Less is More

Ramona Rivera

‘Less is more’ seems to be the new mantra of the former frontman of the psychedelic punk band Poppy Field, Jet Melencio. He studied at the UP College of Fine Arts in the early 90s and has created a hybrid body of work that combines paintings, objects, installations and floor works made out of various incongruous materials. Also a curator, he has worked for the Ayala Museum and was a key artist at Big Sky Mind, where he led a barrage of collaborations between artists and musicians in a series of Soundlab projects. Back in Manila after several years in the US and Canada, he has shed much of his excess fur and his new works are leaner and more elemental than ever.

We saw his work earlier this year at The Unnamable group exhibition curated by Roberto Chabet at Manila Contemporary. Entitled ‘Swan Dive’, it is a deceivingly simple photograph of a makeshift and flimsy diving board perilously perched on the edge of a cliff, which later on is revealed to be the actual site of the infamous Jabidah Massacre in Corregidor.

In The Clear Light, a tightly curated group exhibition also by Mr. Chabet currently ongoing at MO_Space, Mr. Melencio returned to the basic technique of frottage or surface rubbings to map the gallery’s floor and installed the drawings on top of tables, each one with one leg shorter, creating an uneven and rocky terrain. Appropriately called ‘The First Bardo’, the work refers to “the first stage of death when one momentarily enjoys a perfect balance before descending to the lower states. It alludes not only to the tremulous quality of the surface/image but also to the instability of the human consciousness.”

Mr. Melencio’s installation occupies the entire floor of the gallery and is the perfect roost for the works of his two fellow dharma bums in the exhibition. In the small room within the gallery, Jed Escueta’s black and white photographs of drug-induced heavenly visions also speak of the same tremors that yield to a kind of little death or a light-awareness, which descends as soon as we partake of the holy smoke.

Sharing the main room with Mr. Melencio, Pardo de Leon’s new works are uncharacteristic for the artist known for her exquisite figurative paintings using vivid colors. This time she uses only white, still applied thickly, but sandwiched between two canvasses, so we only see the back of the painting, raw canvas and stretcher. Her other work, the skeletal frame of a kayak suspended from the ceiling of the gallery is likewise an abstraction and an affirmation of the material. Entitled Eftya (The Clear Light), it is a device similarly used in Zen theatre, which employs minimal gestures and props to create the faintest suggestion.

Speaking of theatre, Ballet Philippines’ most recent presentation Crisostomo Ibarra just had its first run at the Cultural Center of the Philippines last weekend. Under the direction of Paul Morales, it was an excellent abridged version of the epic tale, a minimalist take on an otherwise dense melodrama. Jet Melencio designed the sets and costumes and again brings his pared down sensibility in The Clear Light to the production, allowing for a harmonious equilibrium between the other elements in the show – the movement of the dancers, the lights, and an impressive original musical score.

Like the exhibition, Mr. Melencio’s design for Crisostomo Ibarra uses an economy of means – black and white costumes (except for the brown cloaks of Padre Damaso and Padre Salvi), a few simple props and a blank movable Japanese – type screen that serves as the only backdrop. The only thing that seemed a bit excessive in the whole production were the video projections, which could have been edited down further, and instead of appearing as a constant element on the stage, it would have been interesting if they were only projected during particular scenes, the rest could have been pure light or darkness.

The move towards simplicity is refreshing amid all the noise, controversies and frenetic energy in today’s art scene. Caught up with so much spectacle and speculation, many artists are embroiled in their own horror vaccui. Illumination may still be far away, but at least there are some glimmers of a clear light, an exit in times of emergencies.

(‘The Clear Light’ is ongoing at MO_Space until October 31, 2010.)

Cube: A Review in 4 Easy Sentences

Ramona Rivera

1. Another cube / box group exhibition, how square is that?
2. Cube is not a group show but a single work, an installation by the artist-curator, Nilo Ilarde.
3. The works of the other artists should be not be seen or represented as individual pieces, but as part of a larger whole.
4. Roberto Chabet has unpacked his work, out of which came generations of Filipino artists whom he encouraged to think outside the box; they should naturally question the premise of this exhibition.

‘Cube’ is ongoing at Finale Art File’s Tall Gallery until September 27, 2010.

