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 18th 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.
