On exhibit at the CCP: Reality According to Artists
On exhibit at the CCP:
Reality According to Artists
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, July 29, 1987
ART and reality are paradoxically linked. On the one hand, all art springs from the reality of human experience. And on the other hand, both quantities are at once irreconcilable.
Consider that if reality is truth, then its reproduction in graphic terms can only be a lie — being, at best, a counterfeit reality. And consequently, the more “realistic” the art, the greater its deception.
How do our artists perceive or relate to reality? The 18-man invitational exhibit organized by the CCP — and aptly entitled “Reality According to Artists: Drawings” — is some indication.
To many artists, reality resides precisely in the real world of people, places and events. Fernando Sena’s “Tondo Scene” is a watercolor barong-barong whose departure from the model is at best stylistic. Brenda Fajardo juxtaposes her patented, re-styled tarot cards with hand-drawn images of social unrest, suggesting the role played by fate in the determination of the final outcome. Jose Tence Ruiz presents a pen-and-ink drawing of a maimed countryside warrior with automatic rifles for crutches, ironically entitled “Footnote to a Ceasefire”. (See photo) Rhoda Recto exhibits an idyllic pencil-sketch of common folk waiting for a bus by the roadside, reminiscent of grammar-book “Pepe & Pilar”) illustrations. Evelyn Collantes isolates symbolic elements from life — broken clothes-hangers, heavy orthopedic shoes and leg braces — to convey her concern for the plight of disabled children. And Mario Parial’s 1987 mixed-media painting “Kaysarap ng Maging Malaya” is a quizzical throw-back to the celebrational mood of the February Revolution, replete with muse, doves in flight, and vintage press clippings.
To others, a distinctly separate reality resides in the pursuit of personal mythologies. Romulo Olazo is represented by an untitled abstract with emerging curvilinear forms. Santiago Bose exhibits exotic, reworked hieroglyphics of Hollywood-on-the-Nile extraction, done on singed handmade paper. Virgilio Alviado has drawn bug-headed humanoids in an alchemist’s shop presiding over a hysterical clutter of severed anatomical spareparts. Fernando Modesto reaffirms his role as moral pollutant-at-large with a flying squadron of ding-a-lings hovering over an enormous pair of puckered lips that are poised to strike. Arnel Agawin’s subliminal erotica endears itself with precious insight, as two lovers with spiked faces kiss in a bittersweet exchange of pleasure and pain (See photo). And Nestor Vinluan’s careless scribble of a dissected head looks almost obscene when viewed in this company.
The mind in art can be either delightful of infuriating, and all the more so when engaged in the investigation of reality. Benjie Cabangis exposes the rear supports of a reversed translucent artwork on glass and tracing paper. Aca Versoza exhibits an immaculate white surface on which a tiny triangle has been drawn. Roberto Feleo has an annotated pencil study of a work in progress, asserting the reality of creativity before the fact. Roberto Chabet’s “Tailor Tatlin Goes to a Communist party” is the superimposition of a satin-black image* on a larger expanse of black vinyl. Huge Bartolome similarly toys with poetics, objectified in a cramped corner installation. And one shameless participant, best unnamed, attempts to pass off the work of Delacroix and Manet as his very own.
In fact, while it is undoubtedly worth a few laughs, very little is actually resolved in this exhibit regarding the perception and representation of reality by visual artists. And this failure may be due, at least in part, to the general evasiveness of its participants. Apparently, the existing norm for our “thinking” artists is never so much to address themselves to curatorial queries as to find ways of circumventing them.
But there are some encouraging results, and that is more than enough reason to justify the expansion of this series into a more comprehensive study of the theme in focus. That many of the artists featured in this show resort to hairbrained double-think is in itself a healthy sign. It proves that an increasing number of our visual toilers — at least when faced with a thematic challenge such as this — can and actually do use their heads. The quality of their logic is beside the point. It is important to remember that the facility with semantics and common sense has never been crucial to the success of the visual arts, despite what Duchamp and the devil might have to say. In art, as in so much of life, ignorance is often bliss. And the ultimate reality is in the doing.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “On exhibit at the CCP: Reality According to Artists” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, July 29, 1987
