WITHOUT WALLS by Francis Francisco

WITHOUT WALLS A tour of Philippine Paintings at the turn of the millennium

authors Isabel Ching Lena Cobangbang Joselina Cruz Marc Gaba Riel Hilario Lisa Ito Siddharta Perez

We would like to thank the following people who have made important contributions to this book's production: - All the featured artists, the galleries who represent them and the photographers who documented their works. - All the institutions and private individuals who have provided us with images and those who made their collections accessible to us. - The authors Isabel Ching, Lena Cobangbang, Joselina Cruz, Marc Gaba, Riel Hilario, Lisa Ito & Siddharta Perez.

We would also like to specially thank the following individuals for all their help and assistance: Andrew James E. Arellano, Bobby Abastillas, Dawn Atienza, Jay Amante, Ronnel Britania, Joel Baylon, Gemma Boydon, Atty. Joel Butuyan, Joel Candor, Fernando Cerro, David Chan, Mariano Ching, Irene Cometa, Carlos O. Cojuangco, Ed Cua, Budiman Darmansjah, Pardo de Leon, Ludovico Destacamento, Benmar Espera, Carmen Estrellado, Dr. Robinzon Fernandez, Tina Fernandez, Evaristo & Alegria Francisco, Toddy & Mel Francisco, Sylvia Gascon, Gilbert Gaylican, Neli Go, Yorkie Gomez, Bing Gonzaga, Noriko Ishimatsu, Geraldine Javier, Bong Lim, Mandee Barretto Lim, Agnes Lin, Trickie Lopa, Isa Lorenzo, Pilar Manzanares, Sol Noble, Jaime Nolido, Sandra Palou, Rachel Rillo, Veronica Rivera, Miguel Rosales, Dr. Toto Salgado, Marya Salang, Romeo Salivio, Raquel Samaniego, Soler & Mona Santos, Vita Sarenas, Melanie Silos, Patch Silva, Alden Villanueva, Imelda Uy, John Valenzuela, Tisha Varona, Cesar Villalon Jr., Olivia B. Yao, Louraine Zammudio

WITHOUT WALLS: A tour of Philippine Paintings at the turn of the millennium Copyright ÂŠ 2010 by Winrum Publishing Works copyright ÂŠ the artists All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without the written consent of the copyright owners. ISBN 978-971-93867-1-1 Produced and published by Winrum Publishing Postal address: E224, Alexandra Condominium, 29 Meralco Avenue Ortigas Center, Pasig City, Philippines Email address: winrum.publishing@gmail.com Editor Francis Francisco Co-editor Maria Chittyrene C. Labiran Text Isabel Ching Lena Cobangbang Joselina Cruz Marc Gaba Riel Hilario Lisa Ito Siddharta Perez Design Consultant

Riel Hilario

Layout & Research Assistant

Veronica Rivera

Frontispiece: Pamela Yan-Santos, OBSERVE SILENCE, 2008, acrylic, collage & serigraphy on canvas, 61 x 76 cm Dr. Toto Salgado collection Page 6

: Mark Justiniani, ISLA, 2007, oil on canvas, 114 x 99 cm Toddy & Mel Francisco collection

All measurements in this book are given in centimeters (approx.), height by width by (depth).

