Category Archives: philippine contemporary art


Manny Montelibano Calculates Greater Than Or Equal To Infinity

Manny Montelibano, "Pamunti", video still

Several years ago,  in the early 1990s, when Manny Montelibano first started his involvement with VIVA-EXCON (Visayan Islands Visual Arts Exhibit and Conference), he had a hard time convincing the organizers to let him mount a video installation.  This biennial event, now a prestigious coming together of visual artists from the Visayas, had then concentrated its efforts on showcasing paintings and sculpture, pretty much mirroring the inclinations of the rest of the country’s art community at that time.  But Manny, with his background as a filmmaker who worked with the likes of Peque Gallaga and Eric Matti, managed to convince them otherwise.  His forays into video and sound installations stemmed from his association with the Black Artists of Asia, the group of  visual artists from the Bacolod headed by Charlie Co and Dennis Ascalon.

What a difference two decades make to a country’s cultural landscape!  When Greater Than Or Equal To Infinity opened last week at the Nova Gallery in Makati, Manny welcomed an audience eager to sit down and savor his four film installations and sound loops.  I myself wanted to make sure to catch this solo show as I had always regretted missing Manny’s Escabeche, at Galleria Duemila, in July of last year.  I did not make it to Manny’s opening either, but I managed to find time to

Manny Montelibano, "Girls Talk", video still

drop by to see this show this week.

If there is any gallery in Manila perfectly suited for watching videos, it would be Nova.  Its cozy size, the absence of any sources of natural light, and its second-floor loft, made it perfect for navigating Manny’s show.  At first, I felt a bit disconcerted at the barrage of images and sound bites that confronted me as I entered the gallery’s main space.  But since I had the gallery almost all to myself (save for a couple who left soon after I arrived), I slowly found my bearings, and was able to focus, segregating which sound went in tandem with which video.

Manny Montelibano, "Up A Head", video still

Manny’s videos show uncomplicated, simple scenes that I found easy to appreciate, especially when viewed with his sound choices.  The two films on the gallery’s two main walls, Girls Talk and Up A Head, were filmed with live sound.  Both show three different scenes that when put together, blend to feel like one.  Girls Talk deals with the emotions of three different women.  Manny leaves it up to the audience to interpret this as they will.  I thought it was about a woman recalling a lost love.  Up A Head showed the butchered carcass of a pig, a close up of oil bubbling as food fried, a fly buzzing on some slaughtered pork, then, of all things, a live cow in a pasture.  Again, the unrelated scenes may or may not make up a story.

On the gallery’s second floor, Manny mounts the other two installations. In Panilag (Observe), he plays around with a market scene of caged chicken and ducks, and a dog that lolled about between the two cages.  He transforms the images into negatives, then into abstract patterns, like that of a kaleidoscope, with sound that mirrors the cadence of the changing images.  He even dubbed a recorded

Manny Montelibano, "Panilag", video still

speech by Idi Amin to go with the close up of the dog.

The last video, Pamunti, is the one I enjoyed most.  Manny filmed a man fishing beside a highway in Negros, then transformed the image into one of high contrast, turning it into a black and white blur with only a spot of color. He runs the film in extreme slow motion, yet chooses to accompany the images with the sound of a Formula 1 car going at top speed.  The vroom of the vehicle contrasts sharply with the unhurried exertions of the man fishing.  Here you have two disparities—that of the image’s high contrast lighting, and the incongruous pairing of the film’s sound with its subject’s movements.

I recommend Manny’s show to those who have half an hour to spare, and relish freeing their minds to take in sights and sounds that don’t require too much to derive pleasure from.

