal and most political showcase to date.

Culaba is fuming as noticed in the bolder and harsher strokes, each has an emotional intent and moral undertones. He deeply reminisces the milestones of his existence causing him to pause and reflect while holding his palette knives in the context of the interiors of his makeshift studio in their humble home.

Sa Kaharian ng Im-PERYA-L Pukada...GO Bananas!

As seen in these eight paintings we continue to confront the same ills and same struggles of society spanning five presidents. Our socio-political issues just keep on going back and remain unresolved. Our problems are systematically bureaucratic because it is the very system that we continue to inquire point blank.

Interiority Complex (Ang Konsencia sa Pagpipinta) is the centerpiece in triptych involving Culaba himself while in his studio as he steps back in perspective.

Ang Konsencia ng Pintor is his largest attempt at portraying himself as nothing delineates the personal from the social atrocities. Santambak is a beautiful and remarkable chaos in discarded party chairs—an allegorical representation of the current mess we are into. Culaba waxes poetic with Bansang-Moro Buchikiik, ik ik ik where an abandoned motorcycle refers to recent killings of men riding-in-tandem.

Speedy Bagal

Titles no matter how long are important to Culaba as you would get a hint what the point in the painting is he driving at. Sa Kaharian ng Im-PERYA-L Pukada...GO Bananas! features his sister with other Filipinas in a group photos as they once huddled in work in Japan sometime in the 80s as entertainers. A familiar palace defaces as background with the greedy crocodile as its official symbol of corruption marked by gargoyle-like bulldogs posing as pimps offering every kind of patronage.

The oval-shaped Ang Larawan, Kabayan is his ode to beauty, or lack of it, that often has been gravely exploited. Culaba also deals with the 3,000 OFWs who migrate everyday in the hope for a better future abroad.

Dogs have constatly figured in many of his images and they take various meanings depending on their context. In Sa Letrang BBB at DDD (Dig Dig Dig) Culaba uses them as one that searches for the truth as evidenced by their diggings.

A discarded car used to occupy in front of Manila City Hall. Over the course of time rust already took over most of it. Speedy Bagal pertains to our chaotic road worries—our concrete pavements being fixed and being tore down again when the rainy days come. A snail is his postmarked for delayed service.

Ang Larawan, Kabayan

Tipanan ni Undo at Inday sa Luneta....sa Panahong wala pa si Puto-Bomber at si Puta-Shop offers that needed whiff of nostalgia when genteel life was more basic than normal. Back in the day when there were no malls one carefree strolled along Luneta while being photographed at the Rizal statue without the photobomber of a condominium we witness today.

Culaba is old school he still sketches his planned output. Most of his time are in meticulously composing his images before transferring them on canvas. He is painting on the edge meaning he only finalizes them with the wet palette technique when he is as close to his deadline as possible. He usually ends up with earth colors of flesh, gray and brown hues.

Culaba assumes his viewers are abreast to follow his expose in his exhibitions. He has brought back the imagistic language of storytelling in art. His brilliance lies how he intertwines the parallelism of his life with to what is taking place in our society at large in a quintessential visual journal. So far he has been effective and affective on both counts. If one needs to review the past years of our collective lives including his then we can just visit again these eight paintings and weep.

Re-current Themes is Culaba’s 4^thSolo Exhibition for Kaida Contemprary Gallery

Ricky V. Ambagan: On the Shoulder of Giants

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 00:28:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Like the man playing the violin while riding the unicycle on a tightrope he oftentimes depicts in his canvases, Ricky V. Ambagan is at the crossroads of his ongoing career of 18 years as a visual artist and he is aware of it. Too old to waste with paint yet too young to repeat his previous images he has painted in previous exhibitions. In Omaggio, he reminisces fantasy adventures as he honors the discipline of painting from unrecognized Italian painters resulting in new art historical perspectives and directions. As significant as the task of rediscovering memories for Ambagan, he flexes the depths and breadths of his artistic prowess in this creative provocation. Omaggio provides you the playfulness that he longs for and the passion that is still there all along. It leaves you with the feeling of nostalgia, contemplation and elation.

