The Osmotic Zaballero
The Osmotic Zaballero
by Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: San Juan [The Liberated Bimonthly Magazine of Art], October 1986
“Celebration”
PHYLLIS ZABALLERO AT THE CCP MAIN GALLERY
If there is one thing about the painter Phyllis Zaballero that comes through loud and clear in her recent exhibition at the CCP Main Gallery, it is her contagious energy. Few contemporary painters of the third generation can match Zaballero’s dynamism and vigor, characteristics that are readily apparent in her obvious predilection for large-scale paintings of immense power and bravado.
But if there is yet another aspect of Zaballero that comes to light in this most recent outing, it is the enormous impact of external influences on her work. The list is long and approximates a significant cross-section of generational hierarchies in Philippine Abstraction: Zobel, Aguinaldo, Joya, Chabet, Albano, Nuyda, Lao Lianben and Albor, Sotto. These and others have been assimilated by Ms. Zaballero in varying degrees of prominence, devoured and not entirely digested through a stylized osmosis that picks at will like a marauding hun, unmindful of territorial concessions.
Merely as examples, her investigative “CASABLANCA SERIES” has more than genetic affinities to the irrepressibly playful work of the late Ray Albano, while her striking “FENESTRA SERIES” of works on paper are literally enlargements of a graphic theme virtually exhausted by the ambivalent Robert Chabet in the 70’s. Zaballero’s “PURDAH SERIES”, truly among her most striking works on display, straddle Aguinaldo, Lao and Albano in turn. And majority of her very best canvases — such as “CASEMENTS & MEMORIES 1”, “TRYST RED 1” and “TRYST BLUE 1”, “THRESHOLDS STUDIO 1” and “CASEMENTS STUDIO 1”, “SUBTERFUGE BROWN 1” and “SUBTERFUGE BLACK 1” — unmistakably trace the filtration of generational influences from Aguinaldo to Albor, Nuyda, Sotto and their subsequent derivatives.
That osmosis itself is an integral imperative to conventional artistic development is beyond argument. Aguinaldo and Chabet, probably Ms. Zaballero’s most obvious sources in her semi-objectie pieces, are themselves mutational offshoots of recent American painting, characterized primarily by the work of Pollock, Albers, Motherwell, Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Johns and Rauschenberg, Twombly, Allen, Kounellis, and a host of others that mark the migration of East Coast Abstract Expressionism to the post-abstractionist millieu of Pop, Conceptual Art, and the quasi-industrial “L.A. School”.
Phyllis Zaballero now emerges at the receiving end of these variegated influences, albeit distilled to some extent by contemporary orientalia, and geographically colored by her assimilation of sub-influences within a local context. It is this latter factor that represents a small but considerable departure from the work of her immediate predecessors — a deviation that can only be applauded, for distancing of any sort is better than none at all.
Doubtless, influences will always abound in a healthy creative atmosphere, providing both springboard and counterweight to motivate and undermine an artist’s rapid development. In many instances, the external influences manifested in one’s own work is a matter of subliminal compulsion rather than an intellectual prerogative, and this could well be the case in some of Zaballero’s more passionate articulations.
To be sure, many artists of her generation have turned their receptors toward influences other than the North American and European models. Most notably, the painter Pacita Abad has assimilated southsea, african, and central american artforms into her work with the appetite of a sponge — turning out impressive work that is more difficult to trace but is equally derivative. Likewise, an entire generation of creative toilers bent on exploring their indigenous roots now derive their sources from local motifs and popular artforms, an equally osmotic process despite their noble intentions. It is clear that the point in this case is not one’s faithfulness to one’s influences, but rather, the choice of influences that one consciously assimilates.
Has the osmotic Ms. Zaballero surrendered herself to the right influences. Personally, I think not. But the artist has brought the painting of the west a shade closer to home, and that, at least, is cause for celebration.
(Rewritten for San Juan from the original review for The Manila Times.)
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “The Osmotic Zaballero” (page 1 of 1), San Juan The Liberated Bimonthly Magazine of Art, October 1986
