Jigger Cruz / Depth Circus

Jigger Cruz / Depth Circus

 

Jigger Cruz explores the primitive memory of the figurative in contemporary painting. He is returning to modernism’s layers of subdued, scarcely fashioned hasty urges to tear down the tenets of precedent movements. When such an attempt is filtered through an ironic, neo-expressionist approach, it’s even more difficult for the viewer to locate the erudite witticisms and context behind the work. In Depth Circus, Jigger Cruz invites the viewer to ask whether the work on display transcends its influences or merely references them.

The paintings re-work many of the stylistic quirks and formal concerns of Classical painting, employing their basic composition and approximating their processes. His pursuit of the idea that a painting is also an installation resulted in exposing the canvas stretcher bars and revealing all aspects and surfaces in the final form. In this sort of contrast of delicacy and wildness do we see Cruz deal almost exclusively with opposites, turning the object inside out and back to front so construction and form become one. This is evidenced most clearly in this series of paintings where the figure presents itself becomes a token to the viewer on first entering the gallery. The figures from classical paintings beneath reminds us of the laborious painting activity as well the art historical baggage of the contemporary painter, with the result that its destruction becomes integral to our aesthetic understanding of the piece.

His materials serve as both expressive, worked elements and raw stuff in their own right, and this fluctuation between both painterly approaches could be seen as a point of interest and a strength. Paint as paint, paint as line, line as annihilation of layer.

The cycle of destruction and creation can be found elsewhere in Jigger Cruz’s work. In his last exhibition, Surface Default , for instance, materials – pencil, the dripped and scraped paint, the occasional wash of gouache – are constantly overlapped. It is difficult to discern the order in which the materials were brought together with the result that these crude forms take on the appearance of sketches.

One cannot escape the feeling that they are half-finished, begging to be transformed into majestic paintings, returning to grandeur that would not look out of place when seen side by side with the referent art museum pieces. This notion is confirmed in the work on show in Depth Circus which uses oil on modestly sized canvasses. Using Spatialist techniques, the paintings demonstrate that Cruz’s approach to the connotations and qualities of a material could just be incidental, and there is nothing is wrong about it.

The works in Depth Circus have been worked on to create a complex network of painted, or more appropriately, squeezed detail. Expertly arranged to create paintings that play on both the physical and symbolic connotations of ‘depth’ reveals the control, restraint and calculations of Jigger Cruz, which are the most defining qualities of his works.

Julius Clar, Not here anymore at Light and Space Contemporary

In bringing collage and assemblage works that recall the twentieth century master, Joseph Cornell, Julius Clar confronts us with two distinct traditions, one rooted in the whimsical visions of Western Modernism and the other in the more politically charged spheres of the Filipino avant-garde aspirations of the 1960s that equally inform his practice. Clar’s world, both inside and outside of his boxes, is one drawn primarily from his quixotic imagination. The humdrum and marvel of his art conceals a reality that is often laden with melancholy and an aversion to connect directly with the world beyond his own memory of people and places. The countless techniques that he practiced over the years formed an alternative language at a time when the artist witnessed the obsolescence of artistic forms in collage and most notably in photography.

Clar has created a wide variety of handmade materials and ephemera largely in the form of book pages, rejected photographs, posters, and memorabilia. As a result, his rarely exhibited works combine his insightful experience as an academic and as a professional photographer.

What is notable of Clar is the articulation of a distinctly personal taste through the respective creation of new visual strategies that teeter on the fringes of what collage and assemblage could be and how they could be read. In this exhibition we find him exploring subjects and themes of travel, nature, antiques, poetry (the title was taken from a verse of TS Eliot’s The Wasteland) and representations of women, from dated documents and artifacts.

Clar’s artworks manifest a fixation with the manipulation of material: his collaging became a means to navigate emotional sites and significant terrains in the margin of the subconscious. By utilizing a range of materials continuously accumulated and scattered about in his home studio, Clar creates visual eccentricities that provoke a rundown of his own spiritual condition. These assemblages wallow in the activity of self-reflection, functioning as fragments shored against the artist’s ruin, examining the internal and external forces that plague and configure the constantly evolving perception of the artist and his surroundings.

About the Artist

Clar is known for employing alternative photographic processes such as the Van Dyke method of printing. He was Chair of the Photography Program at the De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde. In his career spanning over 30 years, Clar has shown work at the Ayala Museum, Lopez Museum, Cultural Center of the Philippines and Art Center, among others. His last solo exhibition was held at 20 Square – Silverlens Galleries in 2008.

Clar is slated to teach a black and white photography class with Light and Space Contemporary this May 2013.

View the exhibition through this website.

