Published Essays
Creators of Perception Re-Configuration
By Con Cabrera
Published in PURVEYR Issue 3, 2017.
“But I sit in front of a fireplace and watch the flames, I do not normally register certain shades of red, various degrees of brightness, geometrically defined shapes moving at such and such a speed. I see the graceful play of aggressive tongues, flexible striving, lively color…” wrote Rudolf Arnheim when he described how we, as humans, instinctively perceive things. We assign expressions and feelings in forms, not readily acknowledging them as shapes or movements. “Expression can be described as the primary content of vision,” he reiterates. This expression might as well be the building block of art appreciation. But when there’s intervention, disruption happens. When mediated, new narratives emerge, dissolving original meanings and a mobilization towards discourse ensues. How poignant is that when we transcend even the poetic experience of perception described by Arnheim?
Get to know the artists whose praxis reflect the creative urge to generate new manifestations of archetypal imageries we’ve come to ignore. Akin to perceptual bounds, they map out the confines of their art production: time, space, resource, and demand. Within these bounds, they labor and present works that configure for us appraised belief systems, which will aid us to live with fervor and transformed viewpoints.
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Cartographer of Chronicles in the City
Vermont Coronel, Jr. traverses the urban landscape on his bike.
This artist is in search of his old home in the metropolis. While he now resides in Quezon City, he acknowledges that he feels more at ease in his hometown Laguna. Objects and places, which resemble parts of his birthplace, catch his attention that’s why he prefers to cycle over public transport for him to find these in alternate routes. He sees beauty in things and edifices that are abandoned, neglected and left to rot. A lot of these places have something interesting to offer whether in its next corner or its next street. They are ready to be captured but also ready to be taken away forever.
Vermont never finished college, but he was resolved to practice art. He first encountered stencil art through an event that showcased a French artist doing live painting. He was amazed by how the artist created an image by using multiple layers of cut paper and aerosol. That experience directed him to teach himself how to make stencils and the collective Pilipinas Street Plan. His relationships with the members enriched his views on the craft and art in general, which propelled further his drive to be an artist. Vermont creates art mostly in his studio now. His persona as a street artist is different from his now current state. For him, artworks implore appropriate platforms and what his present practice requires are venues for undistracted attention. The process of form building though did not change for him. He still uses single or multiple stencils to let images emerge. Photography is an important tool in his process. He always brings a camera operating in the notion that you’ll never know what is out there. He plots his photographs in digital software, a tool he sees similar to the camera obscura. In the streets, creation should be in a fast manner to avoid being caught. Inside the studio, the pace is slower, in parts, per layer, taking him months to finish a multi-layer piece.
Despite his tedious and meticulous process, Vermont is always motivated to create because of the beauty of the pictures he captures. Whether a structure or an entity, he thinks of the happy memories and energy that once filled them. To see them as discarded, for him, does not mean that the purpose of the thing ended. Their social cycles continue through being subjects of his art. His series of works from his exhibition Gone Away exposes the literal and fictive layers on biographies of things. Whether he paints the city or paint with it through the use of its dirt and grime, he lets his subjects speak to us through a stimulating visual language. What is evident in his praxis is the boundlessness of the creative mind. He empowers the viewers of his art to be authors of the narratives of the city. He directs us to weave alternatives to tropes for us to breath new life in the chaotic environ we are in.
Documentarian of Fortitude in the Body
Mitch Mauricio photographs vaginas.
This photographer likes to talk to people, to pick their brains and understand them better. It’s important for her that she communicates her intentions and the concept of her projects to her subjects. For her, understanding is a prerequisite to any project to establish it as collaboration, emphasizing the need for openness and trust especially because her themes deal with the intimate themes of womanhood and sexuality. She wants to document often-ignored aspects of people’s personalities. She attempts to stimulate fearless discussions about women’s sexual desires and needs devoid of objectification and traces of commercially driven glamour.
