At CCP main gallery: ‘Banaag’: Philippine Art Today
At CCP main gallery:
‘Banaag’: Philippine Art Today
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, February 15, 1989
A MUCH-AWAITED, year-long “Festival of the Arts” debuts at CCP’s Contemporary Art Museum with the relatively large group exhibition Banaag: Currents in Philippine Visual Arts. A virtual weatherman’s barometer, it was obviously intended to bring together a great many Filipino artists of all inclinations—painters, sculptors and printmakers whose work, when viewed collectively, would afford us a glimpse of the breadth, width and potential of art in this country.
The exhibit, which opened Friday at the CCP Main Gallery, succeeds because of its inherent color and vitality, adequately representing a number of significant “directions” in work as diverse as fingerprints in possibilities proferred. But the exhibit also fails because the artworld’s participation is disappointingly small and inconsequential: not all tendencies are represented, and those that are defined and charted are not necessarily brought into focus by their leading exponents. A credible “quorum”, as it were, is sadly missing from what had been eagerly anticipated as a comprehensive survey.
It would have been nice, for instance, to have seen what artists like Lee Aguinaldo, Onib Olmedo or Tam Austria are doing now, given the great discrepancy in Philippine painting and the exhibit’s professed purpose of an up-to-date assessment. As it is, we see specks of Philippine Art in 1989 … and are left to imagine the rest.
However, the telltale signs, where they show like ladies’ slips, should interest both the curious and the concerned. As overview, Banaag may be one lame duck. But it certainly is fun.
We could spend hours debating, for example, if the so-called “New Representation” is not in fact already dead, devoured by abstraction’s revenge and the spreading virus of Pinoy neo-ethnic (or “indigenous”) art. In truth, there are enough unintelligible strokes and slashes, as well as enough devilish brown things like boars’ teeth and bamboo, to suggest epidemic waves of non-representational art and studio voodoo.
Which is probably for the best, considering that most of the young bravura painters who form the backbone for this “new movement” of monumentality and flourish (including personal favorites Stella Rojas, Francesca Enriquez, Pardo de Leon and Isabel Limpe) are like shy wet mice in this show of small-scale works (maximum size: 2 x 2 feet), betraying what many already felt was a total dependence on enormous dimensions.
Still, not everyone in that fraternal order of billboard specialists had their legs pulled out from under them by the drastic reduction in size; Popo San Pascual and R.M. de Leon succeed quite admirably in this exhibit with deft humor and clever paint-handling, showing a virtuosity for brushwork that eludes the wrist and taxes the biceps.
The rational abstractionists and near-abstractionists, on the other hand, show brilliance in this format. Marciano Galang’s Absolute Painting is one of the most inspired works to come out of Philippine Art in recent years, magical in its ability to emote from a small, slender strip of coarse lumber. Lao Lianben’s new-found inventiveness elevates his meditative work to unprecedented heights. Mario Parial continues to confound his audience with his stylistic ambivalence, but is nevertheless remarkable for managing to excite with well-worn textural cliches. And Roy Veneracion is likeable enough, if dangerously effeminate in pastel hues.
Phillip Victor abandons his squeaky-clean refrigerator paintings for one of the most delightfully polite installations that I have ever seen, a clockwork piece alive with planar ambiguity and assertive natural forms. Angelito David and Rafael Cusí show impeccable mastery of means. Jun Domingo’s oceanographic sampler transcends conventional solutions to the inflexible grid, and is noteworthy for its controlled use of vibrant pigments. Aca Versoza literally soars in an iridescent fling with brilliance! And the great satirist Virgilio Aviado springs in ambush after years of pictorial self-abuse.
The exhibit succeeds because of its inherent color and vitality, representing significant ‘directions’ in diverse work, but also fails because participation is disappointingly small, inconsequential.
The apostles of the fetishistic do almost as well. The ever-inventive Genara Banzon’s guillotinelike construction of suspended counterweights is like an archaic native contraption that defies both function and mechanical logic. Gerry Leonardo is actually convincing as a significant young talent, creating a percolating polymer selfish enmeshed in a nest of mythical dreams and curious charms. Sandra Torrijos shows teeth in a plaster and wire bust that, surprisingly, could be the most exciting freestanding sculpture in the exhibit. And the box-artist Roberto Robles is intriguing, funny and unusually inspired in an installational wallscape/ fire-escape.
Alan Rivera’s conceptual monument to his late mother, the writer Estrella Alfon, is somewhat oversized and overweight, but it succeeds in substantiating (and architectonizing) a scented memory. Raymond Maliwat, though bordering Bose and art nouveau, emerges as a new talent of genuine worth. Anthony Maculangan shows exceptional promise with the simplest of means. And although it will probably pain him to be mentioned in this company, printmaker-turned-painter Fil Delacruz achieves distinction in his Wood Nymph series and puts his early detractors (including this critic) to shame.
If the Social Realists are alive, the better ones must conscientiously be in hiding. Fortunately, Pablo Baens Santos is a one-man triumph with a precious little canvas untainted by his habitual sloganeering, a work of great sensitivity and compassion. Edgar Fernandez continues to do battle with his problematic figuration, but his passionate fervor and political poetics are both apparent and thriving.
Other notable works include those of Benjie Cabangis, Rey Paz Contreras, Lilia Lao, Belinda Caguia, Petite Calaguas, Julie Lluch Dalena, Brenda Fajardo, Ige Ramos, and even the very persistent Raul Piedra.
But while some rise to the occasion, others bite the dust with emphasis. Agnes Arellano totally squanders whatever talent she has in a mess of driftwood on which is “carved” the heads and hooves of wild stallions—a rather squat, hefty, organic Rorschach that isn’t even macabre or obscene. (Incidentally, where is Michaelangelo Adams, a standout in last year’s CCP Annual?)
Edson Armenta plummets to an all-time low with a grossly mundane skeletal structure embellished with barbecue sticks and garbage, a sad stab at sculptor Junyee. And Al Perez’s elementary nude sketch is unbelievably disgusting, easily the worst piece in the entire show. If at all, the value to such work is in reminding us that our art continues to labor under the weight of irredeemably bad produce perfumed by an inordinate amount of media hype, and that bad art, like bad wine, profits little from ageing.
Banaag is on view until May 5, a shadow of that elusive spirit called Philippine Art. Its very shape excites and stimulates, even in profile.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “At CCP main gallery: ‘Banaag’: Philippine Art Today” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, February 15, 1989