Jason Tecson, Terror Decor at West Gallery

Against the unwieldy physical stature associated with monumental sculptures, Tecson’s creatures appear almost farcically feeble, void of the ostentatious tradition of his artistic precedents and behave more like loaded figurines.  He effectively and a bit roguishly, undermines the canons of sculpture. The superficially solid body is overstated but becomes a flimsy vessel for unworldly appearances. His masks plays upon the devices of function: they are not wearable, unless by one of his elaborate monsters that serves to give a face to a hollow shell of a figure posed in an act of ruin. Drawing reference to a host of styles across sculptural movements, his intentionally gawky forms trade the high and enduring qualities of monumental bronze or marble for the humble aesthetic and manipulability of fiberglass. His sculptures appear physically imposing and powerful in their size and positioning yet fragmented and vulnerable in their construction. To build these works, he begins with a formation of clay and then replicates this as a styrofoam maquette before making the mold and then adds layers of fiberglass. When he settles with the texture, he finishes the work with coats of automotive paint. Some of his works incorporate the burns created by the resin solution on the styrofoam. Intended deformation is turned into decoration as if trying to wrestle a shape from a conceptual form. That each object, whether more human or more beast, stands on a pedestal, posing for the viewers, emphasizes their edified thingness and the tension between what they call into mind and what they actually appear to be.

His subjects lean to the mythological; the rough assemble and haphazard forms both disclose his process and a sense of reserve. Apex, a semblance of a sandman made from Fiberglass resin-soaked styrofoam wrapped over a skeletal support stands as a abject tribute to Jean Dubuffet; while Pipe, literally a blown-up pipe, almost mockingly harks back to Rene Magritte. His works are loaded with things like that and throughout Jason Tecson’s work is ingrained a reinvention of art historical considerations and their connotations, challenging these preconceptions by morphing them together. He creates his own alternative characters, pointing to a more intimate and esoteric source suggestive of our primal fears.

Monstrous yet unthreatening, Apex— part-human, part-beast—is in a midway pose between walking and crumbling, a Goliath weighted on the bulk of its hands and feet. Tecson’s sculpting investigates conventional aesthetic boundaries and artlessness.  The exhibition, Terror Decor, represents both a hopeful addition and a stark reminder of non-ambitious ventures in the sculptor’s production, one that nods affectionately to the contemporary riddles and enduring archetypes chosen from the margins of seemingly familiar monsters and their myths. – Geronimo F. Cristobal, Jr.

Light and Space boys

We are now installing beds in every studio in light and space. Not mainly for the convenience of sleeping inside the studio but rather to make the artists work on their projects as soon as they get up and until the very last hour. So they would have plenty of time to dream of exhibitions and the future of their careers and Philippine art. We’ve opened the mini-library for 24 hours access, the wi-fi shuts down at 6pm to allow for creative time unadulterated by the internet, and for them to take notice the subscriptions we have to magazines and book editions. Once in a while i invite them to come up to the office so we can “talk.” What ensues is a conversation to impinge upon them the roles (burdens) as young and emerging artists, to advance artistic creation. Occasionally I go down to the studios for guidance counseling (we take turns in the counseling) and to view the latest creations. Our residency is not a day-care programme for the young artist, it closely resembles a barracks where the only orders are to do their best and maximize their potential. As each day passes, I get the impression that we’ve been running a little Eugenics programme where the goal is to produce the artists with the most desirable traits, gradually eliminating undesirable elements down the evolutionary line such as non-reflexive assumption of modernist tendencies, our exoticized self-image as Filipino artists, and juvenile stupidity which not a few artists have carried on well into their mid-career. Yes this is a bit fascistic and I may be half-joking but it is a functioning residency. We do not whip the artists to work and neither do we hold anything back for them, no contracts, no peer pressures. We strive to improve conditions so once and for all we rid each and everyone the ills perpetrated in art schools and artistic cliques, to finally shake pretensions and expunge the shame and inferiority complex that we so unconsciously display whenever we showcase our artworks in international exhibitions. The world owes us nothing because we are in the third world.  Wow, the bed cushion feels really nice.

Redd Nacpil: Tolerant Animal

I admire his works. Incidentally he is also a close friend, my ka-batch in high school, and former college fraternity brother. In my opinion, he has included in this exhibit some of his most honest if not the best pieces in his young career. From all the years of knowing him, I’ve always felt that Redd Nacpil has something different and interesting to show in his works and that he should be given the attention accorded to an important young painter. He is in the league but was never really part of any shows by young contemporary figuratives some five years ago which thawed out quickly before they could be recognized any better. Many retired from painting, a few went on with other groups. On a rare solo flight, Redd always seems like he’s only just beginning and beginning strongly every time. With nearly inscrutable images, he never aimed to please or be didactic; he frequently balances chaotic instants or ecstasies like the last breath before dying moment in the painting shown with a tinge of mockery or underlying humour. It reminds me deeply and equally of art historical references (such as the Pieta) and of cliché movie scenes where people who are about to die actually get to speak so lucidly. And the irritation is profound. Please join me in opening his exhibition at Light and Space Contemporary on the 15th of December 2012, Saturday at 7pm.

