Level 7, Booth 36 The Link, Ayala Center Makati City February 22 - 24 10 AM - 9 PM
Mars Galang Betsy Westendorp Roberto Chabet Ray Albano Roberto M.A. Robles Justin Nuyda Alfredo Aquilizan Joe Bautista Jinggoy Buensuceso
THERE ARE NO ONE-LINERS HERE Essentially, abstraction is not an indulgence in the artifice of gestures (or art for art sake) but a necessary human way of checking responses—visual responses foremost—and to transmit new signs of socio-environmental change. ~ Raymundo Albano A quick Google search for the definition of one-liners provided the classic Merriam-Webster “a very succinct joke” definition. Scrolling down to the bottom of the page, “Searches related to one-liner” appears: clever one liners flirty one liners funny one liners on life rude one liners
funny one liners for adults funniest one liners ever heard funny one liners clean actually funny one liners
Note to reader: The top definition in the Urban Dictionary is “a perfectly timed, short, witty remark. Used to put someone in their place, put someone down, make a humorous remark or observation, or to simply show the world how awesome you are.” The critical cultural references for what a one-liner could imply is absent. This writer’s subjective definition for one-liners in the arts: Cliché. Didactic. Blatant. Superficial. Easy. Clearly, a one-liner need not be interpreted as negative or simplistic.
It can be concise, allusive, and contemplative. In the context of this essay, the use of the phrase “one-liner” is a critique of the negative connotation and perception that art, which is abstract, minimalist, and/or conceptual, is reductive, singular in meaning, or meaningless. Galleria Duemila’s Art Fair Philippines 2019 selection of works continues to showcase multi-layered narratives of the artists’ interests. Raymundo Albano, Alfredo Aquilizan, Joe Bautista, Jinggoy Buensuceso, Roberto Chabet, Marciano Galang, Justin Nuyda, Roberto M.A. Robles, and Betsy Westendorp’s artworks are serial in themes and aesthetic sensibilities. Their solitary explorations are windows into metaphorical environments. Representing two generations, masters of diverse artistic practices and influencers across generations—Chabet (b.1937. died 2013), Albano (b.1947. died 1985), Galang (b.1945. died 2001) and Bautista (b.1951)—had and continue to have auspicious careers. A brief glimpse into these artists’ backgrounds, one can see their interconnectivity. Chabet studied Architecture, Albano-Literature, Galang-Fine Arts, and Bautista-Fine Arts and Advertising. Chabet was the first director for the newly founded Cultural Center of the Philippines and served as the Visual Arts curator from 1967-1970 followed by Albano in 1971-1985. Chabet, Albano and Galang began their careers as Philippine modernist painters and went on to become the early innovators of contemporary art with Chabet at the helm of this movement. Chabet and Bautista were both members of the seminal conceptual art group, Shop 6 (1974-1980). In addition, Chabet initiated the CCP Thirteen Artist Awards. Albano, Galang and Bautista were recipients of this award.