As a child, Mitch has always been fascinated with photography, always browsing through her grandparents’ Mabuhay magazines. In high school, she was introduced to the idea of being a professional photographer. In college she joined the school paper The LaSallian where she learned how to take, compose, and tell visual stories and how to print her own black and white photos. After graduating, she joined the Philippine Daily Inquirer as a photojournalist because she wanted to be a war photographer. She got to cover the police beat shooting rallies, politics, shootouts, drug busts, and crime. She eventually grew weary of the dark political scene and moved to shooting celebrities and behind-the-scenes of television show for GMA 7. A few years later, she started her own freelance photography business shooting commercial work. It was also around this time when she started independent projects that reflected her other interests. Her personal and commercial endeavors vastly differ. She photographs people, architecture, products and events for clients, while her personal shoots display celebration of women’s bodies. She believes in empowering females and celebrating sexuality. For clients, her photographs are very straightforward and objective; for herself, the themes deal with sensuality, womanhood, and expressions of thoughts and feelings that are very subjective. The two platforms are independent from each other allowing her to have separate playgrounds for investigation.
Mitch’s photographs are honest in exposing the beauty and appreciation in the power and desires of women. In her solo exhibition Puerta, she attempted to introduce women sexuality through the courageous display of an array of black and white, extreme close-up images of female private parts. She continued this exploration through a two-person show with Wiji Lacsamana. The results of their collaboration were a collection of delicate, pastel colored images that created a dialogue and commentary on femininity. Her provocation progressed from outward looking to a more inward expression of intimate emotions. Mitch is never alone in her process. Whether a fellow artist or her subjects, she needs collaborators because it is the nature of her art and her chosen themes are dialectic. She unsettles the notions that intimacy should only be private, ensuing discomfort even if of our own skins, our own bodies. She aims the spotlight towards the strength we secure from adversities; her art creates the platform for us to celebrate our inmost beings.
Director of Light in Consciousness
Derek Tumala manipulates for us existential light shows.
This new media artist lives in a democratic post-everything, overly saturated, and an era of runoff of information. Amidst all of these, he exposes himself to ideals and images taking what is relevant to him. For him, his aesthetic is a constant search of meaning, meditating on the focal points of his vision. His current works focus on how materials behave with light or video projected on them. He attempts to harness natural phenomenon, challenge visual perception, and explore the concept of space and time. He uses light because he believes that it’s the most available material one can operate. The concept of creation and the wonder of science have been centrifugal to his work, as he challenges further the notion of conceptual and subjective reality.
Derek started dabbling with video and new media after art school, learning via online tutorials. He moved on from painting feeling that the two-dimensional art was so passive and had to find a medium that is dynamic. He started with working on videos on live set-ups. He saw how experiential moving image could be to a viewer, which excited him to explore further. He does both commercial and personal works. The negotiation in his process is propelled by the demand to create tangible pieces using intangible elements. So he tends to harness it, choosing materials that are stable. The results are intermedia artworks that respond to each component. His more personal works are not free form and are more challenging at times. His intentions are grander, attempting to create boundless artworks that set their own landscape, therefore their possibilities. His commercial and personal works are interdependent with each other, given that they both employ experimentation and the science behind their processes are analogous. The production is vital and the product is incomplete when the cycle veers away from the platform.
Collaboration is required in Derek’s practice. He unceasingly wants to include different field of studies, techniques and media into a single output. Working with others is imperative to him as an exposure to the relations of varied ideas. His interest and the experiential factor of his works are dependent on the participatory requirements of his projects. Exploration is also as important to him. It is vital that he tests materials, surfaces, media and techniques. He has projected videos on cardboard, rocks, walls, buildings, plants, water, mirrors; the list is expanding. The art pieces he made for his exhibition To Where the Sky Will Lead Us captured the complexity and dynamism of light into wall bound artworks, adorning the gallery with a constellation of handmade galaxies. Experimentation takes him to different ideologies that affect his context. By experiencing conceptual ideals, he harnesses the root of the experiential. Through our immersion in his works, he takes us to his search for purpose and reason, directing us to the eventual discovery of our own existence.
A Range of Mavericks: Creators of Ideas and Actions
By Con Cabrera
Published in PURVEYR Issue 4, 2017.