Red Nacpil, I’ll take care of your wife for you, 2012, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in

RIP Jerry Araos

I learned from my news feed that Jerry Araos passed away today. He is not a friend or a person close to me but I have one vivid memory of him: I was in college and I was organizing a tree planting activity. Jerry was landscaping a derelict section of the UP Fine Arts campus in Diliman. Dean Tina Colayco tipped that he could sell me some seedlings. Prior to seeing him, people warned me that he was a difficult person and that his temperament could spurn people. But since I was going to haggle for the price of the seeds, negotiating with him was inevitable. Beneath his mix of bored and acidic personality though, I saw a person who was willing to engage young people. Jerry was sagacious and I figured that we could get along even if just for an afternoon’s conversation. It was drizzling anyway so I stayed in the workshop where he was working. He talked about his book entitled “The Garden Of Two Dragons Fucking.” I laughed at the mention of the title. He said, “I’m serious.” I haven’t read it but he went on with his story. I asked him about his Bonsai. And corrected me, “Bansoy not Bonsai.” He said what he’s doing is Filipino and he would gladly decorate colleges in UP for free if he were allowed. He also talked about the Manuela tree and the Aurora tree, named after the famous Malacanang couple. The Aurora tree was among the first planted on campus and it was named after Dona Aurora because she planted them herself. I’m not sure whether he discovered it or coined the name for it long after. When the conversation came to my agenda. He asked about my budget. “Magkano ba?” a little irritated of the fact that I seem to be cutting him in his dreamy stream-of-consciousness monologue. “Mga 6,000 po,” I said, a little shy. “Ang cheap mo naman! nagbutal ka pa… gawin mo nang 10,000!” At that time, I really only had 2,000 pesos in my pocket. He said, it was going to be more presentable in the photos if we planted young trees and not seeds. I agreed. Maybe I wanted the photos to look good, maybe I wanted to plant more trees, or maybe I was just carried away by the man’s passion for horticulture that it somehow transferred. Anyway… to cut the long story short, after a few days I came back with the amount. I didn’t know how appealing it was but people would actually give money so they could name the trees. The dean, the faculty, the student council, the sorority girls, my gang. They all took photos with the trees while pretending to shovel soil on it, when in fact they only spilled some and let the gardeners do the rest. I looked for Jerry but he wasn’t there for the photos. He finished the landscaping and was probably on to his next green project. In his life, he may have impacted on as many or more people as the number of trees he has grown. He also left us extra trees so I could plant them elsewhere in UP. I wasn’t able to thank him for this. Years passed but we never saw each other again. Once in a while when I pass by the campus and get a glimpse of the trees, growing taller and leafier, I recall Jerry and that conversation. The color of that meeting and the smell of rain, how memories of meeting some good people are planted and then just grow even without tending.

RIP Jerry Araos

Rodel Tapaya: Deities

Rodel Tapaya, Tungkung-Langit, acrylic on canvas and mirror glass, 49.5in x 39.5in, 2012, courtesy of the artist

The depictions of these native gods resurface in Rodel Tapaya’s work from oral traditions around ancient beliefs in the Philippine religion, a religion that believes that gods existed in many forms and that there is an invisible realm within our world. Contained in the format of a portrait, they are rendered as abstracted combinations of images that relate to forgotten notions on the nature of the spiritual realm. These seven characters, expressive of their archaic origins, form a pantheon of false representations that turn the idols as portals into the recesses of dreams. The painter is interested not in capturing the likeness but the spirit of his subjects. After all, they existed largely without bodies and their anamorphic faces can be read as reflecting the nature they dominated.
Meanwhile, we are caught by the eyes made of mirrors reflecting our gaze, signifying an ageless and impenetrable existence, one that is enveloped in the splendor of mysterious vistas. In arresting the energy of his images, Tapaya creates work that surpasses the subject’s materiality. The milieu becomes ambiguous and in many works there is no indication of facial features, impregnating a sense of infinity and fluctuation to an otherwise distinguishable silhouette.
These works are exhibited in mirror frames, as if altar saints – treasured relics of a more religious era. The manner of presentation renders them untouchable on both literal and figurative levels despite the approachability of their intimate size and physical presence. These idols become surrogates of the people they watch over. The painter breathes life into the mystique, challenging the recording of the imagination. The paintings, accordingly, are not to be read as honest depictions, but rather, as transcending reality, and as visual rumination on the past. The works emerge almost in worship; an impulse to inhabit known material and discover unexpected points of congregation. In merging abstruse and improbable elements, the lines are erased between our vernacular belief and fine art, spectator and spectacle, retention and imagination across time. – Geronimo Cristobal, Jr.