SAM PENASO man & myth

by Paolo Gerero

Sam Penaso is one of the most sought-after contemporary Filipino artists whose multidisciplinary practice awes in breadth and depth. A multipotentialite who excels in traditional painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, performance art, and hybrids of these practices, Penaso is held in the highest esteem by his artist friends, regarded with admiration by collectors and art enthusiasts, and the young ones who wish to walk in his legendary footsteps mention his name with a certain reverence, bordering on veneration.

But who is the man behind the myth? Who was he before he became the art star that he is today, and what lies ahead for Sam?

Humble Beginnings

Penaso was born in Guindulman, Bohol, in 1974. Named Samuel by his parents, he shares the name with the Old Testament prophet who is known for his oracular visions. In a way, the name is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the young artist Samuel, through the gift and the power of his artistic vision, became a man revered and renowned, just like his venerable namesake.

But before he became the Sam Penaso, he was a boy drawing figures on the paper side of cigarette foils while helping man their small sari-sari store. Along with these early explorations on unconventional materials which seemed to foreshadow the unorthodox and free-spirited nature of his career at present, the young Penaso was introduced to the world of art by two uncles who had a business painting cinema billboards, depicting the faces of actors on huge plywood panels before digitally-made movie posters became a thing. He would help them in their studio, which also functioned as an art sign shop that took commissions for hand-painted signages and canvas streamers by the meter.

The studio helper boy grew into a teenager, and seemingly hand in hand with his adolescence came the need to help his family make a living, so while in high school, he became a fisherman to help make ends meet. As he juggled his schooling and work, he never forgot about art, dreaming of going to Manila and making a name for himself.

Silkscreen Stories

Set foot and spread roots in Manila the young Sam did, through the patronage of an uncle with a printing business in Manila. There, he began to know silkscreen printing intimately, discovering its techniques, secrets, and possibilities — at the hands of his uncle, he learned how to transfer and replicate images from photographs, illustrations, designs, and visuals from other sources by pushing paint and ink through a carefully-masked screen onto a substrate which will bear the final output.

This and other manual graphic design gigs — manual and completely unaided by computers, truly a painstaking and back-breaking vocation back then — became his means to support his education at the Technological University of the Philippines, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts.

In those days, silkscreen printing or serigraphy was only a process with which the working student Sam applied photographic images to a variety of substrates, the most common being t-shirts and signages ordered by patrons of his uncle’s business. Little did he know that the process would become a signature of his iconic artworks and a cornerstone of his artistic practice. The humble process that funded his college education is now the star of his impressive arsenal of skills.

To this day, even as he enjoys the fame and recognition attendant to a brilliant and exemplary artist at the height of his career, he credits his uncle for introducing him to the art of serigraphy, and is unabashed in his admission that his continued use of the process is an homage to his well-remembered mentor and benefactor, a bond that tenderly tethers his feet to the ground of his humble beginnings.

The Rise Of A Star

The journey from Guindalman to the heights of art stardom is a long and winding journey, and not without its difficulties. But Penaso is armed with industry and tenacity — he does not give up in the face of hardship, and is always working to create something new, never stopping to rest on his laurels.

Like many artists, Sam had his fair share of challenges when he was just starting out. He began to work full time as an artist straight out of college, but it took him quite some time before he found his moorings; the art scene in Manila is cutthroat and ruthless, and the artist, far away from the comfort of his home and the comforting familiarity of his mother tongue, would find himself longing to return to the town of his birth.

Homesick and still unestablished, the then-novice Penaso was repeatedly rejected by galleries who failed to understand his vision, and the same was true for clients who did not want to bet on someone so young and so unknown. But instead of succumbing to failure, the artist forged on, continuously honing his craft and sharpening his vision, putting brush to canvas and ink to screen, and discovering other modalities of expression in various media, always pushing the boundaries further with his experimentations. To this day, this experimentative and unorthodox approach to creation remains a staple of his art practice.

His efforts to become a better artist were eventually rewarded by recognition and acclaim. One of his first victories was in the 29th Shell National Student Art Competition in 1996. He then went on to win many other awards and recognition, which include the Young Painters Annual (2001), Beppu Asia Biennale of Contemporary Art (2006), Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (2011), Art Association of the Philippines Art Competition (2012), Winter Grand Salon Show (New York, 2013), GSIS Art Competition (2014 and 2016), Metrobank Awards for Continuing Excellence and Service (2018), Philippine Art Awards Award of Merit (2018), and Don Papa Rum Art Competition (2019).

In addition to these awards, Penaso is also the recipient of multiple grants and international residencies from various bodies which include the Thailand-Philippines Art Exchange (2005), Asian Cultural Council International Studio and Curatorial Program (New York, 2013), ArtHub (Abu Dhabi, 2014) and Don Papa Rum (London, 2019). He has also represented the Philippines in prestigious international events such as the Nippon International Performance Art Festival (Japan, 2005 and 2011), Exhibition Exchange in Hanoi, Vietnam (2018), Beijing International Art Biennale (2019), and in various exhibitions in the United States, Germany, Austria, Singapore, and Thailand.

