An Artist Larger Than Life
An Artist Larger Than Life
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, January 31, 1987
IT took a modest exhibition of Ray Albano’s prints at the Finale Art File in Makati to remind me that the 27th of January was his 40th birthday. For those who thought of Ray primarily as a visual arts administrator at the CCP during his short lifetime, that bit of trivia should inspire little more than a fleeting tinge of nostalgia. But for those of us who were fortunate enough to have had him for a friend, the memory of Ray’s passing should serve to identify that lingering void in our midst.
More importantly than administrator or friend, however, Ray Albano was quite possibly the most infectious creative figure in recent Philippine Art. Misunderstood virtually to his dying day, Ray had a sense of mission that was almost akin to parentage. Under his wing not a few creative toilers — artistic standouts that might otherwise have succumbed to the oppressive stranglehold of a feeble art market — were allowed to persist and develop into maturity at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. It is easy to regret all too quickly that other talents worthy of his attention were never showered with the same care that Ray “lavished on his brood”, but it is likewise important to note that the enlightened new management at the CCP has thus far been unable to forge its way beyond ground previously paved by Albano.
Even in life, Ray’s legendary (if at times controversial) role as CCP Curator had virtually eclipsed his other creative talents. For instance, not very many people are aware of Albano’s consummate artistry as painter, photographer, printmaker, critic and poet. In the visual arts, primarily, this persistent oversight is tragic. For the trails he blazed on canvas and paper, in print and in the galleries and presses, were lightyears ahead of his contemporaries. Much of his seemingly-erratic produce, puzzling in its day, are only now beginning to emerge in the light of the staggering implications foretold by the work. Ray’s growing preoccupation with the physical fracturing of the picture-plane even now provides fertile ground for the birth of the new local abstraction. His penchant for readymade imagery, unmistakeably rooted in narrative, anticipated the current excitement for work of that nature. His abiding belief in installations and siteworks inspired, more than virtually anyone or anything else, the quick assimilation of those visual devices into our creative consciousness. And his uncompromising faith in an art of indigenous local origin aided in its emergence as a major creative trend in our time.
Of Ray Albano the occasional poet, the literary heavyweight Alfredo Navarro Salanga has only praise, surmising in earnest that “he could have been, undoubtedly, a major voice” in Philippine letters. That would have made Ray blush.
True giants in local art have been few and far between. Given the perspective he deserves and the test of time, Ray Albano — so diminutive and so easily underrated in life — may yet, in death, emerge among them.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “An Artist Larger Than Life” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, January 31, 1987