Contents

PREFACE

8 COSTANTINO ZICARELLI 12 PAULO VINLUAN 16 LIV ROMUALDEZ VINLUAN 20 ALVIN VILLARUEL 22 CRIS VILLANUEVA JR. 24 RONALD VENTURA 28 OLAN VENTURA 32 CLAIRELYNN UY 34 WIRE TUAZON 38 TATONG RECHETA TORRES 42 JAY TICAR 44 RODEL TAPAYA 48 CJ TAÑEDO 52 MARIA TANIGUCHI 56 CHRISTIAN TAMONDONG 58 YASMIN SISON 62 PAMELA YAN-SANTOS 66 JOSÉ SANTOS III 70 JAYPEE SAMSON 72 DON M. SALUBAYBA 76 IAN QUIRANTE 80 HANNAH PETTYJOHN 84 LYNYRD PARAS 88 JASON OLIVERIA 92 ELAINE NAVAS 96 MAYA MUÑOZ 100 FERDIE MONTEMAYOR 104 KEIYE MIRANDA 108 JOVEN MANSIT 110 NEIL MANALO 114 JOY MALLARI 118 JOSE LEGASPI 120 ROMEO LEE 122 ROBERT LANGENEGGER 126 MARK OROZCO JUSTINIANI 130 WINNER JUMALON 134 GERALDINE JAVIER 138 GUERRERO Z. HABULAN 140 EMMANUEL GARIBAY 144 PEDRO GARCIA II 146 NONA GARCIA 150 MARK ANDY GARCIA 152 LYRA GARCELLANO 156 CARLO ACERDEN GABUCO 160 KAREN OCAMPO FLORES 164 PATRICIA EUSTAQUIO 168 ALFREDO ESQUILLO JR. 172 KIKO ESCORA 176 CHRISTINA DY 180 RANELLE DIAL 184 BEMBOL DELA CRUZ 188 ANTON DEL CASTILLO 190 PARDO DE LEON 194 KAWAYAN DE GUIA 198 LESLIE DE CHAVEZ 202 MARINA CRUZ 206 LOUIE CORDERO 210 CHARLIE CO 214 MARIANO CHING 218 JONATHAN CHING 222 RONALD CARINGAL 224 ANNIE CABIGTING 228 LYLE BUENCAMINO 232 BRUIHN 236 LAWRENCE BORSOTO 238 ELMER BORLONGAN 242 PLET BOLIPATA 246 JOEL "WELBART" BARTOLOME 250 ANDRES BARRIOQUINTO 254 AMY ARAGON 256 MARCEL ANTONIO 260 LEONARDO AGUINALDO 262 LEO ABAYA

PREFACE A Note at the Threshold The moving idea behind the production of this book is a conjectural exhibition. To be specific: it is to be an exposition on representational painting featuring works by foremost Filipino artists active at the turn of the millennium. It is a project that echoes André Malraux’s concept of a museum without walls in his book, The Voices of Silence. It is an experiment, indeed, a strenuous hope, of projecting a large-scale exhibition in our minds through the portable dimensions of time/space within a succession of pages. It is an art exhibition we can always visit at will, and at ease, without the worry of closing time and travel time. In contemporary parlance the idea of Without Walls is known as a theoretical event. Limitations notwithstanding, these are in no way a barrier to our effort to imagine, envision, albeit in detail, an art event that can take place in our minds. (Perhaps with more effort, it can manifest in reality.) By choosing to foreground images of artworks on the printed page, there is an effort to straddle the obstacles of organizing such an exhibition especially with restrictions imposed by logistics, prohibitive expense, negotiations in art scene micro politics (fences of peerage, exclusivity, stardom) and market forces that are at once heavily charged, fluid and cross-cultural. But why? In a word: zest. The first ten years of the 2nd millennium for Philippine art was a cause for excitement in its development and movement. Buoyed perhaps by the impetus of millennial change, Filipino artists crossed lines of creative disciplines, technique, craft, and idiom to tinker with new possibilities of imagery. Yet unlike past instances of avant-gardism where appreciation of such creativity dawdles a bit longer, a new generation or a new spirit of art appreciation and connoisseurship was in synch: market for contemporary art was not just there, but it was present everywhere, especially within the Asian region. The birth of new galleries, art fairs, contemporary art auctions, projects and events within the region suddenly reached a ferment of such a degree unheard-of since a similar ferment was abruptly halted by the Asian Financial crash. This book is a testament to that decade of Filipino artistry that rode on the wave of such promising milieu. As of the time during this book’s production, even the local art scene has dramatically changed owing to the aggressive art market of the region, where contemporary artworks (and by young-and-upcoming artists) have acquired higher values on the auction block as well as in the secondary market. Collectors across the Asian region are active in purchasing contemporary pieces. As a consequence, in the foreground are not only mid-career artists but also younger artists whose stages of maverick experimentation and figuration sharply define the image of the first millennial decade. With varied players and taken at face value, the contemporary art scene is as heterogeneous as it can be - and considering representational painting (as the contents of this book can attest) such variety of subject, technique, concern and aesthetic persuasion is a wonderful reflection of the milieu’s propensity for plurality. Electing to delimit coverage to image-based painting is by no means to exclude from the discourse the plastic arts, the new media arts and the paintings of non-representational, non-objective or abstract persuasion. While other works abound, the exponential expansion of contemporary art practices of the past ten years provides bulky, overwhelming material, and it is by expediently choosing a segment of such creative output that this book hopes to serve as a threshold into further tours into Philippine art today. The subtitle of the book emphasizes that this project is a tour of artworks, accompanied by texts (written by a selection of contemporary art writers, curators, artists and impresarios) as a matter of elucidation (a backgrounder) of the pieces. As a tour, it is expected to be enjoyable as it is instructive and hopefully insightful.

