Jojo Legaspi and His Drawings

Jose Legaspi, "Drawing 1", pastel on paper, 228.6x 114.3 cm/ 7.5x 3.75 ft.

Come to Drawing at the Vargas Museum for the sheer pleasure of reveling in Jose Legaspi’s incredible skill. 

I love Jojo’s work, and I thought nothing he could produce would still surprise me.  After all, he has never shirked from revealing his demons.  No one else can leave us transfixed to quiet horror, to latent anger.  Yet, the two seven-foot portraits that anchor this compact exhibit at the museum’s third floor space left me shaking my head. What a guy.

These are works that must be seen in their actual state.  Cameras just cannot capture how cleanly and evenly Jojo applied pastel to paper, the nuances rendered to depict creased fabric, the slight shadows that darken the jaw line.

Drawing 1 is a self-portrait, stark and extremely melancholic.  Garbed in black, he stares evenly back at the viewer.  What a difference from the self-portrait we encountered at the exhibit of Paulino Que’s collection in February.  In that piece, he is naked from the waist down, teasing, taunting, ready to do mischief with the excrement he holds up.  Here, although fully clothed, he looks wary, even more vulnerable.

Directly facing it, on the other side of the room, Drawing 2 shows Daniel, the artist’s household helper, seated on an armchair.  It echoes the black and gray palette of the first piece, a device that Jojo has frequently adopted.  Daniel does not meet the viewer’s gaze, and instead, looks somberly down, his thoughts his own.

A collation of crude charcoal drawings fills the long walls that flank the larger drawings.  These are more familiar, rough sketches that have become the artist’s signature.  Still compelling nonetheless, they serve as great foils to the two quiet pastels.

To sum up, I end just as the wall notes do:

“In these images, the details are either carved in very sharp relief or sketched out like a rash.  Either way, the structure of feeling for the self, its sheer presence, is pared down to bare instinct as belied by a stance or a stare, dappled with faint shadow, the source of light that is forever doubted and drawn.”

Drawing Jose Legaspi runs from 8 May to 16 June 2012 at the UP Vargas Museum, Roxas Ave., UP Diliman, Quezon City.  Phone (632) 928-1927 or  http://vargasmuseum.wordpress.com/

Jose Legaspi, "Drawing 2", pastel on paper. 228.6 x 114.3 cm/7.5x3.75 ft

Detail

Installation view

Detail

Detail

Installation of charcoal drawings from 2011

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