With More than 30 solo exhibitions, over 90 group shows, and almost 70 art performances under his belt, and artworks in prestigious collections such as those of the Embassies of London, Vienna, and Berlin, various top hotels, resorts, and museums, the boy who once drew on cigarette foils toiled his way to become a bright star in the firmament of Philippine Art History, and deserves all of the success he is reaping today.

The Stripewalker

With his passion for performance art and projects that defy categorization and inspire contemplation, Penaso gave birth to an alter ego called Stripewalker, which he conceptualized in 2009 as a way to stand out among his equally-brilliant peers from the Tupada Action Art Media, of which he is a core group member.

Inspired by Sam’s very own striped abstract paintings, Stripewalker dons an outfit composed of a coverall suit of fabric printed with horizontal lines of various colors based on his very own colorful artworks, matching striped shoes, and a gas mask that obscures the entire face. Emancipated from the artist’s original identity, Stripewalker is unfettered by race, gender, nationality, and the many other boxes that we put ourselves in. Stripewalker is a fearless, invincible entity who rejects categorization and embraces diversity, travels the globe, and interacts with cultures, communities, and artworks. The character will be around for a very long time — the artist even jokes that he will be buried in the suit!

Penaso documents the journeys of the character through the eponymous Stripewalker Project. In this manner, the artist is no longer just the creator of the artwork, but becomes the artwork himself.

A Journey Of Imagery

All of these experiences from his childhood until today have profoundly impacted Sam’s works. Like many artists before him, he began with images inspired by the world around him, his interest, his experiences, and his ideologies rendered in realistic styles. As the artist developed and grew in understanding, these ideas represented by realistic figures began to become abstracted, turning more towards their essence and leaving behind their recognizable forms. Eventually, the artist found his signature style, which became visually identifiable with his name, to the point that one could look at his artwork without looking at any labels and know that it is by Sam Penaso.

His paintings are characterized by serigraphed images and fragments of portraiture and human figures, anatomy and birds and beasts enmeshed, emerging from, and disappearing into quilt-like abstracted forms and juxtaposed with his trademark letters and numbers. These appear on traditional canvas and more experimental materials such as sheets of aluminum, the latter seemingly giving homage to the first substrate that received his earliest works. These range from the most somber monochromes to riotously jubilant explosions of color.

His sculptures, on the other hand, are more solemn and subdued. Working with steel, the artist exploits the metal by cutting up sheets and reconfiguring them into shapes and forms that range from echoes of the frenetic energy of his quilt-like compositions, to more sensuous and sometimes even severe forms that entice the eyes with simple and stately lines.

This wealth of and uniqueness of his visual language is thoroughly expressed in the suite of three paintings and two sculptures from 2021.

The artist fills his canvas with bold strokes of color overlaid by a grid of innumerable lines that resemble a massive, nebulous scaffolding in “Infrastructurescape”, hinting at something grand being built. The mass of colors behind the scaffolding is ambiguous as it is amorphous — we are left to wonder if the “infrastructure” taking shape is indeed a structure of steel and stone, or an organic leviathan yet to be named.

The scaffolding acquires definite identities in “Wirescape 99”, where Penaso creates figures of various colors and poses using grids that appear to be distorted from being two dimensional into three dimensions by wrapping around invisible cores in the shape of humans of various ages and body types, frozen in a myriad poses of action and inaction. At the lower corners of the composition, we see a nod to the merging of art and pop culture in the grid-image of a Kaws figure, and an enigmatic pairing of a pug and a horse.

Penaso further refines his figuration in “Earth Hour”, masterfully depicting a face in screentone. Overlaid by a watch dial, various fauna, and a single vase of flowers, the composition is a sobering reflection on just how much time humanity has spent destroying the earth, and how little time we have left to save it.

In sharp contrast to the organic diversity of his paintings, “Infinity” and “infinity 89” are sinuous sculptures of stainless steel. They are avant-garde ouroboroi, self-devouring snakes which represent the infinite and cyclical nature of time — past, present, and future weave into themselves with gleaming, highly polished loops of cold metal.

The Myth Is The Man

With so much said about the legendary rise and reign of Sam Penaso, his humility and gratitude show the truth of who he truly is.

Despite the height of his flight, the artist maintains a cheerful, humorous, and genial attitude. He always greets with a smile, readily cracks jokes, engages people in sincere conversations, and is thoroughly committed to helping those that he can, especially aspiring artists who wish to make it big like him. The artists from his native Bohol have a special place in his heart, and in between a very busy schedule of making his artworks and traveling for art events, he helps them become better artists by sharing valuable advice and building bridges for them in the greater art scene. He also plans to build a museum in his hometown in the future, a goal which will bring him full-circle to his beginnings.

The man that is Sam Penaso is a complete antithesis of his imposing and almost mythical art persona, proving that the bright spirit of the boy who drew on palarâ and fished in the seas of Guindulman has survived the ravages of time, and lives forevermore in the heart of the artist.