COSTANTINO ZICARELLI (b. 1984)

There is a certain solace in watching horror films and it is provided for by the veneer of the silver screen, the white sheet that sheathes the suspension of belief over amplified scenes of carnage and terror, nestled in the artifice of movie making magic. The spectacle, however, remains palpable as a collective inducement to mass hysteric dreaming in the darkened halls of the cinema. Painting, somehow operates in the parallel with the canvas acting as a deflecting wall that rather segregates and reinforces a certain cool distance from an otherwise affective event depicted. This is only true of recent contemporary history or as casually bluntly depicted by Costantino Zicarelli as he paints history from a set archive that is tinctured much by the genericity, the typicality of the look of history, of how the past has always been viewed and identified as such - faces blurred, colors blocked in varying shades of gray, diluted in the monochrome of such reproduction. The seeming significance of the depicted event falls into a vapid hole of clichéd representation and thus fails in inducing a total experience out of such depiction. Yet, clichés subsist on myths, on the misty aura of a stilled moment in the distant past, when harrowing tragedies are instead viewed as postcard pretty empty nostalgia, aestheticised for its very look, dead but ineffably disarming since it has been emptied of its primary signification. This perhaps what drives Zicarelli’s series of diptychs entitled 45 Million Years of Fiction, where a painting of a swarm of dead fruit flies is paired with a painting of a prop skull held up in front of boozers at a bar; another diptych depicts a burning farm shack juxtaposed with a painting of a dirty smogged wall grafittoed with a crude anarchy symbol and a NAZI text. These visual pairings form predicates and subjects to a statement that Zicarelli perhaps wants to trigger or evince with his sweeping title that pictures, in their very reproducibility, have their builtin mythic aura of it being a “postscript”, an after image of an event witnessed by proxy, witnessed in absentia, witnessed by sheer faith in its veracity of it having actually transpired. Yet, Zicarelli shrugs it all off by conscripting it as fiction, perhaps the whole of history and evolution as a farcical mass hysteria, as an existence emptied of the redemptory sublime, that it’s all been relative, no different from the short cycle of a common fruit fly. Death is a recycled joke, the only fitting reception of it is just to be dead pan about it. This is none more underlined by another series Sex and Death After Sex, where its overbearing morbid allusion to Eros and Thanatos is again thinned out by non-sequitur imagery - an antelope and his mate (doe) looking out from a tie-dyed mountain landscape. The doe’s neck abnormally thin and stretched out like a rubber band, the head too big for its muscularly twisted body so ripe for slaughtering, to end up as tasty cubed victuals in a stew. They look like abominations of nature but that is the very allure of terror and terror is that green hairy monster behind either drive for self-preservation and self-destruction, the sex drive and the death drive. How this is incited by such a placid image is the very incongruence with its titling yet it simplistically fits the looming fate of such preyed upon beasts whose life cycle is as brief and as meaningless as a fruit fly. But this is how the cycle of consuming and consumption naturally takes its course. Pictures are of course not exempted from such, as both product and byproduct of man’s need to sustain the fantasy of being constantly on the precipice of his own obliteration. The frenzy for it though renders the awesome and the terrible into banal predilections instead. Costantino Zicarelli, of Filipino and Italian parentage was born in Kuwait and spent his formative years in Italy. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts major in advertising in the University of Sto. Tomas. (LC) 1. 45 MILLION YEARS OF FICTION 3 (diptych), 2009, oil on canvas, 244 x 152 cm 2. LIFE LESS ORDINARY: HUMAN SKULL, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 244 cm 3. SEX AND DEATH AFTER SEX, 2009, oil on canvas, 198 x 244 cm 4. LIFE LESS ORDINARY: BURNING HOUSE, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 244 cm 5. 45 MILLION YEARS OF FICTION 2 (diptych), 2009, oil on canvas, 244 x 152 cm 8