Lena Cobangbang & Bea Camacho: Sisters?

Ramona Rivera

Two exhibitions, which opened on the same day within walking distance from one another may be perceived as a kind of twinning or a sister act. Lena Cobangbang’s Velvet Landing at MO_Space is a spread of carpets and installations that spillover from her earlier solo presentation at Finale, Crater Valley Plateau. As with her previous work, Ms. Cobangbang creates fantastic, illusory and mocking landscapes and environments using various everyday domestic materials, projects that she likens to ‘failed scientific experiments’. For this exhibition, she lays down the carpet as a stage for her comedy of errors – a panther is scorched and skinned, a clown is hit by lightning, mushrooms and stalagmites are growing, a plane crashes at night. We may fall flat on our faces, but at least it’s a soft landing.

Bea Camacho’s Standard Fiction at nearby Pablo Fort likewise works with domesticity and other controlled and simulated environments. She adds another chapter to her long-running familial narrative with her new works that aim to reconstruct memories, images and spaces of her old family home, which has now been gutted down and stripped bare for renovation. She admits the works are inadequate, an abstraction, a translation, removed from the real, a fiction. A chandelier made of wood hangs light-less and low. Images of bare walls scarred with the shadows of what used to hang on them are imprinted on neatly folded sheets. A swatch of carpet tries to remember its original color with the help of a pantone strip.

Ms. Cobangbang and Ms. Camacho’s practices overlap in many ways. Both deconstruct situations, objects and images from their personal space – either the studio or the home to create fictionalized identities, contexts and settings. Both are informed by design and sign-making; Ms. Cobangbang works as a freelance production designer, mostly for music videos and Ms. Camacho used to work as a corporate design consultant. Both of them have interests in architecture and spatial relationships, evidenced by their use of installation, objects and other props. Both are also susceptible to traditional ‘women’s work’ – crochet, embroidery and other crafty leisure activities to while away or measure time. You can even almost imagine them sister-like, threading different ends of the same quilt.

Seeing their two exhibitions side by side however, it is clear that there is a palpable divide between them when it comes to the aesthetics, values and production of their work. Trained at the UP College of Fine Arts, Ms. Cobangbang, in keeping with the 90s DIY attitude, prefers handmade, raw and messy one-offs. Nevermind if they are a tad too grungy and will most likely break apart as soon as you bring them home; that is all part of the work. Several years younger than Ms. Cobangbang, the Harvard educated Ms. Camacho, in contrast, works with white gloves and there is almost a business-like detachment with the way she approaches and represents her subjects no matter how personal they are. Sleek, machine-made editions that are so conveniently well-framed and wall-bound.

Would it be safe to say that this is largely due to a generational shift? They say art history can be simply put as a pendulum that swings back and forth. And if these two exhibitions are of any indication, where can we be now? One thing for certain, Ms. Cobangbang and Ms. Camacho are far from being even half-sisters. The thread is basically never long enough to finish the quilt, so it might be best to just leave it all in shreds.

(Lena Cobangbang’s ‘Velvet Landing’ is ongoing at MO_Space until September 26, 2010 and Bea Camacho’s ‘Standard Fiction’ at Pablo Fort until October 9, 2010)

Jayson Oliveria: Fuck You Over There

Ramona Rivera

Jayson Oliveria’s New Works on Paper Here, Fuck You Over There, flips the bird at conventional expectations while actually succeeding in what a painting exhibition should be.  The show which opened last August 18 at Mag:net Columns looks like an exploded artist’s sketchpad; or windblown detritus collecting at the juncture of a busy intersection in a tangled web of paint, spit and paper.

Mr. Oliveria studied Painting  at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in the 1990s and since then has been consistently reconfiguring it and turning it upside down. His earlier works experimented with abstraction, minimal color and rawness of material. In recent years, he shifted to a more expressionistic type of figuration, which he sometimes sabotages even before its done – a gesture not far from destroying a piece of evidence before someone else can get hold of it.