As a child it was his grandfather who was fond of storytelling in the family. Ambagan imbibed his sense of wonder in recalling world war exploits and how they survive living in poverty as they were rebuilding their lives. The tales ingrained much of how Ambagan would visualize scenes as he decided to become an artist since his grade school days. While researching for subject matters in art through the years, as a fine arts student Ambagan was enthralled by how these Italian masters have already advanced mixing three or more paints since the 15^th century onwards; how highly artists commanded each court or community in every rural town of flourishing city. Much of what we learned as iconographies and iconologies emanated from their hands and minds. They classically composed a religious scene to the happenings of the apocalypse to Victorian romantic affair from their own canvases. Until this day much of what they churned out are still being copied by other painters unmindful of them as originator of ideas.

Respecting these bygone masters Ambagan appropriates by building upon on what we have seen they have created. The brilliance of Ambagan is that he slices a chosen masterpiece by employing an element of awe by adding the present as nostalgia on his own. He adopts his grandfather’s narrative trait in delivering these tales that he cannot help but imagine not involving himself for the viewers. More often they could be his younger self with his friends or even his children. Some are cloaked with blanket as a theatrical device he used to do then or they take the form as one of the characters themselves or morphed in detail as the door or carving on the picture. Light is omnipresent, whether from a gas lamp, flying lantern, or a round hint of luminosity peering through from afar as a constant for Ambagan. How he positions them as part of the overall tableau revitalizing a masterpiece within a masterpiece all together is signature for him.

By nature, we are taken on a visual trance as time travelers in Omaggio. From Roman Coliseum to Neverland, Ambagan imbibes the thought that he knows where and how to take us. He even allows us to marvel at architectural details of doors and how artists before took us notice of the places and situations of a well-appointed time. We are not merely in an art gallery but in a palatial museum being transported to the setting of the scenes themselves. Impacting his viewers a kind-of-deja vu that unravels like the paintings have happened to one’s life yet they are only looking at it for the first time. In summation, as he steps on the shoulder of giants, it is Ambagan who is honored himself.

Arel Zambarrano: The Need for Needles

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:39:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

After a decade of art practice, ushering into a new chapter in his life Arel Zambarrano consistently continues from where he left off. For his third exhibition this 32-year old Ilonggo hones deeper into his craft and parlays his imaginative prowess by focusing on himself and in being most personal this time. The kind of act cleanses himself further as in his own words: “to overcome his inner demons.”

Juggling many responsibilities Zambarrano does not have the luxury of time as he had before, as a new father, he now owes to his family their food and shelter and to his community being an architect yet he perceives belonging to a bigger society in humanity as an artist. For him art is not a way to make a living, rather it is a very human way of making life more bearable.

In Unlimited Optimism he renews this commitment and redefines himself more--what artistic path to take, his strengths and inner courage, dwelling more on self-discovery. His greatest ally has been his belief in himself that no one can help you except to be self-reliant to function more effectively and being true to your artistic philosophy.

At an early age when other kids were collectively playing along the seaside of Banate, one would find him drawing on the sand along the shores using a broom stick. The ethereal experience of his visual images being washed away by the waves excited him. At this early, though the living was rough and uncertain then, he wanted to create great structures of imagination and realized to be an artist someday.

Depicting needles on canvas has come a long way since 2007 when these represented all his hard-earned years as a self-supporting student of architecture in college. Needles will eventually connote his struggles, as well as triumphs in life. Being dirt poor didn’t hinder him, it is his belief that we all have needles in our lives, in many forms some too irritating to handle-be it hurdles, thorns, even in being too sensitive. Yet this too shall pass, hope remains for pain is the evidence of life.

How Zambarrano unassailably survived from the pits is like an artistic pilgrimage to him. Allowing his gut and following his footsteps, his art has been autobiographical evoking himself in every painting with resemblance of himself in allegories by constant juxtaposing and careful composition he has constantly mastered. Zambarrano visually records his milestones and journeys through these protracted often surreal images.