Another video still from "Panilag"

Greater Than Or Equal To Infinity runs from 6 to 27 August 2010 at Nova Gallery, Warehouse 12A, La Fuerza Compound, 2241 Chino Roces Ave. (Pasong Tamo), Makati.  Phone (632) 392-7792 or visit http://www.novagallerymanila.com


The 2010 Ateneo Art Awards

Just like everybody else in the audience, I eagerly awaited the announcement of winners for this year’s Ateneo Art Awards.  The

Shattering States: The Ateneo Art Awards 2010 Winners: Pow Martinez, Leslie de Chavez, and Mark Salvatus

Ateneo Art Gallery staff kept the final results under tight guard, even to us jurors.  Thankfully, they paced this year’s awards night programme so that none of us had long to wait. Continue reading →


Terracotta Origins

Joe Geraldo, detail, "Parada Tinik"

Two years ago, I had my first encounter with the sculpture of Roedil “Joe” Geraldo and Israel “Noi” Gonzales.  Together with other artists from the Visayas, they came to Manila, to the Alliance Francaise Total Gallery, in June 2008, and introduced their terracotta pieces.  This month, they return to that very same gallery in a three-man show with Mark Valenzuela, a critically-recognized artist who also shares their passion for working with clay.

Mark Valenzuela, "M" and "Source"

The terracotta that these three artist choose to fondle and shape comes from the richness of the earth where they make their homes. All three have been nourished in Western Visayas, the base from which they work.  As Mme. Deanna Ongpin-Recto, President of Alliance Francaise de Manille, remarked during the exhibit’s opening reception, all three see terracotta as a pure and spiritual medium.  They enjoy a special closeness with this material as it is literally borne from the soil they inhabit.

Israel Gonzales, "Sa Kapawa"

In this show, which they have dubbed Gingikanan or Origin, they use this clay to explore their roots, to look back to their ancestors and forebears, to revisit experiences that have shaped their persons.

Joe, who won first prize at this year’s GSIS Art Competion for sculpture, exhibits the most polished pieces.  Early on in his career, he chiseled his figures out of woodblocks.  He takes inspiration from the rituals of daily

Mark Valenzuela, "Exhibitionist"

life in his native Bacolod to bring us work that strike me as three-dimensional versions of Ang Kiukok’s paintings.  Mark, who has been a short-listed artist for the Ateneo Art Awards, brought out
Exhibitionist, a life-sized piece from his own collection.  I felt, though, that his work and that of Noi’s, who both showed mostly busts, looked interchangeable.  Perhaps they should both start looking beyond past pieces for their future work.

Joe Geraldo, "Diin Padolong"

Mme. Ongpin-Recto also used the exhibit’s opening  to announce the launch of the Alliance Francaise de Manille-Philippine Artists Residency Program. This grant, to be awarded on an annual basis, will allow for one Filipino visual arts practitioner to enjoy a three-month residency in Paris.  As far as I know, this is open to artists 45 years old and below.  Now, that is what I call a great opportunity!

Israel Gonzales, Joe Geraldo, and Jon Pettyjohn with Joe's piece, "Owang"

Origin runs from 3 to 26 August 2010 at the Alliance Francaise Total Gallery, 209 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel Air 2, Makati City.  Phone (632) 895-7585/ 895-7441.

For more information on the Alliance Francaise de Manille-Philippine Artists Residency Program, you may visit the Alliance Francaise or http://www.alliance.ph

Israel Gonzales, "Mal-Am (Elder)"

Mark Valenzuela, detail of "Last Full Show"

Israel Gonzales, "Kusog Tawhanon"

Mark Valenzuela, "Getting Louder Everyday"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B6dIxFMaLg


Nona Garcia’s Fine Fractures

Nona Garcia, "A Series Of Fractures", x-ray plates made into light boxes

I loved the quiet impact of Fractures, Nona Garcia’s show that opened this week at West Gallery.  I honestly did not know what to expect from this, her third show of the year, coming as it did on the heels of her SLab and Finale exhibits.  For those two shows, Nona gave us major pieces, firmly announcing she had come back after a brief hiatus.  As majestic as her two oversized paintings