COSTANTINO ZICARELLI

PAULO VINLUAN (b. 1980)

At first glance, his works may seem to be random pastiches, stylistically inspired by comics and illustrations. But there is a deliberately ruminative bent to Paulo Vinluan's whimsical works: one which weighs in the questions and tenuous links between propriety and personality, the social and the psychological.

Deliberately surreal, Vinluan's narratives and reveries take on the dimensions of a distorted dream, like advertisements or children's story book illustrations gone awry. Aberrations and disjunctions in the social order are implied in the ways where the bestial and human are fused, amidst the exotic and the elegant, the religious and the banal. Dogs and crocodiles are smartly dressed in suits, teacups are strewn around plush Louis XIV chairs, rodents are scurrying across marbled floors. Wild beasts are fitted in business garb; humans are clothed in the uniforms and costumes of the old colonial past. In the work Mounds of Monstrosity, for instance, layers and images melt and morph into each other, denoting the collapse of a respectable scene irreverently disturbed by a dog clambering up the lap of a defaced man. There is an intentional threading together of these symbols: how they dwell on the values, norms, and beliefs simmering beneath the surface of presentday gentility and “civilized” society. Vinluan juxtaposes these images of the privileged with snippets from common folklore, religious and historical symbolism to convey social and personal conflicts. This is reflected in the artist's series of works in 2009, where he incorporates a melange of images from Philippine culture, history, and nature: islands and clouds, the fallen Christ, crocodiles and bats, disembodiment and defacement. In Alamat Para sa Lahat, where the composition interestingly mimics the planes of the national flag turned upside down, Vinluan creates a tableaux of figures in contemporary and historic costumes, implying that the present and past are intertwined. Vinluan also introduces his concept of personal folklore—an oxymoron implying the need for criticality against the tide of inherited conceptions and perceptions. In his series of works produced in 2008, Vinluan touches on various aspects of cultural beliefs, and how they come at odds with each other. In Signs, Symbols, and Misinterpretation, the clash of symbolic cockfights - corporate, cultural, or social - is magnified in the frivolously apocalyptic battles in Conflicts of Lore. It is also interesting to note the wide range of visual traditions which Vinluan utilizes in his works: from sharp geometric patterns to flowing, gestural strokes, from Western images to contemporary Filipino street culture. In Silly Symphonies, for instance, Vinluan appropriates the suggestive visual and textual aesthetics of plastic stickers popular among Manila's tricycles. Paulo Vinluan is currently taking up his Masters of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the Pratt Institute, New York. He graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts with a Bachelor's Degree in Painting (cum laude) in 2003. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. (LIT)

1. SILLY SYMPHONIES, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 2. QUE HORROR!, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 3. CONFLICTS OF LORE, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 4. SIGNS, SYMBOLS AND MISINTERPRETATION, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 183 x 274 cm 5. ALAMAT PARA SA LAHAT, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 6. MOUNDS OF MONSTROCITY, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 12

PAULO VINLUAN

LIV ROMUALDEZ VINLUAN (b. 1987)

One of the younger artists to break early into the Philippine art scene, Liv Romualdez Vinluan’s haunting scapes, suspended between realism and fantasy, underscore a steely intensity of vision beyond her age.