Flexible Nerves series are ongoing witnesses to these revelations that occurred in his short and oftentimes topsy-turvy existence. His dragonflies are often constricted by red strings is a metaphor for change as they represent energy and enthusiasm eschewing pessimism and resentment. A venus fly trap is a reminder that everything comes at a particular time and space. Everything in life is enriching and rewarding. The eventuality of the pieces is an almost disruptive, caught-in-the-moment, uneasy depiction to bear. There is an alliterated meaning justifying every happening to his life. Beneath the thick oil paint in the back ground are his inner reflections. The shaft of the needle is a sturdy and blunted straight line encouraging the viewer to be brave under any circumstance. Done in pure oil paint, with no aid of sketch, like a versed prescient storyteller all these pieces have been painted like riddles in his mind before he set out to feature them on canvas. Every Zambarrano piece is rich in allegory as it is often laden with moral values and positive vibes. He has trained us to take long and hard to look and imbibe them.

In the Black Garden with Unlimited Optimism is a fitting centerpiece for its immensity and sheer attention to details. We are overwhelmed by the volume of needles each painted with a special thought in mind. Here art is more of a process. It is more of the evolving ephemerality that ignited him to accomplish this. One can unravel the long and arduous contemplation that underwent while physically rendering it on canvas.

A committed spiritual man, Zambarrano may not be religious yet he was quite affected by the parable of the needle: it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. A bleeding heart evoked at the dead center with its tentacle-like veins being entangled. Somewhat abstract in its portrayal while painting it he felt his aspirations for mankind unfolding. A brutally beautiful scene emerges for us to behold.

Those long slender tips in needles may be subversive for the fear of being pricked, or an unlikely site used in acupuncture for healing or even surgery, yet needles remind him also not to focus on earthly possessions but rather in basic human goodness. As an artist practicing in Iloilo, Zambarrano’s need for needles transcends him, making him cope with the earthbound burdens while at the same time displaying faith, joy and wholeness soaring into the end of his own quagmire. The brilliance of Zambarrano however embodies positivity as he prepares for bigger things to come his way. For him, artists are still highly valuable and constructive individuals in nation-building. Art is a revolting way of coping from life’s constant beatings and persecution. He feels obligated to foster art as his vocation in future.

Unlimited Optimism innately explores the intersection of Zambarrano’s life and his inventive interpretation morphed into relevant art. He is fulfilling himself so that others may be encouraged in attaining their new goals through his paintings. It is a genius solution to an ever bugging problem. Used to this existential routine, he just needs to embody optimism for himself firstly before others--to pay forward kindness and espousing hard-earned repurposed lessons over the years for everyone to get on his side.

Alfredo Esquillo: Passion/Play

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 09:59:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

For the uninitiated Alfredo Esquillo Jr. prefers to be in the peripheries as he favors the folk religious, the pre-colonial indigenous and fresh visual language of the young. Unlike other artists that concern themselves with the personal stuff and the plurality of found objects in CautionaryTales he readily inquires current issues and political events. Before he painterly essays his paintings, this time he abstractly warns his viewers, as he hopes they get his message.

Spending Time on a Chair

Usually after a long respite, it is exacting for Esquillo to venture a big leap in visual style. His impulse is to his impending themes and how aesthetically he could combine imagery—how will it morph—decorate his canvas without being too illustrative and to create new potential meanings. In experimenting with Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA) he rediscovers flatness as a spatial option. Though there are no portraitures in these seven paintings, he graphically exhausts us with anatomy connoting each body part with representations. What is recurring in every Esquillo piece are his staple symbols like megaphones with wings as messenger angels, his prophetic scrolls, and wave-like flames representing eminent danger ever present in our own mortality. Another penchant now is his composition done in earth pastel colors and curvillinear lines in existence.

Eve and Apples

Eve and Apples continues from where an earlier piece entitled Fall of Kolokoy has left off. Esquillo depicts the beauty of women as prey to their own trap leading to their eventual downfall. An inverted Eve is pierced while being suffocated by an overbearing of apples. The scroll which Esquillo uses for his pronouncements is not labeled as it tangles further the woman in question. She is even about to be in a deeper black void of uncertainty. Notice how a more playful Esquillo in transition uses flat frames or framing devices unlike before he would frame his subjects with depth resulting in 3-D perspectives.

