Tag Archives: arteng biswal

kultura

Art thinks highly of itself in “The Death of Death”

A version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 19 2010, in the Arts and Books section.

There was nothing exciting about the façade of the space where “The Death of Death (is alive and kicking”) (SM Art Center, 4th FL, SM Megamall) was being exhibited. On one side was a black tarp with the list of participating artists, on the other was a cartoon-like rendition of a skull. Between the dark colors and skull, this told me not to expect much, which directly contradicts curator Igan D’ Bayan’s “non-curatorial statement.” I began reading the note after I had slept on this exhibit longer than I would any other, still not finding some crux from which to begin analysis. The curatorial note, while no god, might give me a sense of the project’s notions of itself, a good starting point for understanding the exhibit. Of course sometimes, as with “The Death of Death”, the curatorial note fails as well.

No limitations equal clichés

There were too many skulls for one thing, and this wouldn’t have been a problem if these renderings didn’t look like things we’ve seen in popular culture before. Kiko Escora’s “Bungi” was funny with its hot pink background and its rendering of a skull with missing teeth, but it’s something we’ve seen in the local comedy films before.  D’ Bayan’s “Armageddon Boogie”, the steel installation that greets you when you enter the space, also looks like something you’ve seen and killed in video games before. (more…)

kultura

art on fire!

Not literally of course. Though it’s entirely possible that had the venue allowed it at least one of the 10 Most Exciting Young Artists chosen by Inquirer Lifestyle and Nokia would’ve used fire as a real live element, or burned down an artwork altogether. Which of course defeats the purpose of selling art, but then again, that doesn’t seem to be the point for many of the works here.

Winner Jumalon’s “Shady Tree”, an installation of a life-size resin sculpture of a fallen tree trunk seems simple enough, except that the tree’s crown is created by a bunch of framed black and white photographs spread sporadically on the floor, including one frame placed on the panel saved for Jumalon’s work.

Buen Calubayan’s “My Virgin Mama” meanwhile seems like a traditional looking Virgin Mary from afar, but up-close it becomes apparent that it’s a merging of the faces of the latter and Jesus Christ. Across it is stated, “Diyos dapat ito kaya lang maling medium talaga ang painting e”.  This canvas is submerged in water – which on opening night also had one live fish floating, and pieces of toothpick that Calubayan himself had thrown in for some good “Art is no God!” measure. Not far from this installation is a bottle filled with crumpled canvas in white liquid: trashed art it is!

Art buyers must have asked: how do we even begin to imagine owning this work? But maybe here lies the fire of much of the work in this exhibit: it’s an “Up Yours!” to anyone who expected easier art. There is happily none of that here.

Kiri Dalena’s three installations include “Found Figure 2”, a terra cotta sculpture of a pregnant woman on a tub of water and lilies, alongside a wooden bed filled with the same. Not far from this installation is a digital video loop entitled “Floodwaters”, of how waters rose in Pakil Laguna. These three pieces are a haunting paean to the flood’s aftermath, an imagination of what it is that remains true, without exoticizing the bodies it has rendered defenseless.

Mark Salvatus’ “Crowd”, a mixed media installation of steel birds in various forms of flight and fluorescent lights, is a statement on migration with disregard for destination. It is placed on the floor by an unpainted wooden wall that screams “Cultural Production” in huge black letters, a statement as well on the kind of copying that goes on in the kinds of cultural products we create, even when our main products are our people.

Farley del Rosario’s “Bridged” is a daring take on how communication just might be our downfall. Two miniature clay figures speak through tin cans tied by one string in front of del Rosario’s canvas, in which is his standard figure, surrounded by miniature versions of itself. All of them are bound by the lines that symbolize communication, but instead of tin cans these lines connect mouths and ears in various dimensions and colors. The seeming mess of lines and thoughts, and the way they are intertwined isn’t at all a simplistic view of bridging communication. We are already bridged because we cannot remove ourselves from this mess, this noise, these conversations.

Dina Gadia’s “Bad Art for Bad People” is a rendering of a woman in a leopard print bikini riding and about to slay a tiger. This was obviously a statement on the notions of popular art as bad art, and of bad art being for bad people. It is as well a statement on how what is bad is really intertwined with stereotypical judgments of women, and what she cannot be.

Lindslee’s abstract works stand out not just because it is amidst realism, but because its three dimensional aspect is crazy creative. “Paradox” and “Under Appreciated” appear on two sides of the same wall, bound together by two triangular beams, that seem to protrude from both works. The geometric lines and shapes of the works, its bright crazy colors, vis a vis blank spaces of white and gray, are strangely familiar in their being forgotten. Or just mis-/un-understood.

But the most fire and daring here comes from curator Jay Pacena and his vision for the exhibit. Pacena’s installations on the first floor of the exhibit area become more interesting after opening night, as the square beams in various sizes and positions seem to be installed into the floor, growing out of and into each other. These shapes are used as well on the panels reserved for each artwork, with protrusions of smaller beams unsystematically placed on its sides.

The installation of the 10 artists’ works are interactive and connected, obviously not in terms of form or content, but in terms of an energy that allows for the eyes to travel across various artworks at any given time, from any given standpoint. The panels are spaced apart, allowing for a line of vision to a piece of art by someone else’s hands. So  you stand by Jumalon’s work and see Gadia’s, Lindslee’s, Kawayan de Guia’s, and Dalena’s; you stand between Clairlyn Uy’s two panels, and see del Rosario’s clay installation, and a wee bit of Lindslee.

