For more information about the Deleted Scenes exhibit, please visit LINK1, LINK2. My art statement for this group show can also be found at LINK.
(Image grabbed from spot.ph)
Most notable art events of 2009
By Lito B. Zulueta, Philippine Daily Inquirer
The year showcases both established and emergent art, the old and the new—a fitting summing up to the first decade of the new century, a decade of transitions
THE FIRST important art event of 2009 is “Juan Senson: 19th Century Master of Angono,” which mainly consists of works from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas collection. The works show the strong suits of the great artist: a mastery of landscape and pictorial composition. Despite the patina of age, the works are ageless.Betsy Westendorp comeback show at Mandarin Oriental-Gateway (March)
Unassumingly titled “Reflections,” the return exhibit of the venerable artist is as unassuming as the artist herself. Although Westendorp became a famous artist for the portraits of the elite of the Philippines and Spain in the 1960’s, she’s particularly noted for her landscapes, a genre to which her “reflective” style is particularly suited. The following month, she teams up with her daughter, Carmen Westendorp-Brias, for a delightful mother-and-daughter exhibit.
Neal Oshima’s ‘Play’ at Silverlens (April-May 2009)
The great photographer takes his cue from the games played by his 10-year-old son and employs a very ancient (and archaic) photographic process, the photogram on hand-coated paper, mixing and coating light-sensitive emulsions onto “artisanal papers” to create works that embody, in both form and content, the exhibit’s title and theme. Playful of Neal, indeed.
Roberto Chabet’s ‘10,000 Paintings I Must Paint Before I Die’ at Mag:net Katipunan (April-May 2009)
The father of Filipino Conceptual Art and the mentor to at least a generation of UP Fine Arts students, for better or for worse, returns to his architectural roots (no, he did not take up Fine Arts but Architecture—in UST), and comes up with an intriguing exhibit that’s part installation, part interior design, part architecture, part psychological test, and part—but of course—conceptual: canvases painted in primary colors attached onto clipboards and arranged like a grid that cover the entire walls of the gallery. Don’t bother to count if they number 10,000 exactly because that would be literal, not conceptual, reading. But if art is in the cv material, then shouldn’t the approach be at least literal, not conceptual—or would that make the art immaterial? Whatever. Chabet is a master of the intriguing thought.
Fernando Modesto’s ‘Galaxies, Earth, St. Marys and Second Heaven’ at Hiraya (June)
“One of the country’s most prolific and critically acclaimed contemporary artists” (says writer Ige Ramos) returns to depict again his eclectic cosmology, mixing Christianity, Eastern mysticism, and environmental pantheism in a show that confounds as well as pleases, with its pantheon of deities and angels, its constellation of highly infectious colors.
Julian Schnabel at National Museum and Manila Contemporary (June)
Southeast Asian regional art impressario Valentine Willie brings the Singapore show of top American contemporary artist-filmmaker Julian Schnabel to Manila (the Singapore show took place in the summer). The Museum show consists of Schnabel’s recent large-scale multimedia paintings (mainly ink on polyester). At the Manila Contemporary are his exciting prints. The works in both shows, according to Ige Ramos, are “cinematic.”
Romulo Olazo’s “A 40-Year Retrospective” at Ayala Museum (June-September)
Mounted in collaboration with Azool and Paseo Gallery in time for Olazo’s 75th birthday, the retrospective exhibit reaffirms Olazo’s formidable position in the history of Philippine art. It consists of 113 paintings, prints and what the artist calls “paperwork,” in mediums ranging from oil and acrylic on canvas and board, to Chinese ink, oil pastel and watercolor on paper, and plain dyed paper pulp. These have been culled from around 15,000 catalogued artworks. The centerpiece is the “Diaphanous” series, large-scale works of utter translucence and color genius. The series shows that despite his age, Olazo’s art has taken on superhuman quality.
Dudley Diaz retrospective at UP Vargas Museum (August)
Because he started in the art world at a precocious young age, it seems that Dudley Diaz has been in the art world for forever. His 40-year retrospective exhibit, mounted by Duemila Gallery, affords his collectors and admirers the chance to survey his achievements and locate the leitmotifs that comprise the “Dudley Diaz design planet.” The logic that governs his sculptures is spirituality, from his raids of Philippine folklore and mythology to his explorations of Christian themes. All themes are united by Diaz’s restless art, embodying the restlessness of the soul that seeks repose in the godhead.
Toti Cerda’s ‘Forever Young’ at SM Art Center (August)
Mounted by Genesis Gallery, the exhibit consists of large canvases depicting children at various states of delight while playing under the rain, their gossamer wetness captured by Cerda’s genius in watercolor or acrylic. Cerda has always been best when depicting children at play, and he reinforces this strength again in this show through art that’s never childish.
