The High Profile of Philippine Sculpture
The High Profile of Philippine Sculpture
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, September 24, 1986
LONG before the Filipino had ever heard of painting, the creation of sculpture was already deeply engrained in his life and culture. Indeed, nearly everything we own by birthright betrays a natural propensity for building, modeling and carving in general — from the anito of the North to the sarimanok of Maguindanao, from rice terraces to vintas, from earthen jars and handcrafted personal ornaments, to grass huts, daggers and jeepneys.
But for all its elegant posturing — or probably because of it — the current exhibition of ten contemporary Filipino sculptors at the Manila Garden Hotel is by no means an unusually exciting or memorable event, straddling the thin line, as it were, between sober and sedate. The sculptural idiom here is polite and competent, pared to an almost painful wholesomeness, well-heeled and well-polished. If anything, what we are confronted with in this show is local sculpture’s “contemporary heritage”, a historical pedigree force-fed by the excitement of the 70’s, and sometimes also known as “Philippine Sculpture according to Duldulao.”
Certainly, no one can argue with the skilled implement of God that is Edgar Doctor. Beyond a doubt, Doctor leads this pack right down to his Moroccan finish, excelling in all departments except one. His use of spring coils in his literally statuesque “Don Quixote , 86”, and of cast-iron faucets in “Water Giver No. 1” are delightfully imaginative, indicating a terse wit that is very nearly cynical. But Doctor sometimes lacks the fire of his welding tools, working with assembly-line precision on a one-to-one basis with his mental blueprints, building figurative ships in bottles. If he were a dentist, he would surely do wonderful bridgework. For Edgar Doctor can amaze the most discriminating among us whenever he cares to, and in this exhibition, he almost succeeds.
The triumph of wit is even more winning in the works “Hiroshima” by Mrs. Virginia Ty-Navarro, and “My Wife Doing Calesthenics”, by Jerry Ty-Navarro, Jr. In Mrs. Navarro’s structural umbrella of bone fragments held aloft by slender trusses, is the sobering nightmare of giant mushrooms and the devastation they inflict, providing some future owner with a personal desktop fallout to beat the fear of Oppenheimer into him. On the other hand, Jerry Navarro’s trilogy of lithe and agile forms engaged in strenuous exercise are neurotically funny under the circumstances, and are lovingly acrid conjurements of a typical middle-aged husband. (That these two works are personal favorites of mine owes itself largely to their titles’ literary implications, although I am not certain how significant a role semantics should play in an objective overview of contemporary sculpture).
In a nutshell, the other works on display can be described in summary, for quite honestly we have seen them before. The works by Dr. Antonio Raymundo are like those of skilled amateurs, but are disarming precisely because of this. Antonio Ramboyong haplessly ventures between Jean Arp and Billy Abueva in three small whitings that are much too tentative and uninspired for serious consideration. Ramon G. Orlina's chunky glass pieces are like bogus kryptonite on display at a science fair, and do little to substantiate his recent excursions into the world of public relations. Fred Baldemor’s "Noynoy" looks ironically like Bongbong Marcos, while his heroic slabs of folklore are much too saccharine and melodramatic in their effort to move and impress the viewer. Francisco Verano should find a good matte finish for his "acri-weld" creations. And Conrado Mercado’s three elaborate gridwork constructions are highly successful pieces that would probably benefit from more airspace.
Reynaldo Paz Contreras is the most puzzling of the artists on parade, or at least the most difficult to place in the right perspective. Contreras is a sculptor rooted in handicrafts, which in turn is rooted in our productive mainstream — an artist caught in a delicate balance between mass-produced Ifugao bric-a-brac and our true ancestral roots. Looking very much like tribal trophies, the distinction between art and tourist-curio is deliberately obscured in his work, inviting debate between indigenous and inane. His fetishistic use of organic remnants and handwoven fabric are dangerously seductive, but the polish on his molave pieces are straight out of Tesoro’s. Contreras is either the most significant or the least significant of the ten sculptors presented here, and those who wish to settle the argument for themselves should go to see a more comprehensive exhibition of his work now on view at Rustan's in Makati.
It is heartening to know that recent events have restored the art of sculpture to its rightful place at the forefront of our creative consciousness, perhaps ending, once and for all, the decades-long drought that has relegated this artform to the ignominious role of an also-ran. But this current exhibition, dubbed "RATED 10" is by no means the sum total of our sculptural potential, and is at best a glimpse into the inner workings of present-day Pinoy artworld politics. How terribly disturbing that in an area of concern as underpopulated as Philippine Sculpture, there should be very nearly as many factions as there are practitioners! And in the end, the exclusivity of groups such as this one, could very well be their own undoing.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “The High Profile of Philippine Sculpture” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, September 24, 1986