A dormant reaction to one’s frustration is Pandora as Esquillo cleverly uses pulleys and gadgets as a creative tactic of expressing blind resignation to the political quagmire we are all into. Covering the subject over his face it is the mechanical interlude that excites the viewer, waiting the next moment to happen. We are all in this submissive stance.

Camouflage is another retort pertaining to the violent Marawi siege in Mindanao. Two limbs representing survival soldier’s instincts humbly occupying the land while they firmly stand in denouncing atrocity. The megaphone with wings is Esquillo’s symbol of homeward angels with trumpets alluding that the Apocalypse is happening already. As it is present in war, instead of music it will be a noise of sermon brought about by hatred and deceit that will be heard.

Esquillo’s process does not use a sketch rather it is mostly titles in mind that dictates his imagery. Before setting everything up on canvas he already knows who and what the main figure is. He then compliments it with minor characters for him to explore further.

Babtism

Another influence for Esquillo are rubber cut Japanese woodcut prints or ukiyo-e which traditionally plays on flatness as foreground background using figuration lines. He translates them into his own version by using the EVA which is more adept to the indigenous materiality to his images highlighting linear lines and decorative features of his paintings.

Allegorically commenting recent moves to revise our constitution thus affecting our history, it was only the head and the clasping claws of the monster that was definite for Esquillo in Memory Eating Eagle. Attempting to oversize it bigger-than-life Esquillo drew up a big brain as it sucks up his victim’s consciousness only to be surprised that the monster’s eyes resemble a trigger of a gun. Accidental parallel occurrences like this pleases Esquillo no end.

More than graphic device, biblical verses as texts concern Esquillo. In Babtism, controversial for him was when Jesus was babtized the Holy Spirit dawn on Him with a translated message as Di Kapayapaan, Kundi Tabak (He came not for Peace but for the Sword). For Esquillo there are many interpretations of truth and the word of God is open to various definitions. One will never be calm unless one understands their application to our lives.

Pandora

The physical depiction of the man’s ribs reveals that God as an idea became man in the flesh. On the other hand, religion which is man’s concept was given a structure, thus, the simplest truths remain to be the most abstract of revelations. Notice how the prevalent maroon backdrop evidences of Esquillo’s Nazareno devotion.

How Esquillo imbibed his father’s talent in deciphering texts from the Bible connoting varied meanings is evident. It is Esquillo’s brilliance how he then applies it with paints. Every combination of words used is complimented with implied goodness, value, and remembrances of his spiritual father.

Interesting how appropriation and free association is reflected in 300 Year-Old Slave. A man is burdened with colonial pillars and through time our weary bodies sag. Emancipation in the form of an erupting volcano parallels as the soil erupts an impending revolution to unravel.

300 Year-Old Slave

Dysfunctional morphing is at its prowess in Spending Time on a Chair. By his lonesome, a man whiles away his time unmindful of ethereal happenings around him. In an almost abstract rendering all Esquillo’s favored elements abound—clouds, flames, potencias,wings, thunders, monster’s ears--while the unwritten scroll wraps around him. A cup slips due to his absence while a cord is unplugged eschewing detachment from reality.

The man’s consciousness floats as he struggles in his spiritual condition between good and evil. As tension in his head overpowers him he is situated in a chair could it be he is deteriorating to oblivion or just apathetic in his confusion?

Esquillo continues to experiment through Cautionary Tales and is consistent to have no definite style, transferring from one period to another yet he goes back to a loop of regulars that binds together all these tendencies. He remains more natural in combining potential imagery, the more freedom to engage the further meanings are suggested. The deeper the political and social underpinnings, the more enamored his design sense becomes and the greater challenge is to simplify its overall aesthetic quality.

When Esquillo was younger he viewed his works to be too old for his age. Now that he is older he continues to aspire that they look younger and more relevant. As he celebrates 25 years as a visual artist this puts the nationalist in Esquillo in a brighter light of significance.