Soler’s ‘Stream: Works on Paper’ at Alliance Francaise (September)
Soler Santos returns to exhibiting with this series featuring several new mixed-media pieces in acrylic, pencil, ink and collage, an experiment in layering depths and textures. Done in mainly black, white and ochre colors, the depictions mimic water on stone, like a flowing stream. The result is poetic and engaging.
National Artists Nick Joaquin and Ang Kiukok become fashion brands (October)
Fashion house Freeway comes out with its National Artist Collectors’ Series, featuring the words of Nick Joaquin and the images of Ang Kiukok on its apparel and accessories. The series mainstreams the important works of the National Artists. Now it’s hip to wear Nick Joaquin or Ang Kiukok.
‘Deleted Scenes’ at Lopez Museum (November up to Jan. 9, 2010)
As its contribution to the annual multi-museum exhibit “Zero-In,” the Lopez Museum mounts a multimedia exhibit by various artists—contemporary artist Lyle Buencamino, filmmakers Sari Dalena, Camilla Griggers, and Dada Docot, and social realist Al Manrique—centering around the theme of deletions or “such omissions both in pictorial and literary accounts of national history hinged on modes of representation that museums invariably lay out,” says curator Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez. Buencamino’s large paintings are based on movie stills from LVN Films whose archives are now hosted by Lopez. Dalena and Griggers show a documentary, “Memories of a Forgotten War,” of the latter’s personal recollection of her Filipino grandmother abandoned by her American grandfather. Manrique is represented by a sketchbook with illustrations about American relations during the Marcos regime. All of this constitutes revealing intimate biographies and histories that, however (because of the postmodern rejection of grand narratives, which the Lopez Museum. come to think of it, represents—the grand narrative, not the rejection), may hardly cohere into anything whole, comprehensible, or useful. Because of its own suspicion of fact and fiction, it deletes or effaces itself, a fragmentary approach to a history of fragmentation.
Sanso’s early expressionism at Mandarin Oriental (November)
“Sanso: Pioneer of Expressionism” takes art-lovers back to that phase in his career in the late 1940s and early 1950s when he pioneered Expressionism in the Philippines. Among these works are paintings done after World War II when, like many of his generation, the young Sanso carried with him the anguish and deep scars of war. The show is both a retrospective and a reaffirmation of the strength and spirit of Sanso’s prodigious art.
Lor Calma at Ayala Museum (November)
“Architect Lor Calma: Paintings and Sculptures” marks the return to the visual arts of the trailblazing Filipino modern architect and interior designer. A man of modesty and laconic speech, Calma lets his achievement speak for themselves. And what utter anthems to contemporaneity and geometry they are!
Kidlat Tahimik Family at Ricco-Renzo (December)
Typical of the playfulness of the man, Kidlat Tahimik (aka Eric de Guia) calls this exhibit with his spouse and artist-sons, “K-Ayos, K+KKK+K (Organized Chaos), A Family Exhibit.” The exhibit is formidable because it does not alone feature the famous filmmaker--the first Filipino to have won a prize in a major international film festival (the International Critics’ Prize in the 1978 Berlin Film Festival for his “Mababangong Bangungot”)—but his wife, Katrin de Guia, a German scholar-artist, as well as sons Kabunyan, Kawayan and Kidlat, all artists with teenybopper looks and with their respective legions of fans and collectors. The result is nothing short of tumultuous lightning.
50 years of prints at CCP (November-January 2010)
The Philippine Association of Printmakers is marking its 40th anniversary with a 50-year retrospective of Philippine prints, highlighting in particular the career of Manuel Rodriguez Sr., the father of Philippine printmaking. The exhibit does justice to the achievement of the oft-neglected art of printmaking and shows the mastery of Filipinos in the difficult art form.
UST unveils restored work by Locatelli (December)
The University of Santo Tomas through its own restoration clinic has restored a gem from its vast visual arts collection, Italian artist Romualdo Frederico Locatelli’s “Portrait of a Balinese Girl,” painted in the 1940s. Locatelli’s works have been fetching high prices in Sotheby’s auctions of Southeast Asian paintings and the discovery of a Locatelli in the Philippines has stirred the art world. The Locatellis fled Europe during World War II and joined Italian expatriates, notably Francesco Monti, in Manila. Locatelli’s work is just among a host of several priceless works in the UST collection that are being cleaned or restored in the run-up to the Pontifical University turning 400 in 2011 as Asia’s oldest university.
‘War and Dissent: The US in the Philippines (1898-1915)’ at the National Museum (December to March 2010)
Mounted by the Presidio Trust of San Francisco, with the National Museum, Lopez of Balayan, Batangas Foundation, and Fundacion Santiago, this exhibit charts the war between the US and the Philippines from both points of view, with important materials from the Filipino American National Historical Society in the Bay Area. Curated by Randolph Delehanty with Ambeth Ocampo and Purissima Benitez-Johannot, this is a very important exhibit that seeks to resurrect from collective historical amnesia a forgotten war. Call the National Museum for several public programs and lectures related to the exhibit.
