Art Towards The Grand
Art Towards The Grand
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: Philippine Graphic Magazine, September 23, 1991
Two heads are better than one. Twelve heads are even better, and twenty better still. In the realm of the arts, the laws of addition and multiplication are starting to apply—and they are yielding dividends:
Collaborations, multigallery exhibits, festivals, extravaganzas of every manner and stripe casually rooted in the wholesale mixing of artistic disciplines—the bigger, the better—and audiences have been lapping it up.
The troupe mentality is all the rage as painters, poets, dancers, musicians, performance artists and filmmakers continue to churn out collaborative stews that are delighting art aficionados, and renewing public interest in the arts at a most difficult time.
In a seeming conflict of intentions, visual artists are spreading themselves thin for the sake of grandeur, assembling into brat-packs, showing in several galleries at once or exhibiting ambitious bodies of work in series. This overwhelming tendency toward the grandiose sharply contrasts the zen-like minimalism that characterized artistic attitudes of the last two decades, a time now clearly in the past when understatement and a paring down of elements were emulated.
A quick look at the cultural pages will suffice. Jeannie Javelosa, an aggressive young abstractionist who doubles as an art writer and museum administrator, has coined the term “relay exhibitions” to qualify her Triadic Movements, an ongoing series of high-profile art shows in three Manila galleries in as many months. “The three Malangs”—art master Mauro and his sons Soler and Steve Santos—have themselves come out with an unusual display of firepower, occupying separate venues at the same time at the labyrinthian Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).
Art In Progress: The Cocoon, a quasi-experimental effort at the rejuvenated Kanlungan s Sining gallery at the Luneta, attempts to bring together artists of diverse disciplines and persuasions (including painters Inma Ortoll, Jose Legaspi, Elmer Borlongan, Alan Rivera, Andy Maluche and Mark Justiniani, printmakers Fil Delacruz and Ariane Guilbaut, indigenous sculptor Hermisanto, photographer Nap Jamir II, composer Orville Tiamson, videographer Mike Archivido, and choreographer Hazel Sabas) in a virtual orgy of media multiplicity. At the Ayala Museum
Are we experiencing a renaissance of sorts, or are these the spastic seizures of a dying horse?
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Art Towards The Grand” (page 1 of 1), Philippine Graphic Magazine, September 23, 1991