The possibilities of seeing things differently become endless, the experience of art as interactive happens beyond the artworks and into the curator’s head: what he imagines about this exhibit, where he wants to take you. Having done so much here, it would be most interesting – and exciting! – to see, what it is Pacena and these 10 artists can do with fire.

kultura

Finding Juan

a version of this was published in The Philippine Daily Inquirer on May 24 2009.

Projects that deal with the creation of a Filipino identity are always bound to be met by debate and objections, violent reactions and a lot of hair-pulling. And rightfully so. At a time when we are being told that Manny Pacquiao is our sense of identity, we must be able to kick and scream our way towards a better sense of who we are.

The “Looking for Juan Outdoor Banner Project” of the Center for Art, New Ventures and Sustainable Development (CANVAS), seems to be a step in the right direction. Asking artists to create works that respond to the question of Filipino identity, the first batch of paintings on exhibit at the Cultural Center of the Philippines is telling of the individual minds of our young contemporary artists. Collectively, it is everything and indicative of where we are as a nation.

On that hot evening of the exhibit’s opening night, the slew of paintings hanging on the second floor lobby walls of the CCP was surprisingly refreshing. The youthfulness was difficult to ignore, owing literally to the bright optimistic colors across the canvasses. Even when a given canvass dealt with dark hues, there seemed to be something light and agreeable about the general look of the string of paintings in front of me.

It could have been the familiarity of it all as well. From afar, the amalgamation of images of being Pinoy (the jeepney, the Filipino child, a person sweeping, people smiling into camera phones) couldn’t help but be heartwarming. But too, it was almost a warning: the concern for identity after all is an overdone concern of the arts, visual and otherwise, and as such it does quite often become cliché.

As some of the works on exhibit are, falling into the trap of using overdone stereotypes of the Filipino. The Pinoy as unique in our ability to smile in the midst of pain (Galos Lang by Jeff Carnay) and oppression due to unjust laws (Juan Line by Dansoy Coquilla), to walk to the beat of our own drum (Hataw sa Traffic Light by Marcial Pontillas), and to rise above adversity given our heroic history (Like Our Heroes, We Will Rise by Anthony Palo). The realism that the first three work with don’t leave much for interpretation – a function as well of its being cliché – while the latter is strangely enough a representation of people flying with and on a hot air balloon, an image that connotes social class mobility. Is this to say who can become hero?

Many others, while dealing with realistic images of poverty, corruption and oppression, end up talking about the universal notions of environmentalism (Juanderful World? by Anna de Leon), unity (Maybe we are the pieces… by Jay Pacena II), personal struggle (Sarisari Storm by Maan de Loyola), determination (The Rise of Juan Tamad by Lotsu Manes), and hope (The Traveller by Palma Tayona). Understandably, it is these pieces as well that have more to say on the canvas.

Pacena’s piece in particular screams against the oppression of information, with a blindfolded image up-close, mouth filled with three-dimensional puzzle pieces. With eyes unseen and face half-covered, this was a statement on every Juan and Juana: you are being defined by too much, even as you remain unknown. Meanwhile, the Filipinos’ need for travel and movement is in Tayona’s work, showing an oversized figure carrying wooden children and lifted off ground by two hands. It is a statement on the enterprise of selling laborers’ bodies across the globe.

The clichés notwithstanding, a lot of thinking obviously went into many of the artworks. This was particularly true for the more politically charged ones, those that spoke of the true conditions of nation, and dealt with it head-on. There was the truth of poverty and how it understandably sacrifices hope (Juan Luma by Migs Villanueva), the contemporary Filipinization of what is foreign and how this hybrid identity is problematic in its abstraction (Hybrid Nation by Jucar Raquepo), the static state of the nation as potential never fulfilled (Penoy by Manny Garibay). Expectedly, the latter two paintings used a pastiche of images (popular culture and our unfulfilled, respectively).

But it is the flair for the revolutionary that is striking about this exhibit. The works “Byaheng Maynila” by Omi Reyes, “Aklas… Baklas… Lakas… Bukas!” by Marika Constantino, “Panata” by Salvador Ching, and “Pinoy Big Brother” by Buen Abrigo are priceless not just in its imagery but also in its call to action. Reyes’ close-up image of a jeep seems cliché, but up close its movement challenges the audience to an engagement: where are you going and why? The value of this question is true as well for Ching’s use of a Filipino everyman doingthe Catholic devotees’ sacrifice of flagellation. This man though is facing a bright red moon, his bare back bloodied – the Juan is himself the sacrifice, as he is the one facing the possibility of revolt with the red red moon. And while the image of two arms clasping each other in Constantino’s work could seem cliché as well, its flowing red background connotes the rage and revolt that seem all possible.

But it is Abrigo who outdoes them all, creating the image of contemporary times as transnational neo-colonial: an unstable building and tower is filled with everything commercial that permeates our everyday lives; figures beneath these structures, are that of a masked GMA/Imelda, a two-faced man in shadows, and a zombie-like creature with laser eyes. All of these are contextualized in the dark neglected buildings in the background – a telling sign of how the capitalist enterprise silences the nation. The eeriness reeks of injustice and murder, and this is precisely what works for “Pinoy Big Brother”. Because too, it highlights the need for change, the need to end the oppression that capital brings. Hooray for the revolution!

If only for Abrigo’s as well as Reyes’ and Ching’s works, and in the context of the highly debatable concepts of nation and identity, the “Looking For Juan” exhibit is everything and a must-see.