The Two Lives of Justin Nuyda

noreply@blogger.com (jay bautista) — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 10:18:00 +0000

BY JAY BAUTISTA

Justin Nuyda or Tiny to his friends has two lives—one as a lepidopterist and the other as a visual artist. It has been this way as far as he can remember, he says. He does not really know how one influences the other. One thing he is sure of though: one cannot live without the other.

His Winged Beauties

Tiny’s love for butterflies began at an early age. His dad (Hermel) and uncles (Rene, Glenn, Jeciel) were the pioneers in this specialized field of Lepidotera. These men had an intense passion for butterflies.

“My dad, writer Hermenigildo Nuyda, was second of six brothers who all grew up in Bicol in the 40s. They had a garden where butterflies roamed freely. Maganda ang kamalig nuon. They started naming them based on their looks and forms: vampire, forest king, green enchantress, spotty green, cabbage.” However, this fascination was interrupted by the Japanese occupation and then the American liberation.

It was only in 1952 that Nuyda brothers became serious collectors. Their exploration grew from the kamalig to forests, jungles, hills, and mountains. This was the era that the famed (George and Karl) Semper’s butterfly collection seized to be mere description. In 1954, the Nuyda siblings led the way to Mt. Halcon. In 1957-64, Glenn Nuyda ventured further into the Palawan wilderness.

The first generation of Nuydas was joined by a second generation led by Tiny who even today continues to be the most outstanding lepidopterist, even surpassing his father and uncles. Butterfly catching may be a bygone activity but for Tiny then it was what he lived for. He adds: “The earliest butterfly I caught was when I was in grade school. I was 6, I even cried. I pointed it to my father, di ko nahuli but nahuli nya. At 7-8 years, I would tag along, hawak ko yung braso ng tatay ko, baka maiwanan ako sa gubat.”

He continues, “At 12, I was already catching butterflies. I would hear stories from butterfly collectors describing what they could not catch then I would go to the place to look for them. I would even go up when before there were no trails. Kabayo ka, lakad ka. There are certain butterflies that live on certain altitude only. Malaria and other diseases were your enemies.”

In 1957, he ventured alone or with his father-in-law, Colin Threadway, head of Procter & Gamble at that time, who taught him how to describe butterflies. They would eventually go to Mindoro, Palawan and Northern Luzon in the 60s.

It was also at this time that Tiny frequented Mindoro, Palawan and Northern Luzon. In 1968, in a Bukidnon trip with Treadway, they went up 3,000-4,000 feet. They did not know that they were on the slopes of Mt. Kitanglad. It was there that he saw Delias baracasa. The first butterfly named after him was also caught in Mt. Katinglad, the Delias nuydaorum, in 1975, it was named after him by Dr. Schroeder of Senkenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.

Tiny would climb many other mountains in search of butterflies. It was on Mt. Halcon where he caught many sub species and on Mt Banahaw where he found exactly the same butterflies as in Mt Halcon (except for chikkei). He frequented the Babuyan Islands in Camiguin, Calayan Island, and Sibuyan. He believes they are somehow connected because they have the same species of butterflies.

Tiny elevated his study of butterfly into a formal discipline: “In 1993, we formed the FilKulisap society for us to describe our own findings through its scientific journal. Before we did not have the capacity to name species because there was no venue but we had photos and butterfly collectors could testify knew about it,” Tiny proudly recalls.

In 1995, Tiny donated some species and started a comprehensive butterfly farm at the Assumption College, Peace and Care for Earth Ministry (PACEM Eco-Park) in Antipolo, Rizal. Given the cool climate and being a largely secluded space, butterflies breed and freely can roam there. So far, it is the only comprehensive haven where these winged beauties can be fully appreciated.

“I go abroad not because of my art but because of my butterfly collection. I’ve been to the Leiden Museum in Rotterdam and Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt. The Leiden has impressive and extensive collection of tropical butterflies found in the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea,” he mentions.

Tiny has named over a hundred endemic sub species and new species such as Archillides hermelli which he named it after his father in 1992 and the Moduza urdaneta ayni named after his daughter in 1993. There are also many sub species in Mt. Apo. Other butterflies he named are Lexias satrapes hiwaga in 1989, Tajuria igolotiana bonito named after his cousin and Dacalana halconesis after Mt. Halcon, both in 1999. The DENR has prohibited catching butterflies since 2000.

