Artist Argie Bandoy opens a new window in his new collection “A discourse on bad taste and

guilty pleasures”. He creates a perspective wherein the image and signification are far from each other.

He positions them where one can never meet the other – where recall and memory cannot in any way act

as bridge to bring them closer, together.

Travel in a dimension where images are independent of meaning – where memory, recall and

nostalgia do not lead to resonance and wonder. It is where the association between the image and meaning

are blurred and broken. It is where the painting can no more and no less be read as is – a field of lines and

colors.

The exhibit runs from 5 March to 25 March 2010 at NOVA Gallery, Warehouse 10A, La Fuerza

Compound, 2241 Don Chino Roces Ave., Makati City.

For more information call 392-7797 or send an electronic mail to gallerynova@gmail.com

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It is not surprising that the terms we use to denote elements of play are the same words we use for aesthetics. Balance, poise, tension, contrast, and variation come into mind. In this exhibition, the archaic imagery of the bul’ol, the cultural icon of our primeval past is used to recreate a feeling of spontaneity- another shared attribute of play and art. The post-modern bul’ol figure now detached from its role as a ritual accessory- is relieved of its soot-black serenity. Playful poses supplant the rigidity of the venerated icon, rendered in colors associated with fun and the contemporary.

Using Huizinga’s treatise on the play elements of culture, the artist threads the fine line between creating playthings and creating play elements. A collection of mobile inter-active sculptures scattered on the floor, iconic figureheads and a hagabi make up an installation that is distinct in its playfulness without losing the aura of an aesthetic space. Play is depicted as fun and agonistic at the same time: a “tight-rope” performance, a balancing act, an archaic ritual indispensable for real life. It is with regret that contemporary man has lost most of this ritual and sacred play, worn out with too much sophistication. Art as play, and not play as art, accomplishes itself outside and above the necessities and seriousness of everyday life.

In this sphere of sacred play, the child and the poet are at home with the savage. Subject matter is ordinary life, ordinary people doing ordinary things. Mothers playing with sons, fathers playing with daughters; expectant mother heavy with child, the neighborhood drunk heavy with his beer gut; people in toil, people in leisure. In this play area, the imperfect world and the confusion of life is rendered limited perfection, albeit temporary.

Between ritual and play, we grapple with the problem posed by non-initiates in their quest for what they view as authentic elements of culture. Rituals become performances for non-local audiences; art become mere trinkets for adornment- the finer nuances of play no longer a factor by which the society is civilized. Sacred play is forever lost in reflexivity due to continuous modifications brought about by social experiences with other societies.

Artinformal is at 277 Connecticut St. Greenhills East, Mandaluyong. For inquiries: Telefax 63(2) 7258518 or visit www.artinformal.com.

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Drawing on the bitterest, rawest experiences of alienation,
frustration and loss, Janet Balbarona deconstructs and lays bare her
most intimate, pivotal moments in a series of surrealist
self-portraits that are at once tense and thick with emotion, and yet
tempered with a strong sense of self-consciousness and conspicuous
calm. Balbarona effectively creates this complex, uneasy tension in
the stark contrasts between the immediate illusion afforded by the
bright, fanciful colors and general dream-like interweaving of images,
and then the more sinister allusions evident in each individual icon
and in the artist’s sober depictions of herself.

The paintings in “Peeling Peaches for the Sharpest Tongue” continue on
the autobiographical narrative arc of her first solo show, jumping off
from her departure from Manila for Beijing. As she recounts in a kind
of visual allegory the bittersweet failings and disappointments of her
“second round” or second chance at life in a completely foreign city,
her works reveal an increasing withdrawal into a kind of isolation.
One of the most emotionally-charged paintings, “Dear…,” conveys a kind
of loneliness, despite the presence of another, underscored by a clock
reading four in the morning and a dagger pointed up at the artist’s
fingertips.