Upon closer examination of the works featured in this year’s AFP made by these four artists, one cannot claim as a western one-liner that they are derivative of American and European artists and movements such as John Baldessari, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, and Arte Povera, to name a few. They were, in fact, created in parallel universes. Chabet’s Untitled (Head Series) (1986-1992) are playful post-Dada collages comprised of pop culture images of the mundane from newspaper and magazine clippings, and monochromatic construction paper cutouts. A reoccurring faceless portrait serves as the background for each of the eight pieces. Their meanings subtly differ from one environment to another, if seen as a whole piece. As individual works—words, phrases, narratives come to mind—like self-contained non-linear thought-bubbles. Albano’s Circular Series and two Untitled works painted on cement paper bags speak to impermanence and the elliptical nature of life. Galang’s Untitled 1969 intimate 12-inch square painting is concerned with pictorial structure and color fields. These Philippine artists were the pioneers of their day, pushing the boundaries of their artistic practices. They created through life experiences without feeling the need to reflect them in figurative and concrete forms. Bautista’s more recent architecture-inspired paintings on paper and canvas are a bold departure from his more conceptual installations, wall works created with found objects and everyday materials, and photography produced in the 70s-90s. His current body of work is consistent with his emphasis on ideas, now translated into an on-going experimentation with abstracting
landscapes, spatial and temporal planes. Three-dimensional topographical and geometrical perspectives are actualized in two-dimensional spaces, utilizing a more organic process that is precise although no less challenging than his early oeuvre that catapulted him into the spotlight 40 years ago. Influenced by his studies with Robert Beuchamp, a former student of Abstract Expressionist, Hans Hofmann at the Arts Student League in the late-1980s, Aquilizan (b.1962) went on to produce a series of contemplative gestural paintings that call attention to his environmental concerns. His mixed media works on paper—Mangrove, Phytoplancton & Seagrass, Knox, and Prinston Butterfly—invite the viewer into ecosystems, fusing written and expressionistic visual language into lyrical poetry. Love of paint and the act of painting are the ties that bind Robles (b.1957), Nuyda (b.1944), and Westendorp (b.1927) together. Longevity of their passion for their practices and insistence of following their vision/s seals their success. In Robles’, “Saluysoy: A Eulogy To The Filipino” artist statement for his retrospective at Ateneo Art Gallery in collaboration with Galleria Duemila (2011), he succinctly says about his work: “The art forms hold biographies and autobiographies; their narratives are an oration for the living, for the spirits of our forefathers, and the Filipino race to live its origin.” Perhaps to some viewers’ eyes, such a pronouncement is difficult to construe. And to others, a welcoming motion to enter into his paintings and sculptures with wonderment and trust. Flying Kites and Dragonflies, Barking Dog, and The Old Pond, A Frog Jumps in, The Sound of the Water,
the titles of his featured painting and sculptures provide these passageways into Robles’ world. Nuyda’s four commissioned Search Mindscape paintings evoke feelings of dance, flight, movement that flow beyond the canvases’ frame. They are a homage to his other great love—butterflies. His masterful, signature painting technique of using several brushes bound together to form sweeping multi-colored unified strokes unfolds the imagination to magnificent nature-scapes. To believe and/or interpret non-figurative paintings as noncommunicative and exactly the same are gross misperceptions and tiresome stereotypes. Stand before Westendorp’s thirteen paintings, and you, the viewer, will feel what you see and viceversa. Her impressionistic, ephemeral landscapes depict that which is transient in nature. These light-handed painterly strokes of a spectrum of muted blues, greys, and reds conjure up images of tireless sunrises, sunsets, gathering storms, rays of light in an open sky or upon a vast sea. The child’s imagination is a treasured gift, especially when an artist can infinitely draw from this scared place. Buensuceso’s (b.1982) Ancient Cities of Children I and II sculptures made of charcoal, century old mango tree, Legos, and plastic toys tell a tale of destruction caused by fire and what can emerge from such contradictory beauty. Built within and upon these remnants of trees is an amusing, integrated and inventive world while at the same time, a critique of urban development and experiences. Such ambiguity opens rather than closes one’s imagination and ability to enter the spirit world while still being situated in tangible reality.
These nine iconoclasts resist and transcend one-liners in the arts. The ways in which they innovate and creatively address lived and imagined socio-cultural concerns are, indeed, “visual responses” to Raymundo Albano’s insightful definition of abstraction. Angel Velasco Shaw, 2019
Angel Velasco Shaw is a media artist, educator, curator, and cultural organizer living in Manila and New York City. Her documentaries have screened in American, European, and Asian film festivals, museums, galleries, and schools. They are in the film collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Cinematheque Suisse Schweizer Filmarchiv, Casa Asia, and the Museum of Modern Art. She is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences/Communication Arts Department, and the Founding Director of the Institute for Heritage, Culture and the Arts at Philippine Women’s University. She has curated and produced several visual art and film exhibitions, and cross-cultural exchange projects such as, The Inverted Telescope, Markets of Resistance, Women as (Mythical) Hero and Provocations: Philippine Documentary Photography (co-curated with Neal Oshima). Shaw co-edited the anthology Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of An Imperial Dream: 1899-1999 with Luis H. Francia (New York University Press, 2002) and self-published Silent Stories (1985).