Hailing from a family of visual artists all trained at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, Vinluan distinguishes her work by creating dioramas filled with darkness and immensity: carefully composed scapes or penetrating portraits that border on the filmic and theatrical. Vinluan’s style of realism, surreal and cryptic in their multiple layers and references, heavily utilize photography and digital media as a base for creating her oil on canvas paintings. Yet the strength of Vinluan’s art lies in its evolving ability to bridge the social and psychological: in the way her visions on canvas capture a sense of unease and disturbance, hinting at coming catastrophes. This is exemplified in works such as All That Heaven Allows and The Soft Veil, where the artist juxtaposes monochromatic faces and vividly-colored fabric to heighten the sense of dismemberment and dislocation, veiling and bondage. In these two portraits, there is nothing comforting in the way silk and lace rest on flesh, nor anything innocent in the expressions of her subjects’ wide-open eyes; what is conveyed, instead, are the vapid spaces of symbolic and bodily separation, and the luxurious taste of terror. In All That Heaven Permits, the artist makes interesting use of transparency as a symbolic device. Intentionally ambiguous, the male figure is simultaneously blinded yet able to perceive through his blinds, left strangely broken in spirit at the unseen sight beyond. A sense of an apocalyptic unfolding is also eloquently represented in Vinluan’s undergraduate triptych series, entitled Sin Verguenzas, which was cited with the Dominador Castañeda Award for Most Outstanding Thesis at the University of the Philippines in 2009. Juxtaposing the concepts of body, loyalty, and faith with allusions to colonization, ownership, and alienation, Vinluan issues a powerful commentary on the threaded and entangled discourses between gender, religion, social convention, and post-colonial realities. Symbolic rather than overtly political, Vinluan imbues her works with an intensity that somehow leaves the viewer with the feeling that we have witnessed these disturbing realms before; that we have been here or in the past, in the recesses of our collective and solitary nightmares. (LIT)

1. ALL THAT HEAVEN PERMITS, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 122 cm 2. ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 122 cm 3. THE SOFT VEIL, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 122 cm 4. MY BODY WAS NEVER YOURS (SIN VERGUENZAS TRIAD), 2009, oil on canvas, 274 x 183 cm 5. MY LOYALTY WAS NEVER YOURS (SIN VERGUENZAS TRIAD), 2009, oil on canvas, 274 x 183 cm 6. MY FAITH WAS NEVER YOURS (SIN VERGUENZAS TRIAD), 2009, oil on canvas, 274 x 183 cm 16

LIV ROMUALDEZ VINLUAN

ALVIN VILLARUEL (b. 1975)

Obsolescence is a frightful word to come to terms with, for it is either fraught with sappy nostalgia or is a smug recollection of things that have already ceased to relevantly function but to merely reify their dissolute hold on those who care to remember them. Obsolescence is a final cessation yet it leaves its ghostly presence on a sluggish waltz to its death knell, dragging each ball-chained foothold in its long-drawn out parting, resulting in tracks deep enough to drown one in the wistful recollection of its passing. Alvin Villaruel seems to stubbornly hold on to this obsolescence with his paintings of a far bygone era’s anticipatory elation for its perceived future via machines and clunky inventions that seem to take the imagination of the generation from such era into either brighter antiseptic utopia or to a nightmarish paranoia of a world subsumed by machines. H.G. Wells may have well fed much this curiosity and anticipation for such a future but it is almost dreadfully painted with bleakness and terror. He deems science as a “gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by” (in his A Modern Utopia); furthering both a suspicion for and fascination for the then marvels of the Industrial age in its infancy. The Luddites in his books, persistently adamant to the introduction of machinery for fear of their own obsolescence in replacing human labor with mechanization, are paragons of a cynical stubbornness to cling to their much valued craft. This might as well be said of the condition of painting at the onset of photography when painting was still foremostly held as a document of “reality”, that painting would be easily dethroned from such function by these curious black boxes that approximated reality by a flash and a single flick of the button. Yet, painting has persisted and stubbornly denies its pending demise. At best, painting and photography have only become taunting bed fellows in supplanting each medium’s inadequacies, strengths and limits. No one medium trumping one over the other, yet the romanticist view of painting still has valued craft more than any other especially in this digital age when technology has accelerated further the replication of and even the manufacture of “reality”. It is as though painting’s persistence is predicated on its dedicated quest for authentic sentiment precept on human labor, a triumph of the will and spirit in enduring the long hours of its creation. In view of objects or past inventions that figure in Villaruel’s works, of racing dragsters, spindly gyros, deflated zeppelins, clunky early experiments in flight, crashed NASCARS, abandoned payloaders and billowy hot air balloons, either in their state of grace in the hazy optimism of their novelty or in their trampled spent carcass ditched in embarrassing disappointment of their failure. What has been made apparent here is the obsolescence of these aforementioned objects through the tinctured filter of their tenuous remembrance by being painted as blurry strokes in a flurry of rushed movement, as though time hurries past them but this passing is stilted, a certain grappling for the familiar in the layered haze of their dead reckoning. The familiarity gleaned from these images seems to be spun from a collective web of memory induced by printed media that is as well on the edge of obsolescence or rather delaying such obsolescence in their continued circulation of such images. They are all tellingly sourced from old National Geographic and Life Magazines, two publications who then had a singular vision in documenting every discovery, every human race, every specie, every nook and cranny of the planet in their 1. TURBO, 2007, oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm 2. FLYING SADDLE, 2008, oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 3. ARRIVAL OF THE EXPRESS, 2009, oil on canvas, 183 x 183 cm 20

