Abstraction with a difference
Abstraction with a difference
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, May 02, 1987
IT has become increasingly rare for our young artists to take up the cause of Abstract Painting. Far too strong is the lure of other gods, some of them not entirely our own. Our Realism, in particular, has come full-circle, at least some of its resurgent energy induced by the New Expressionism that has taken the contemporary art of the West by storm. And closer to home, much of our current interest has been taken up by a spirit of introspection and socio-political activism.
On view until May 15 at the main exhibition hall of Kulay-Diwa Galleries is the collection entitled "Kalburo't Uling", the first one-man show by young abstractionist Sid Hildawa, Jr. Part of an ongoing series of activities focusing on new potential, it could not have come at a better time.
In the first place, our attention of late has been drawn to the autonomous nature of "Young Art" in general, what with the recent spate of media fanfare celebrating the inventiveness of the inexperienced. And also, Hildawa has only recently emerged in the public eye by virtue of his unprecedented triumph in an on-the-spot painting competition in April, sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs for the purpose of selecting a delegation of young artists to the ASEAN meet in Singapore. (See this section, April 29)
Hildawa is an architect by training and profession, and his educational background in structural dynamics serves him in good stead through works that persistently attempt radical departures from the conventional picture-plane. The artist presents his latest series of ephemera paintings in direct relation to the surrounding gallery area, exploring time and space in a stroboscopic continuum, or boldly extending beyond his paintings' surfaces with the use of hinged panels that hang obliquely from their original points of origin. The resulting installation is a moveable feast of visual sumersaults that tests our traditional predispositions to the limit, both delighting and cajoling us into a reassessment of our own innate reading-skills in keeping with the surprisingly elastic qualities of real (vis-a-vis illusory) space.
To be sure, there are a number of finer points that this young artist has yet to work out for himself — not the least of which is his present inability to adequately penetrate the restraining surface of walls and canvases, resulting in a great deal of front-line acrobatics for its own sake. There is very little give-and-take here between positive and negative space, and while much of the work generously extends beyond the pictorial surface, it hardly allows us a stab at receding vision. Likewise, not all of Hildawa's well-worked canvases are as receptive to his structural interplays as they should be, nor as luminous their own as we might expect.
Nonetheless, Sid Hildawa, Jr. is certainly a new talent who bears close watching, an intelligent and aggressive young abstractionist whose obvious potential is difficult to overestimate. His "Kalburo't Uling" is clearly representative of a new wave in local abstraction that has yet to develop into its full potential, but which, in time, may yet restore public interest in non-representational artforms.
* * *
Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Abstraction with a difference” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, May 02, 1987