Nona Garcia, "Above Water", photo assemblage

had been, White, blank(at Slab in March) and Fall Leaves After Leaves Fall (at Finale in May) simply reacquainted us with Nona.  She revisited signature devices, her portraits from behind and depictions of damaged and abandoned spaces. Continue reading →


Manilart 10

It was not difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the galleries that thought about what they would

At West Gallery, Roberto Chabet collage, "The Erection of the Obelisk"

show for Manilart 10 from those that did not. You could tell which ones regularly mount exhibits as opposed to those who simply maintain spaces to sell paintings.  I suppose, in the end, the commercial aspects of the fair outweighed all other considerations.  And with 55 galleries joining this year, you had enough paintings to satisfy all sorts of sensibilities (and I do mean ALL sorts!). Continue reading →


Nilo Ilarde Thinks About Paintings

Appropriating Kippenberger: Dear Painter, Paint For Me

So what exactly is a painting?  That seems to be the question that Nilo Ilarde asks us to consider as we make our way around the colossal pieces of Painting As Something And The Opposite of Something, his solo exhibit currently on view at Finale Art File.

On a visual level, the show is spectacular.  We get that wow factor without feeling overwhelmed by the number and the size of his work. While we see treatment that recall past pieces (words scraped on the wall, empty tubes of paint), we come upon surprising additions.             

We all know that Nilo puts his curatorial stamp on a good number of shows in Manila.  So he knew exactly how to work with Finale’s expansive Tall Gallery.  But we also know that Nilo challenges on another, more cerebral, level.  And his exhibits engage all the more because of that.

For starters, we have been asked to suspend our conventional notion of paintings, and accept the five pieces he has on view as his paintings, unorthodox as that may sound.

The first of those five immediately catches our eye. Scratched out in gigantic letters that fill most of the gallery’s long wall, Nilo appropriates Martin Kippenberger’s cheeky request:  Dear Painter, Paint For Me. The line comes from the title of Kippenberger’s seminal suite of works from 1981 that also turned painting on its ear. Kippenberger had a sign painter execute his portraits in various stage-managed tableaux.  In Nilo’s piece, the statement on the wall is itself the finished product. You have a painting, albeit one that had undergone the reverse process from the norm.  Paint has carefully been stripped off wood, rather than brushed on it.

At the foreground, "The Void Speaks In Each Painting, Between The Brushstrokes"

Across from this, we see a glass receptacle that houses hundreds of used paint tubes.  We saw about half this amount in 2009, as I Have Nothing to Paint, and I’m Painting It.  Now with double the number collected from various artists, Nilo has transformed the piece into The Void Speaks In Each Painting, Between The Brushstrokes. Here we see the response to Kippenberger’s plea:  Nilo’s colleagues, dear painters all, have indeed painted for him.  Composer John Cage once said that the gap between the notes can also be considered as music.  Discarded paint tubes make up a painting’s gap. Thus, these repositories of paint, from which several paintings had been created, collectively make up a painting too.

Beside the amassed tubes hangs a boxing ring’s old floor,

A closer look at the collection of empty paint tubes

resurrected, with much cajoling, from the Elorde Sports Center storage.  This massive square of printed canvas acts as Nilo’s third painting.  He installs this as a diamond, a nod to Mondrian’s Victory Boogie Woogie. Filled with drips of sweat accumulated from the numerous boxers who have sparred on it, their DNA served as the paint that completed the piece.

The Boxing Ring

How can we miss The Road To Flatness? A crushed blue car suspended high above the gallery’s far wall and installed just as a large-scale painting will definitely receive its share of attention. A hired pay loader went to work on an old Volkswagen Beetle until the car had been completely squashed.  The pay loader mimicked an Abstract Expressionist, levelling the car’s figure, obliterating all but it’s basic form.

