Immobility: Its Joys and Perils
Immobility: Its Joys and Perils
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, September 13, 1986
"NOTHING Ventured, Nothing Gained" could well be the title of Romulo Olazo's recent exhibition of his latest works at the Luz Gallery in Makati. To be sure, Olazo has painted these very same configurations again and again through the years like some sort of calisthenic zen, unmindful of the changing world around him. This tireless reworking of subliminal form and color, truly approaches a ritualistic indefatigability that must be honed on unwavering faith, if not entirely made in heaven, lest the art and the artist both have succumbed to malnutrition long before now. For Olazo persists, and on occasion, continues to delight. And this in itself is incredible, even as the magic wears thin.
Olazo is celebrated in more than one artistic camp as a contemporary master, and in many others as an artist on the threshold of attaining that status. Indeed, Olazo is a master of the variation. It is no small task to juggle about an austere vocabulary of gestural and figurative bravado and make it almost always settle into "different" pictures. Olazo appears to go on indefinitely, and with hardly an effort. But then again, is this really all that difficult once you've mastered the ins and outs to a language of your own invention? Is not every signature on your checkbook a little different from the one that came before it? Are signatures art?
Undoubtedly, some artists have beautiful signatures. Their patrons see only their signatures, and never their pictures. How richly these artists and their patrons deserve one another!
As for Romulo Olazo, three questions inevitably come to mind. Will this artist bravely defy his exceptional mastery of means and thereby transcend the precarious status of a young master? Will he fall prey to the signature game as others have done before him? Will his language go the way of Latin and its swinely versions?
There are masters who court time and masters who court danger. What a wonderfully exciting artist a painter of Olazo's calibre would be if he would only court danger.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Immobility: Its Joys and Perils” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, September 13, 1986