It comes so natural for artists to create. They cannot help it. “Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works,” Alma Gluck reiterated in one of her writings on singing. This art is not just an object or a visible thing. In the sixties, John Chandler articulated very well its dematerialization in a critical essay. He discussed “…art as idea and art as action. In the first case, matter is denied, as sensation has been converted into concept; in the second case, matter has been transformed into energy and time-motion. If the completely conceptual work of art in which the object is simply as epilogue to the fully evolved concept seems to exclude the objet d’art, so does the primitivizing strain of sensuous identification and the envelopment in a work so expanded that it is inseparable from its nonart surroundings.” This absence of the art product therefore subjects artists to the instinctive, almost unconscious effort, of creation of the idea and/or the action. With that said, the impetus of artmaking varies, coming from the most mundane occurrences to the most complex of emotions. And though most of the art that we get to view and experience are tangible, the content always rely on the formation process behind. In this article, we’ll get to know more about three peculiar artists and how their motivations and contexts influence the kind of creators they have become and the eventual direction of what they do.
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Zeus Bascon
The Compelling Spiritual
Zeus started as a children’s book illustrator. He became a member of Ang Illustrador ng Kabataan while studying business administration at the University of Santo Tomas. He mistakenly pursued college at UST thinking that Ang InKwas based there. He became an illustrator for the College of Commerce publication. He has a number of illustrated books published by local companies Adarna House and Lampara House. While doing freelance work as an illustrator, he also pursued his interest in painting. He has been joining exhibitions since 2006. The themes of his artworks reflect his fascination with the supernatural. For him, his belief in the paranormal and elementals is part of the self and are therefore explorations of self-actualization. The common elements found in his paintings are representations, even materializations of primitive spiritual experiences. He also experiments with photography to capture the immaterial. His collection of photographs titled Spectre Series attempts to document these occurrences in a journalistic manner pushing boundaries of blurred realities. The images he produces revolve around the idea of personal history, charged with the paranormal and the fantastical that tend to narrate an invented mythology. For him, these imageries at some point offer a sense of curiosity towards the unknown and the otherworldly. He prefers, sometimes, to imbue uncertainty, if not fear when viewers look at his photographs and paintings.
Zeus also has intense fascination with costumes. One of his dreams is to be a mascot, and even attempted to apply as one in a local theme park but was not accepted. He made his first costume for Hang ‘Em High exhibition titled Ang Alamat ng Cactus. He presented this piece as a part of a series that documents the wearing of the costume. From there, more ideas came and he explored more on the performative potential of wearable artworks during his residency in Koganecho Art Bazaar in Yokohama. In that performance he wore a ceremonial cape lined with small bells, which he said, whispers to the wind. When he went back to the Philippines after three months, he did a suit with drawings extracted from anting-antingsand overwhelmed it with golden metal studs like a spiritual armor. From there he then dedicated himself to the annual ati-atihanprocessions in their barangay, where he make costumes for himself and other participants using plastic straw to emphasize the movements they make while walking. Recently, he worked as a costume designer for the film Balangiga: Howling Wilderness. Film production is a new and different platform for a creator like Zeus. He had to be dependent on another artist’s vision, which makes him treat the project strictly as work.
To communicate an artist’s personal belief systems in the art produced for him is a process of foundation building for a visual language. This idea and/or action include the constant re-evaluation of the self in order to define the current state of being. It is important for him that visions from dreams are reflected, the engkantoshe grew up with, and for most times, evident signs he sees from the universe as guides to his decision-making process. He considers that layers of legends, magic, faith, the occult, and paranoia are present in/with him. As a spiritual, the purpose of his art is to offer the possibilities of the existence of the unknown.
Dina Gadia
The Formidable Wallflower
Dina remembers drawing as a kid but can’t exactly remember how she knew about art and being an artist. She just knew about “art” and “artist” but did not really grasp their meaning until art school. But she always loved observing the landscape that surrounds her and she liked the flaws and imperfections of things. Taking Fine Arts at the Far Eastern University was a more practical move, because she knew she couldn’t handle five years in Architecture. She worked as an art director for a publishing company but took a sabbatical, which eventually led her to being a fulltime artist. She couldn’t handle the demands of working for a company and at same time do art so she quit. Dina works with collages, combining images from popular literature and advertising, manipulating them through adding text or unusual arrangements. She has been exhibiting since 2005 and had solo shows in New York, Tokyo, Taipei, and Singapore. Though Dina looks frail and quiet, there is strength from the visuals she lets us consume. Her continuing experimentation with collages, and reinterpreting them as paintings or sculptures, is surprisingly consistent and delightfully disarming. She works on themes of class, culture, aesthetics and what she considers “nonsense.”