In Making Nothing Out Of Something, Nilo goes further than merely scraping off paint from the gallery’s walls.  With the intent to start afresh–he uses the term Tabula Rasa– he completely removed all traces of what had been in that portion of the wall, layer by layer, until only empty space remains.  But the irony is, because the emptiness gives us a peek into what we did not see before (Finale’s backroom), he hasn’t really created nothing.  We get a framed look at more paintings—Nilo’s final painting of stacked paintings.            

“The paintings are about paintings thinking about paintings”, is how Nilo explains his work.  We could probably say the same thing about his impact on us.  Once we’ve gone beyond the visual feast, the show gets us thinking about paintings too.  Well, it did me.

Painting As Something And As The Opposite Of Something runs from 9 July to 2 August at the Finale Art File, Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound, 2241 Pasong Tamo, Makati City.  Phone (632)813-2310 or visit http://www.finaleartfile.com

 

Nilo Ilarde, "The Road To Flatness"

Nilo Ilarde, "Making Nothing Out Of Something"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Leeroy New Raises A Balete While Kiri Dalena Repeats History

Leeroy New, "Balete"

Sometimes only  a Pinoy word will do to convey an incredible experience.  Find time to pass by the Ateneo Art Gallery’s newly-

Another detail, "Balete"

expanded space (they’ve completely taken over the old Rizal Library), and see if you don’t agree with me.  How else can you describe

Detail, Leeroy New, "Balete"

Leeroy New’s installation other than galing?  Because it is.  So galing!  Conceptualized with thinking that goes beyond awesome, and put together by the creative use of simple materials that goes beyond super, you really just have to say

Leeroy New next to his Balete tree

“Ang Galing!”

In Balete, Leeroy wraps the posts of the gallery’s facade with his version of a Balete tree, one constructed from cable lines , flexible tubing used for electric conduits.  Accented by plastic cable ties, the tree twists and turns between the building’s columns, simulating the gnarling, gigantic roots of an actual Balete.  Also known as the Banyan in Southeast Asia, the Balete possesses a mystical reputation.  It guards sacred spaces, monasteries and old churches.  Leeroy comments that the orange cables remind him of the saffron robes used by Buddhist monks.

Detail, "Balete"

In the Philippines, we know the Balete as the dwelling place of extra-terrestrials and enchanted spirits.  Leeroy worked with graphic designer Dan Matutina for projections that mimic the enchantments bestowed by legend on a Balete.  Come by during the evenings of the exhibit’s run and catch the apparitions suggested by the light patterns.  You may even see a wisp of the legendary White Lady crossing the tree’s intermingling branches.

Another view of Balete

Simultaneous to Leeroy’s installation, Kiri Dalena mounts  Watch History Repeat Itself inside the gallery’s space for contemporary exhibits.  Kiri continues her documentation of protest slogans that began with Keeping the Faith, the piece that won the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards.   Earlier this year, she carried on this exercise in The Present Disorder Is The Order Of The Future (for which she got into the shortlist of this year’s awards) by using marble slabs as the medium to memorialize these slogans and placard texts.  For this current exhibit, she shifts to another medium—neon lights.  The idea of recording text in neon came to her after an evening spent with

Kiri Dalena's Yellow Book of Slogans

Caucasian colleagues in the red light district of Mabini.  Subjected to the indignities that inevitably fall on a young Filipina seen in the company of foreigners, the experience sparked her militant streak, leading to an “aha” moment among the flashing signs.  In her exhibit,  she recreates the tag Liar Liar in neon, appropriated from the Jim Carrey movie by rally participants of a 2004 protest action after the Hello Garci scandal.  Kiri also compiles her collected texts in her Yellow Book Of Slogans.  Playing on one wall is video clip borrowed from ABS-CBN News.  It shows a student protest at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.  The film catches school chairs being hurled from inside the campus, forming a mound of chairs that echo the detritus left from student protests during the Martial Law era.  A sure sign that some things never change.