In this new exhibition, fairly large oils on canvas paper and sprawling collage installations are a lazy fit on the gallery’s tightly configured wall spaces and floors emphasizing the “no-problem”atic and self-contradictory nature of the exhibit itself.  The main body of works are called “Demotivational Posters”  the first of which hangs, or should I say, is crammed onto a wall roughly half its size; it’s edges curling up against a glass wall on one side and projecting into space on the other.  The word “FIAL?”(FAIL) is misspelled in bold red letters across the top establishing the thread of cleverly circular absurdist humor prevalent throughout the exhibition.  The “poster” presents the perfect slogan for the failed- so much so that it fails to even declare failure and ends with a question mark.  However, by succeeding in aptly portraying the absurdities of  failure, the work itself ultimately fails to fail and has the last laugh.

Most of the images used in the exhibition; randomly found or mined from the internet quagmire, some even twice or thrice regurgitated – are disposable salvagings from the recycle bin of  public consciousness and have little value or connection beyond their service as vehicles for the act of painting.  The works universally evoke the casual ease and detachment of sketches.  Paper itself, medium as well as ground is used to full expression-in the form of misprints, found photographs and clippings. Crumpled, cut, painted, collaged and sculpted into horn or phallus, it is painting and paper. There is no concept; it is all about delivery.

(Jayson Oliveria’s “New Works on Paper Here, Fuck You Over There” is ongoing at Mag:net Columns until September 18, 2010)

Vic Balanon & Ferdz Valencia: All in a Hard Day’s Work

Ramona Rivera

Its sometimes interesting to wonder about what artists do during the day. Artists are often seen as nocturnal creatures, who only come out of their studios or houses starting at 6 pm when galleries usually have their openings. A typical day for an artist might be something like this: wake up, recover from last night’s work and/or hangover, eat something, start working, text, email, check facebook, look for materials, do something with it, break for a drink with other artists and friends who suddenly drop by, go to an opening, more drinks, more artists and friends, more art…

Many artists, unfortunately, cannot live on their art alone. Like everyone else, they have day jobs to sustain themselves and their art. On top of the usual things than an artist does, they have do all kinds of work – teach, write, curate, run galleries and spaces, do production design, advertising, graphics, commercial photography, shoot weddings and music videos, give workshops to kids, landscape gardens, anything, just to get by. After hours, cigarette breaks and fleeting moments throughout the day are for art, if not actually for making, but at least for thinking about it.

Artists Vic Balanon and Ferdz Valencia both work in graphic design, illustration and animation during the day. They have a common interest in underground culture, skateboards, death metal, independent film, and comic book publications. They both studied at the University of the East, majoring in Fine Arts and at the Mowelfund Film Institute, where they first collaborated on a 35 mm film animation project called Terminus in 1999. The same year they also participated in the annual group exhibition, Dog Show at Surrounded By Water in Angono, showing drawings and other works on paper. They also had a collaborative exhibition entitled Failure of a Modern Man in 2005 and participated in the group show Conflict Resolutions organized by artists Lena Cobangbang and Jayson Oliveria in 2006 at another critical but now sadly defunct alternative artist – run space Future Prospects at Cubao Expo, way before it became a hip and popular weekend destination.

Their most recent collaboration called The Crocogator at Green Papaya Art Projects, one of the few remaining alternative artist – run spaces in Manila, is a continuation of their long – standing interest in impromptu, guerrilla work: drawings directly on the gallery’s wall, temporary installations and assemblages using scraps and found material. For two weeks, they went to work and transformed Green Papaya’s front area into an open studio. Anybody who passed by can watch the two artists as they go about their job. They didn’t really have a plan about what to do; they just maximized the time, space and readily available resources to create their work. In the end, the products and remnants of their two – week collaboration was shown together with an animated video that documented their process, and a performance by sound artists Erick Calilan and Roger Lopez.

Mr. Balanon and Mr. Valencia’s The Crocogator is the first part of a new program called The Ephemera of Disposable Goods organized by Lian Ladia, Green Papaya’s new resident curator for this season, July – December 2010. Ms. Ladia is an artist herself and co-founder of the Filipino – American art collective Kwatro Kwantos and has organized various exhibitions in San Francisco, Oakland and Manila. Now she is based in town, where apart from Green Papaya, she also works as Silvana Diaz’ new assistant at Galleria Duemila. For her project at Green Papaya, she aims to present a series of collaborations, bringing together artists of “similar or dissimilar genres investigating social sculptural projects based on context of time/place, relational works and encounters and to make available to them Green Papaya’s space and bar hours as a facility where artists and public can engage in discussions and debates as the artist go through their process of constructions and deconstructions every session.”

