Junyee Plays With Fire

Junyee, "3rd Quarter Squared", soot on board, 36x36 in.

Rain inundated the metropolis this weekend as a low-pressure area morphed into the first bona fide typhoon of the season. Gray clouds and unrelenting wet weather guaranteed less than stellar conditions for gallery hopping, especially for those intending to traverse one end of EDSA to another. But if the Queen of England can sail up the Thames for her Jubilee Pageant in similar conditions, standing for four hours, what should stop the hardy enthusiast in dire need of an art fix?

Those who made it to Galleria Duemila (and they rounded up quite a crowd) will attest that Dark Matter is worth seeing— in any kind of weather. Luis Enano Yee, Jr., or Junyee, does not exhibit very often. He held his last solo show four years ago, an all sculpture outing, also in the same venue. But when the 70- year-old artist brings out a new body of work, he reminds us what an artist should really be about.

Low-key and self-effacing, commercial success has never been the impetus behind Junyee’s work. Yes, this holds true for many other artists, but with Junyee, never really means never.

He has been accorded numerous distinctions for sculpture and painting, most recently in 2007 for his design for a holocaust memorial in Tel Aviv. Since the 1980s, curators from all over the globe have featured his work in various biennales and festivals. His peers regard him as a pioneer in outdoor installation, a champion for the use of ecologically sound materials long before environmentally conscious work became a buzzword. But the real draw of Junyee comes from brilliant work made with integrity and an unwillingness to compromise. He will diligently put together pieces for months at a time, perfecting technique, without a thought to the art market. With Junyee, satisfaction comes from producing work he truly believes in. You will never see him stringing endless permutations of a series simply because it sells.

It took a year of playing with fire to prepare for Dark Matter, a set of wall-bound pieces he calls soot paintings. Junyee used the flame from a hand-held gas lamp to sear images onto boards while lying on his back, his face protected by a mask. For instance, to achieve Memories, one of the show’s bigger and more impressive pieces, he set a bolt of crochet on the board and slowly went over it with fire until its pattern had been imprinted to his satisfaction, black soot stark against white board. The other pieces display forms that recall particles viewed from a telescope, floating out in the galaxy, distorted by smoky wisps or pinpricks of light, a few of them enlivened with shots of painted color, or made three-dimensional by collaged bits of fiber.

Junyee added lines of his own verse on the labels that contain the titles of his pieces to elucidate on each one. The exhibit also includes a film clip of him working on his soot paintings for this show. He takes the viewer through his process, enriching our enjoyment of his work even more.

Dark Matter runs from 2 June to 28 July 2012 at Galleria Duemila, 210 Loring St., Pasay City. Phone (632) 831-9990 or visit www.galleriaduemila.com