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Mars Galang
Betsy Westendorp
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Painting No. 337-1986 oil on masonite 41.00 x 33.00 cm / 16.15 x 13.00 in 1986
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Painting 1506-18 oil on masonite 21.70 x 28.60 cm / 8.55 x 11.27 in 2018
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Painting No. 1423-2016 oil on canvas 24.00 x 31.50 cm / 9.46 x 12.41 in 2016
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Painting No. 1437-18 oil on masonite 91.00 x 67.00 cm / 35.85 x 26.40 in 2018
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Painting 1514-2018 oil on masonite 22.00 x 29.50 cm / 8.67 x 11.62 in 2018
Untitled lacquer on wood 30.50 x 30.50 cm / 12.02 x 12.02 in 1969
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Painting 1509-2018 oil on canvas 36.00 x 36.00 cm / 14.18 x 14.18 in 2018
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Painting No. 033-1980 oil on masonite 38.00 x 46.00 cm / 14.97 x 18.12 in 1980
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Painting No. 1117 A oil on canvas 45.00 x 66.50 cm / 17.73 x 26.20 in 2007
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Painting No. 42 oil on masonite 33.00 x 41.00 cm / 13.00 x 16.15 in 1982
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Painting No. 1425-18 oil on masonite 21.50 x 29.50 cm / 8.47 x 11.62 in 2018
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Painting No. 27 oil on masonite 42.00 x 33.00 cm / 16.55 x 13.00 in 1980
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Painting No. 176 acrylic on lawanit 31.50 x 42.00 cm / 12.41 x 16.55 in 1980
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Painting No. 0041-1982 oil on masonite 41.00 x 33.00 cm / 16.15 x 13.00 in 1982
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Roberto Chabet
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 28.00 x 25.00 cm / 11.03 x 9.85 in 1992
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 33.00 x 23.00 cm / 13.00 x 9.06 in 1986
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 31.50 x 24.50 cm / 12.41 x 9.65 in 1986
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 28.00 x 25.50 cm / 11.03 x 10.05 in 1986
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 28.00 x 21.50 cm / 11.03 x 8.47 in 1986
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 28.00 x 25.00 cm / 11.03 x 9.85 in 1986
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 28.00 x 24.00 cm / 11.03 x 9.46 in 1986
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Untitled (Head Series) collage on paper 31.00 x 21.50 cm / 12.21 x 8.47 in 1992
Ray Albano
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Circular Series (Blue & Yellow) mixed media on cement bag paper 50.80 x 50.80 cm / 20.02 x 20.02 in 1982
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Misty Violet and Green acrylic on wood 122.00 x 81.30 cm / 48.07 x 32.03 in 1984
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Circular Series (Red & Yellow) mixed media on cement bag paper 50.80 x 50.80 cm / 20.02 x 20.02 in 1982
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Untitled (Left Tape) mixed media on cement bag paper 61.60 x 50.80 cm / 24.27 x 20.02 in 1981
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Untitled (Yellow Center) mixed media on cement bag paper 61.60 x 50.80 cm / 24.27 x 20.02 in 1981
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Roberto M.A. Robles
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Barking Dog carrara white marble 28.00 x 18.00 x 18.00 cm / 11.03 x 7.09 x 7.09 in 1998
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The Old Pond, A Frog Jumps In, The Sound of the Water marble, lead, aluminum, gold leaf and silver tie 15.20 x 20.50 x 46.00 cm / 5.99 x 8.08 x 18.12 in 2000
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Flying Kites and Dragonflies acrylic & oil on canvas (diptych) 122.00 x 320.00 cm / 48.07 x 126.08 in 2000
Alfredo Aquilizan