As a whole, however, the idea of loneliness and isolation is most
obvious in the fact that whereas the artist would once typically
portray people around her with a sentimental detailing of faces and
fashions, now she remains the only solid inhabitant of her world, with
a small handful of attachments that are allowed a vivid, if merely
temporary existence alongside her.

Much of Balbarona’s work still relies on the set of highly specific
iconography, which both draws on each item’s accepted contexts and
metaphors in popular culture, as well as the artist’s own set of
meanings. The key image in this show, the ubiquitous peaches, takes on
the erotic implications of the fruit to convey love, lust, and pain,
but also employs the artist’s connection to China, where peaches are a
frequent, inexpensive commodity. With regard to the latter meaning,
the artist creates a very telling contrast between fresh peaches in
the anchor piece of her show, “The Second Round” (also notably the
only painting that employs imagery from her previous show), and
rotten, bleeding peaches throughout the rest of the series. Notably,
just as she tackles themes and situations that are at once uniquely
hers and yet are ultimately understandable as fundamental human
experiences, Balbarona employs very personal symbolism that is also
accessible enough for viewers—clocks, pressure gauges, candy canes,
daggers, and online communication icons—which encourages discovery of
one’s own stories within the fantastical structure of each piece.

Finally, for Balbarona, “Peeling Peaches for the Sharpest Tongue” does
not have a “formal” conclusion. She explicitly states that the
concluding piece, “Ricochet Part 2,” in which the artist depicts
herself as struck by several arrows save for the one that she is able
to catch mid-air, imparts neither tragedy nor redemption, neither
closure nor catharsis, only indetermination and an open end.
Confronted with the context of her own life as depicted in her art,
she offers an open ending and the possibility of continuation at the
end of the show, subtly emphasizing the fact that this is an
inescapable reality for her, which we, as spectators, merely glance
at, comment on, or observe quietly, before walking away.

-Yonina Chan

The exhibit opens on Monday 6PM, February 22, 2010 at Blanc Gallery
Makati. Blanc is located at Crown Tower, 107 H.V. dela Costa St.,
Salcedo Village, Makati City.  For more information, please call or
sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit
www.blanc.ph, www.blancartspace.multiply.com

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Charlie Co

As in a novel that introduces a story to its reader, “Chair Chronicles” opens up a narrative to its audience. Artist Charlie Co utilizes media he has already been known for to extract images out of the most basic item within the home – the chair. It articulates a universal situation where man is in a meditative yet egotistic moment, with his naked desires and selfish interests flourishing only when he comes into contact with no one else but himself. These works appeal to the audience as they are periods in life as chapters are to a novel.

Artist Charlie Co draws the curtain on 2010 to present “Chair Chronicles”. A chair, basic and plain as it may seem, re-enacts a story as in a stage presentation. It relates the theatrical chaos, dramatic confusion, and spectacular insanity found in the diverse personalities of characters. It supposes the perplexity that becomes of the person out of the entwined roles and occurrences as the narrative of life goes on. The exhibit runs from 29 January to 26 February 2010 at NOVA Gallery, Warehouse 10A, La Fuerza Compound, 2241 Don Chino Roces Ave., Makati City. For more information call 392-7797 or send an electronic mail to

gallerynova@gmail.com

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Iggy Rodriguez was named by the Cultural Center of the Philippines as
Thirteen Artists Awardee in 2009. His art studies began as an
advertising major at UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts. Known
for his pen-and-ink drawings and the collaborative street art he
undertakes with the artists’ collective UGATLahi, Rodriguez crafts his
imagings from his own milieu and calling as community organizer and
activist. He is also a core member of TutoK.

The exhibit opens on Tuesday 6PM, November 10 at Blanc Compound
Mandaluyong. Blanc is located at 359 Shaw Boulevard Interior, Addition
Hills, Mandaluyong City. For more information, please call or sms
752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph and
www.blancartspace.multiply.com

KIMI IMIK will run until November 30, 2009 and is co-produced by
slash/art artists’ initiatives.

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