Green Papaya is back on track after a tumultuous period of domestic squabbles and other issues. Norberto Roldan, Green Papaya’s founder, at one point announced that he would close the space after his very public separation from his former partner. Then he decided to keep it open and maintain the space as a bar. Now it seems like Mr. Roldan has found a more stable working relationship with Ms. Ladia, whose new program is reminiscent of the early alternative projects of artists at Surrounded By Water, Big Sky Mind and Future Prospects. Relational aesthetics was not yet a catch phrase then. Artists just did their work on their own terms, free from the expectations and limitations of commercial galleries and institutions. And often at the end of each working day, especially if there was an opening, they would gather, have too many cold beers and toast to the next round.

(Ferdz Valencia and Vic Balanon’s’ The Crocogator’ was presented at Green Papaya from July 28 – August 14, 2010. It is part of ‘The Ephemera of Disposable Goods’, an ongoing program by guest artist – curator Lian Ladia until December 2010.)

(Photos courtesy of Albert Ascona)

Poklong Anading: Things Washed Up Along The Shore

Ramona Rivera

He must be out surfing, for he is now rarely seen around Cubao, his stomping ground for almost ten years. Yes, for the moment, Poklong, the artist turned surfer has found a different wave to ride. Where is it taking him?

Mr. Anading, a two-time Ateneo Art Awardee and recipient of the 2006 CCP 13 Artist Award, studied at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts under the legendary artist and professor Roberto Chabet. Along with his contemporaries like Manny Migriño, Kaloy Olavides and Ernest Concepcion, they formed a group called the Boboists whose manifesto called for meaningless art, echoing Walter de Maria’s famous call in 1960.

In his most recent solo exhibition at Pablo Fort, There’s Money in Spending, Mr. Anading is seemingly wanting to search for meaning in life’s many contradictions and ironies – strange alchemies like plastic and gold. An electric fan is installed on the floor and attached to it are plastic bags splattered with gold paint – whirling around to remind us that it has not lost its breath, unlike the plastic hooded faces he photographed, like convicts waiting to be executed. Their crime? Shopping.

Mr. Anading hates the idea of shopping, but he is one big consumer who at one point amassed piles and piles of molded plastic packaging, which he cast in resin and turned into hand – grips and footholds for a wall for climbing at the Finale Art File Inaugural in 2008 and in the most recent Jakarta Biennale. He hates the idea of accumulation and suffocation, yet for art he collected the dust that layered in his studio on 18^th Avenue, when it was still Big Sky Mind. For art, he will walk the extra mile, like he did with his clunky wooden circle and pencil from CCP to Quezon City and beyond.

But now at Pablo, he is stuck with the plastic bag. Upstairs, on opposing corners, are two light boxes with images of more plastic hooded figures, one in red, the other blue. A silenced conversation, a failed collaboration or a lovers’ confrontation? Whatever it is, it remains unresolved.

Just above the short flight of stairs, Mr. Anading installed another lingering shadow of a previous investigation with fluorescent light. Before he attempted to seal light in concrete, now he allows some light to seep through. The carved letters, which read ‘mind your head’ seem absurd since it is hung so low, like a fragile swing.

These are the endless loops and questions that Mr. Anading’s works bring forth. Their beauty lies in their capacity to engage us into questioning, without ever really seeking any definite answers. Because maybe even the artist himself, doesn’t know, yet he seeks it. He continues to mine these mundane everyday things, maybe they will turn into art one day.

Poklong Anading’s ‘There’s Money in Spending’ is ongoing at Pablo Fort until August 22, 2010.

Gaston Damag and Gotz Arndt: Back to Back

Ramona Rivera

Painting may be dead in major art capitals in Europe and America, but it is well and alive in Asia, particularly in the Philippines, where the scene is dominated by ever-younger generations of highly – prolific artists and their likewise young and eager to buy yet mostly conservative new breed of art collectors. At the recently concluded Manila Art Fair, which gathered over 50 galleries from all over the country, it was obviously clear that painting is the main preferred commodity. Nearly every booth was filled to the brim with canvasses, mostly gleaming with well – rendered figures in oil. The image is not far from the early day Salons in Europe at the turn of the last century. Except perhaps for the fashion and the music to remind you that you are in Manila 2010; nothing much has changed at all.