His Waiflike Brushstrokes

“In art, there are unusual colors that just can’t go with each other but they exist in a butterfly,” says Tiny. “For example black and yellow. With a thin line of gray you can put them together. How light to dark is. You can witness that in a butterfly, most colors exist in them already.”

He learned a lot of this from the late National Artist Cesar Legaspi who had a special fondness for him. He used to visit Mang Cesar when he was still in high school: “You cannot go wrong with nature, it is always right,” Mang Cesar would tell him. “He would look for fallen kaimito leaves pin them his canvas, and use them as inspiration for his paintings,” Tiny recalls.

Tiny stood by his own visual language, having favored his own kind of abstraction more than another kind of realism. His abstraction is always met with praises although it is not being categorized. Even Tiny does not know what to call his style: “Before, it was called “surreal” or ‘modern art.’ It’s not abstract because you see landscapes; only good things appear. It is not also conservative because no such thing appears. I stood by my style since my first one-man exhibition in Solidaridad. In fact there are places I go to that remind me that look like a painting not realizing I had already painted it. I would play with gaze. A painting should communicate to a person with the person who wants it.”

The colors of the butterflies influence Tiny’s work: “I have my own choices of colors but a lot of times, I prefer color combinations in butterflies. There are colors that are real but do not look right. He veers towards more natural earth colors, warm side not the bright and luminous.”

Tiny’s first exhibition was held at Solidaridad Galleries in 1968. He was already doing his Search Mindscapes theme. In fact, this is where he met National Artist Benedicto “BenCab” Cabrera who lent him an easel when he was installing.

Tiny’s process is organic; he primes his canvases with as much as seven coatings. He often uses colors that play with the eyes. His colors come backwards and forwards. However, he only uses white for blending and he scrapes it. He adds: “There are some works I started five years ago which I only finished now because I like it better than the last one I did. Even if somebody likes it but if I don’t like it, I don’t give it. An artist must go from one level to the next. If it doesn’t work, change to another level or improve what you have done. When you are doing something, your mind is so focused, unmindful of the wrong. I would ask the opinion of other artists.”

Tiny was a founding member and closely associated with the Saturday Group. He narrates: “It all started in 1968 when HR Ocampo bumped into writer Alfredo Roces in Ermita one Friday. Fond of banana split ice cream, he invited him for a snack at the Taza de Oro along UN Avenue. They both enjoyed the camaraderie that they agreed to meet with other artists the next Saturday on the same place and Saturdays thereon.”

Tiny would join them on the third Saturday for the next ten years. This was a loose organization that would attract an entire generation of artists. Some of these eventually became National Artists HR Ocampo, Cesar Legaspi, Vicente Manansala, Ang Kiukok, Jose Joya, and Benedicto Cabrera. Other artists like Federico Alcuaz and Juvenal Sanso (whenever in town), Mauro Malang Santos, Ed Castrillo, Onib Olmedo, and Sym Mendoza. Even writers Rod Paras-Perez and Leo Benesa.

“You can be a member if you attend twice. Younger artists mingled with older artists. Initially, there was no president. Ocampo was just the spokesman. Everybody, no matter, how young had a say. I was their pet being the youngest of the founding members. They were in their late 40s, I was in my 20s. So mga bata pa rin sila,” he gleefully reminisces.

They would have nude sketching, out of town trips and annual exhibitions. They went to the studio of Botong Francisco in Angono at one time. To this day, most of his lifelong friends were from this artistic bunch.

There has been a resurgence of young and old collectors buying his works however Nuyda laments how young artists could be more expensive than National Artists. In the galleries, they can’t sell it at that price. He plans to have a black and white plus one color show soon for his future mindscapes.

For his butterflies, he would like to write many subspecies in the FilKulisap journal as there have been no big news in the last ten years. And there’s that long overdue Philippine Butterfly book. Eventually I would like to donate all my holotype first caught to a worthy museum for every Filipino to view and marvel at.

Like his butterflies, Tiny is the last of his species. Like his paintings, his life is a masterpiece-in-progress.