Neon bright: Liar Liar

Both Leeroy and Kiri return to the gallery for homecoming exhibits after their 2009 Ateneo Art Awards residency grants.  Leeroy spent time in Sydney, at the La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre while Kiri went to Bandung, Indonesia, to the Common Room Networks Foundation.

History in neon

Balete runs from 14 July to 30 October 2010.

Watch History Repeat Itself runs from 14 July to 16 August 2010.

Both shows are at the Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City.  Phone (632)426-6488 or visit http://www.gallery.ateneo.edu

Video still from installation of "Watch History Repeat Itself"

"Dear Activist Write A Slogan For Me"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaXJWOCRiPU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4nPJfE97mQ


Happy Birthday Tin-Aw! (Part 2)

The celebration continues at Tin-Aw with the second installment of their anniversary exhibit.  I must say I enjoyed this show more

Detail, Pamela Yan Santos, "Sugar Coated"

than the first.  Perhaps it had to do with the combination of pieces.  Perhaps the smaller number of artists included in this show made me appreciate each artist’s effort more.  Perhaps the exhibit’s installation just felt easier to navigate.  Perhaps it was all of the above! Continue reading →


Jonathan Ching Finds Botero's Leg

Jonathan Ching, "Living With Botero's Leg"

I wanted to see this show because its title intrigued me.  Why does  Jonathan Ching need to search for Botero’s leg?  It turns out that he intends for the exhibit to play on memories, random thoughts and experiences that cross his mind, including recollections

Found: Botero's Leg

of his own past work. A favorite computer game, Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego, inspired the exhibit’s title, along with the show’s biggest piece.

Jonathan Ching, "Topiary Of My Mind"

In the first three panels of Living With Botero’s Leg, a multi-media quadriptych, Jon depicts distinctive footwear:  two styles of cowboy boots and a pair of silk Chinese slippers for bound feet.  None of them would suit the hefty proportions of a Fernando Botero subject, an approximation of which he places on the piece’s fourth panel.  Here we find the elusive leg, portly as expected,  cast in metal,  and crowned with tin embellishments used for altarpieces. With this piece, Jon continues his series of incorporating objects within his paintings,  a device he used extensively for his show at Blanc Compound in April.

Smaller canvases make up the rest of the show, most of them oval-shaped.  Jon felt

Detail, "Topiary Of My Mind"

that his personal reminiscences called for these intimate sizes.  On two of these, Topiary Of My Mind and Chimes, he integrates sculpted blackbirds fabricated from polymer clay.

Exhibit Installation

The pieces I find most interesting are the three free-standing sculpture of black swans that hearken to origami, the Japanese art of creating figures from folded paper.  Constructed from GI sheets and finished with automotive paint, the swans reference his past work, an installation of numerous folded birds from his 2003 two-man show with Christina Dy at the now-defunct Surrounded By Water.  I don’t exactly know how these three pieces fit in with his paintings, and perhaps they don’t.  However, I think it would be great to see him take his origami sculpture further, explore different patterns, even experiment with textures.  Maybe next time, at some future show, Jon can allow his sculpture to take center stage.  But of course, I am usually more partial to sculpture.  So perhaps my biases are showing.

Jonathan Ching, "Two Rivers"

Where In The World Is Botero’s Leg runs from 9 July to 2 August 2010 at Finale Art File, Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound, 2241 Pasong Tamo, Makati. Phone (632) 813-2310 or visit http://www.finaleartfile.com or visit http://www.jonching.com

Jonathan Ching, "Chimes"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS1RsnyzlP4




Portraits from Inside: Martha Atienza, Bea Camacho, Sam Kiyoumarsi, Pow Martinez

Now this is my kind of group show.  The concept is simple, and you don’t get overwhelmed by the range of pieces on view.  Four

Pow Martinez, "Walking Corpse"

artists seem to be a good number for the venue, both to give each artist enough space to showcase their work, and for the viewer to take in the variety of styles present. Continue reading →