Sculpture, on the other hand, has always been on the sidelines. There are fewer sculptors compared to painters, as many are deterred by the demands of a practice that is more difficult to sustain and turn into a profitable enterprise lest one is lucky to receive grand commissions or is content to reproduce small table – top decorations. Sculpture asks for so much more, and is so much more, beyond the appreciation of an audience more easily drawn to familiar painted images and illustrations rather than a more encompassing awareness of the poetry of actual objects and material in space.

Outside the usual orbit of commercial art galleries, two ongoing exhibitions at the Jorge B. Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman and at MO_Space in Bonifacio High Street provide Manila audiences with a rare opportunity to see new sculptures by Gaston Damag and Götz Ardnt, two artists who have long called Paris as their home. Despite coming from two entirely different traditions, their work intersects in a shared investigation of material culture, whether ethnographic, modern or urban, as a touchstone for contemporary sculpture.

Gaston Damag was born in Banaue, Ifugao in 1964, to a family long immersed in traditional sculpture and woodcarving. After his studies at the UP College of Fine Arts in Diliman, he left the Philippines for France where he has been living for the last two decades.  He took up further studies at the renown Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and has created a body of work that integrates ethnographic symbols and images culled from his Ifugao roots with modern and industrial processes, materials and contexts.

Götz Ardnt, a German artist born in Calw in 1962, also studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, finishing his studies in 1994. He continues to teach there, specializing in stone and wood – cutting. His concerns are grounded on contextualized sculptural interventions, the physicality of his material and how these affect our perception of space.  He has created a number of works situated in public spaces, exploring the history and specificity of each site.

In conjunction with their recent residency at the University of the Philippines, both artists unveiled last June 29, 2010 two new outdoor works created especially for the lush grounds of the Vargas Museum. Mr. Damag’s “L’Envie De Faire L’Amour” is a grove of Ifugao handcarved pestles held together with metal rods and erected into a clearing in a garden beside the museum. Surrounded by towering old trees, the sexually – charged installation is a familiar juxtaposition of nature with a phallic – centered culture. Mr. Arndt’s work “Kidlat”, overlooking the remains of National Artist for Sculpture Napoleon Abueva’s former foundry, is a concrete plinth upon which blue painted steel rods jut out in dialogue with the what is left of the old foundry – Abueva’s unfinished and abandoned projects mostly also in concrete and metal. While the two works thoughtfully considered their location, they were short of being arresting enough to stand apart from their expanse and weight of their surroundings.

“Ah-hud” and “am.pm,” their other exhibition that opened shortly after at MO_Space was more successful in showing the combined strength of their material and the beauty of their form. The more confined space of the gallery provides a better frame for their sculptures that effortlessly blend into one another. Mr. Damag’s “Ah-hud” extends his current interest on the pestle and the repetitious acts of pounding and heaving. His video shows a tight shot of his bare torso, its rise and fall in unison with the throb of the pestle as he continuously pounds and chants. Laid on the floor of the gallery’s main exhibition space, is a giant pestle carved from the entire trunks of a pair of mango trees. Cut into parts, the segments are installed with only a few inches in between, creating gaps that echo the pauses in between the body’s rhythmic pulsation and primal utterances. Mr. Arndt’s “am.pm” likewise follows similar trajectories as his work at Vargas. Without the burden of Abueva’s monoliths in the background however, his work at MO achieves a more transcendental quality, a stark lightness evoked through the use of iron rods appended with thin white fluorescent tubes that gracefully bounce off from various points across the gallery space.

The pairing of Mr. Damag’s and Mr. Arndt’s works illuminate and evoke issues that remain pressing in sculpture, such as the choice and transformation of material, the juncture between site and sense, the complex of tangential references and uncertain relations, and all the gaps and discrepancies that mark contemporary practice.

Gaston Damag and Gotz Arndt’s works will be on view on the grounds of the Jorge B. Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines, Diliman until December 2010, and at MO_Space, 3^rd Fl. MOs Design Building, Bonifacio High Street, Taguig until August 22, 2010.

(Photos courtesy of the author, Jorge B. Vargas Museum and MO_Space.)