In her creative process, ideas come and arrive in unusual settings and places. There are times where these ideas come from the materials she uses. She says she doesn’t have a system when working. Her personal beliefs and principles are always present in her work. In her creative actions, most of the time she doesn’t give them away but occasionally she makes them obvious enough. Her work stems from immediate happenings and her current state, thoughts or interests. Personally, as a maker of things, she tries to put sense in her artmaking. From someone who knows her limits and believes that she tries very hard, she thinks that exerting too much effort is not good. That’s maybe why she listens to what her medium’s message and she goes with it. For her recent solo exhibition at the Silverlens Gallery titled Situation Amongst Furnishings, she showcased all paintings but still with the strong comic book aesthetic we have come to associate her with. The body of work she was able to produce for the show appears to be heavily influenced by her domesticity and the strong will to poke fun on what we see as reality. Nevertheless, Dina is a cerebral artist who can layer themes such as politics and ideology with images that can conceal them, yet tackle them head on at the same time.
Most of the time, Dina thinks she is selfish. This means she has to be contented with what she’s making first and then thinking about what to accomplish follows. For her, communicating an artist’s personal beliefs is both important and unnecessary. For her, any art that is good has its own capability to communicate to and eventually change a viewer. Having high regard with this potential of art, the idea and the action collapses in Dina’s chosen forms. Her practice is informed by her personal history, observations, and realizations about human existence. As a wallflower in this outrageous world, it is wise to hear her speak through her works.
KoloWn
The Clever Mediator
KoloWn is the brainchild of one artist. It is a conglomerate established in 2007 during a time when tagging was becoming a popular graffiti art form in Cebu City. The name comes from the oldest street in the Philippines, Colon Street and from the idea of colonialism. The concept of the conglomerate attempts to challenge the notion of authorship in art and attribution of art labor, an antithesis to the image-based and individualistic notion we imply to artists. Collaborators come and leave depending on on-going projects and inclinations. The early artworks the group produced were made with available materials due to the lack of resources for spray paint. KoloWn experimented with Manila paper and Zoy, an instant wheat paste that is bought exclusively in provinces. Along the way, affordable tools and supplies were used to make their artworks in the streets and eventually utilized the concept of urban interventions. In these street interventions, works take over existing structures even with minimal labor and limited capital. The projects by KoloWn are not financially sustainable so members depend on their jobs and donations from fellow creatives to sustain their projects.
KoloWn’s interests lies on the concept of conflict of opposites and absurdity. In the creative process, the group lets the space dictate the generation of the ideas. From the concepts, they break down the materials to use and then decide on the corresponding techniques that fit the provisions. Most of the time, they incorporate their own beliefs and views via the technique, material, or process. Action comes as response to the collision of the ideas, the site, and current context. In the conglomerate’s recent exhibition titled Low Pressured Areas at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, they brought their street intervention techniques to the institution. Attempting to solicit active citizenship by reclaiming the public establishment through street art’s political nature. Strategically interacting with idle spaces inside the building such as old telephone booths and hallway corners, the works were viewed similar to how treasure hunt works wherein the explorers are guided by a map. There are a few installations that interact with existing artworks by modern masters such as Modern Dilemmaand Barangay Luz, both created as reactions towards works by Arturo Luz. Some parts of the exhibition reflect KoloWn’s current exploration on internet-based interactions responding to this generation of gadgets and virtual lives. For the group, it’s important that personal belief systems are reflected in the projects that they produce to differentiate the Pollock artist from an elephant making abstract paintings. They believe that an elephant painter is much better than a Nazi artist or nuclear bomb scientist.
The conglomerate wants to confuse people in their creative endeavors. They want to encourage people to question the world, let them cry, count their tears, find happiness, chase rainbows, and ask more questions. Through their actions, they negotiate the surroundings and the viewers offering them distortions that make sense. Always simplistic at first glance, what they do is accessible enough for a bystander to understand. Always humorous upon immersion, their works are intellectual enough to elevate the thought-process of that bystander. As a mediating entity, we must surrender to the alternative notions about the world that they have to offer.