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.)

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)

Nona Garcia: After the Flood

Ramona Rivera

Nona Garcia’s latest body of work, currently on exhibit at West Gallery, brings up waves of unpleasant memories. Entitled Fractures, the exhibition follows the heels of her solo presentation Synonyms at Finale Art File last May, and continues to ponder on her already familiar repertoire of domesticity, disasters and leftovers.

Fractures is composed of three different sets of works, each one occupying a room in the gallery. In the first room is “Above Water” a suite of twelve black and white photographs of interiors of abandoned houses in various states of deluge and disarray after the disastrous typhoon Ondoy. The images, culled from the internet, were meticulously cut and layered using the paper tole technique, adding a crafty, diorama-like three-dimensionality to the work. Framed under non-reflective glass, with individual spotlights, they entice the viewer to come up close and inspect each minute detail. It marks a new direction for the artist, well-known for her photo-realistic paintings. Rather than treating the photograph as a mere study for a painting, she takes it a bit further and utilizes it as an object, to be dissected and assembled, as if reconstructing the evidence of a tragedy we all wish did not transpire.

In the second room, Ms. Garcia returns to a previous method of negating presences and harking back memories. In her earlier works, she often juxtaposed photo-realistic paintings of wrapped objects with their x-ray versions, in order to heighten our perception of their absence. This time in “A Series of Fractures”, she presents x-rays mounted on lightboxes of random scavenged damaged objects.  The already degraded goods – a typewriter, a fork, a tin can, an umbrella, and others – become almost abstract and unrecognizable.

The last segment of the exhibition, “One –off”, a series of nearly – identical paintings of a single crumbled ball of paper, is a departure from the Ondoy/disaster theme, but clearly epitomizes the core of Ms. Garcia’s art. Here she tests her limits in photorealism and attempts to repeat the same mundane image four-fold as if she herself has become a camera capable of multiple frames per shot. She fails to make them exactly the same, thank goodness, for she is human after all.

A graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, Ms. Garcia studied under the Filipino conceptual artist, curator and professor Roberto Chabet. She adds a touch of conceptualism into her work, a kind of observant distance that opens up space for the artist to inject enigma and multiple meanings into her otherwise straightforward manner of painting.

Ms. Garcia has yet to define her current preoccupation with heavy and intricately carved frames, but somehow they seem to complement her manner of painting, with its rapt attention to detail, perfection and aspiration to grandness.  In this exhibition, disasters, tragedies and accidents are not mended or resolved, but are elevated into the realm of myths.

Nona Garcia’s Fractures is ongoing at West Gallery until August 14, 2010.