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Phytoplancton & Seagrass polymer paint and charcoal on paper 94.00 x 65.00 cm / 37.04 x 25.61 in 2007
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Mangrove polymer paint and charcoal on paper 65.00 x 94.00 cm / 25.61 x 37.04 in 2007
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Prinston Butterfly mixed media on paper 64.90 x 50.00 cm / 25.57 x 19.70 in 2006
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Knox mixed media on paper 64.90 x 50.00 cm / 25.57 x 19.70 in 2005
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Justin Nuyda
Joe Bautista
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Search Mindscape: Going Out For A Stroll oil on canvas 122.00 x 64.00 cm / 48.07 x 25.22 in 2019
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Architectural Traffic Line acrylic on canvas 152.40 x 91.44 cm / 60.05 x 36.03 in 2019
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Search Mindscape: Off to the Market oil on canvas 122.00 x 64.00 cm / 48.07 x 25.22 in 2019
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The Wedding of Geometry and Nature I acrylic on board 96.50 x 66.00 cm / 38.02 x 26.00 in 2018
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Search Midscape: Mt. Talinis oil on canvas 92.00 x 122.00 cm / 36.25 x 48.07 in 2019
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The Wedding of Geometry and Nature II acrylic on board 96.50 x 66.00 cm / 38.02 x 26.00 in 2018
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Search Mindscape oil on canvas 92.00 x 122.00 cm / 36.25 x 48.07 in 2019
Jinggoy Buensuceso
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Natural Topography 1 acrylic on board 48.00 x 66.00 cm / 18.91 x 26.00 in 2018
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Ancient Cities of Children 2 charcoal , century old mango tree, lego and toys 35.00 x 25.50 x 22.50 cm / 13.79 x 10.05 x 8.87 in 2018
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Natural Topography 2 acrylic on board 48.00 x 66.00 cm / 18.91 x 26.00 in 2018
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Ancient Cities of Children 1 charcoal, century old mango tree, lego and toys 33.00 x 26.00 x 25.80 cm / 13.00 x 10.24 x 10.17 in 2018
GALLERIA DUEMILA
ART FAIR PHILIPPINES Feb. 22 - 24, 2019
Art Director
Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz
Exhibition Team Johanna Labitoria Jose Joeffrey Baba Gabriel Abalos Vicente Amancio, Jr.
Thess Ponce Bing Francisco Roy Abrenica Edgar Bautista
Exhibition Notes
Angel Velasco Shaw
Graphic Design
Marikit Lagunzad
Copyright 2019 Galleria Duemila, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system transmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the abovementioned copyright holders, with the exception of reasonably brief excerpts and quotations used in articles, critical essays or research.
GALLERIA DUEMILA was established in 1975 by Italian born Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz. Duemila means “twentieth century”, and it was this vision that inspired Duemila’s advocacy in promoting and preserving Philippine contemporary art. To date, it is the longest running commercial art gallery in the Philippines maintaining a strong international profile. With the vision to expose its artists locally and within the ASEAN region, Duemila complements its exhibits with performances, readings and musical events in its custom-built gallery in Pasay City, Manila. Galleria Duemila takes pride in being the only local gallery to publish and mount retrospectives of artists as part of its advocacy in pursuing art historical research and scholarship. With the collaboration of institutions, Duemila has mounted the retrospectives of Roberto M.A. Robles (Ateneo Art Gallery, 2011), Duddley Diaz (Vargas Museum, 2009), Julie Lluch Dalena (Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2008). It has also published a book on Diosdado Magno Lorenzo (National Library of the Philippines, 2009) and produced a major Pacita Abad exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2004.
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