pages, to be this pictorial accounting of everything that is of this earth. Alvin’s use of such images reveal as well a yearning for return for those initial conditions for curiosity for such, sparking the childhood fascination for flight, for movement, for adventure, for dreaming but glimpsed back once again with a gloomy realization of their passing. Alvin Villaruel earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines and was a member of the art collective Surrounded By Water. He has actively been exhibiting since the 1990’s and has been short listed for the Ateneo Art Awards in 2006. (LC)

ALVIN VILLARUEL

CRIS VILLANUEVA JR. (b. 1959)

A sense of suspicion cannot be helped: Villanueva’s paintings always seem to be born out of a plot. The artist’s works are always in askance, curious and inquisitive about the nature of painting, the painted surface, or the virtual surface… even the whole point of the act of painting is inescapable. Yet, unlike the methodical solipsist who suspends his belief in the objects of his perception yet dare not subject his own self to doubt (and thus establishing his own consciousness as the sole point of reality in the universe), Villanueva’s “person” as author or creator becomes contingent. The painting being posed a visual puzzle, the challenge is internalized by the viewer: the game is afoot and the artist seemingly flitters away from focus. The cryptic nature of Villanueva’s works can be traced to his award-winning (and breakthrough) work, Something's Missing but Something is Found (Grand Prize Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards 2005), where a painting of a blackboard wrapped in a plastic bubble sheet defies the classical relation of a subject-rich foreground and background gestalt of a panel work. First, the plastic sheet obscures the blackboard “beneath” it. Second, the writing on said board is almost completely erased, the dust trails of a passing eraser further obscuring the layer where a message is supposed to be. This scheme foils all our expectations of what a painting is and because of that, we are taunted by the work to reconsider our constructs not as rules but as mere habits of perception. On Line Order remarkably turns to the wooden plywood panel that serves as backing for contemporary easel paintings as primary image of a painting. With an insert of a small image of a person’s back and two linear shapes above and below it, the work is as tangential as it can get, i.e., evasive yet always scrutinizing. Considering That It is Always Already Changing is an interesting diptych of two almost unrelated image-frames, namely a painting of water drenched benches and table vis-à-vis a representation of a pen-and-paper game called Guerra Patani played on the blue-and-red ruled surface of a child’s writing pad. Both scenes, however, reinforce the mood of nostalgia: the first being a lucid memory of a gathering place and the other being a scrap of evidence from a lazy yet playful encounter with friends in school. Finally the title is a sober statement on the transience of experience - and both time and place do not survive the vicissitudes of history. Same As It Never Was is the artist’s attempt to re-create an event, namely an exhibition called White Wall 1 in 2001, and recalls images and impressions of artworks from that scene. The negating tone of the work’s title is yet another twist in Villanueva’s creative practice, but also at the same time affirms the recollection of the group show significantly breaking up the conundrum and objectivity of “documentation”. Here, the exhibit is taken from such documentation, and the artworks speak of an exhibition, whereas the exhibition is almost always about artworks. Villanueva’s wit - albeit artistically solipsistic never ceases to challenge the order of things. Villanueva was a founding member of the Antipolo-based group Salingpusa in the late 1980’s, but did not pursue a solo career in painting right away with his contemporaries and colleagues. His breakthrough came after a Salingpusa reunion show in 2004 and with his two consecutive wins at the prestigious Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards in 2005 and 2006. He has had eight solo shows from 2005 to 2009 and continues to be at the forefront of conceptually-driven paintings in the local art scene. He has participated in a number of group shows including a few in Singapore. (RJH) 1. ON LINE ORDER, 2008, oil on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 2. CONSIDERING THAT IT IS ALWAYS ALREADY CHANGING, 2009 (diptych), oil on canvas, 183 x 122 cm 3. SAME AS IT NEVER WAS (AFTER WHITE WALL 1, 2001), 2009, oil on canvas, 198 x 259 cm 4. SOMETHING’S MISSING BUT SOMETHING IS FOUND, 2005, oil on canvas, 145 x 181 cm

