LIKHA ROSARIO BITANGA SOLO EXHIBITION

Exhibition Notes

Resolving an entire art exhibition into a single word in order to encapsulate the totality of the value and significance of the art works into a single title is a daunting task. This can be done only when all the pieces have been completed, since the act of naming is after the fact. This is a dilemma to Charito Bitanga. To her, each art work is a discrete ideation with a specific connotation, and therefore, consequence. Even variations in a series are not repetitions of the same theme, but are nuances that depict different values, that must be discerned with specificity.

The range of subject matters, too, complicates the issue. She dealt with birds, sunflowers, the moon, orchestral compositions, a song, emergence from within, moonlight on rooftops, a floating apple, a misshapen pale bottle, even the state of her mind. Then, there too is the mode of attack on the canvas that individualizes each work since treatment must be specific to the subject. There is also the way it has to be depicted in order to define the final cause of the work, and its impact on the viewer.

The resolution came by way of how she conceives of art. To her there is no such distinctions on the way art is created. There is no such thing as conservative, abstract, and non-objective/non-figurative categories the way art is described in Philippine art circles as popularized by the moguls of the Art Association of the Philippines in its infancy. To her all art is an abstraction from reality in various degrees of removal, creating a new reality of its own. To her, it is a participation in the act of divine creation. In a word, all of the paintings included in this exhibition are acts of creation — pieces of LIKHA.