CRIS VILLANUEVA JR.

RONALD VENTURA (b. 1973)

The senior among two painter brothers working in figurative art, Ronald Ventura is among those artists who steadily gained critical reception early on and were soon on their way to becoming masters of their craft. Winning the Grand Prize for the 1990 Shell National Students Art Competition before earning his degree in Painting at the University of Santo Tomas in 1993, Ventura chalked up a credible string of other awards, garnering major citations in competitions including those organized by the Art Association of the Philippines, Metrobank Foundation, Philip Morris, the Taiwan International Biennale and Winsor & Newton - all before unveiling his first one-man show in 2000. It was Ventura's mastery at creating marble-skinned nudes that propelled him to the full attention of the Philippine art scene by 2001. Exquisitely modelled and almost palpable in their realism, Ventura's nudes go beyond being mere objects for display or demonstration of technique. Bodily forms are signifiers of intersecting realities: sites of tensions, junctions for contradictions simmering beneath skin. In his 2007 work Apocalyptic Cover, for instance, Ventura's central figure - a body cocooned in a striped sheet - is not only a form captured by the contours where fabric and flesh meet, but also a signifier of apprehension against a hazy backdrop of the final day of reckoning, denoted by Renaissance tableaus in the background. More critical reception to Ventura's works soon followed: he was chosen to be among the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Awardees for 2003 and was the recipient of a studio residency grant to Sydney, Australia as part of the 2005 Ateneo Art Awards plum. Works from this period, such as Insecured and National Animal, attest to his merging of hauntingly pale bodies with sepia or rust-tinted backgrounds as well as his use of bestial symbolism. Insecured demonstrates the visual binaries that Ventura is capable of combining: from immaculately white compositions to distressed, almost carnal, surfaces. In the work National Animal, the headless figure of a male laborer pulling an invisible yoke recalls the form of the Philippine carabao conveying the sentiment that hard labor is today's true beast of burden. Ventura's numerous awards and collaboration with galleries have also gradually introduced his art to regional audiences in recent years. After first showing his works in Singapore in 2008, Ventura unfurled a debut solo show of paintings and sculptures in the United States in collaboration with Tyler Rollins Fine Art in 2009. A work from this exhibition, entitled Second Skin as well as a 2008 work Funny Story, demonstrates how Ventura's style has retained its sharp hyperrealism in portraying the human figure, yet now incorporating images from other visual influences: pop culture, cartoons and tattoos, graphics with bright candy colors. Ventura powerfully complements his monochromatic figures with colorful graphic embellishments, presenting the human form as a complex, evolving layer of mixed identities, histories, and signifiers. (LIT)

1. APOCALYPTIC COVER, 2007, oil on canvas, 91 x 61 cm 2. INSECURED, 2005, oil on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 3. NATIONAL ANIMAL, 2004, oil on canvas, 160 x 103 cm 4. FUNNY STORY, 2008, oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 5. SECOND SKIN, 2009, oil on canvas, 213 x 152 cm 24

RONALD VENTURA

OLAN VENTURA (b. 1976)

Rolando â&#x20AC;&#x153;Olanâ&#x20AC;? Ventura channels inspiration from the everyday: not from exotic muses but from the stories and scenes of ordinary folks. Decidedly figurative, Ventura's subjects are completely human yet simultaneously and exquisitely unreal, rendered to near perfection through the polished exactness of his painting technique. In Ventura's art, the mundane acquires a sheen of the surreal; details of the human form are painstakingly captured and idealized in the process of perfecting portrayals. This is evident in the artist's earlier works of 2004, such as Free Wheel and Family Portrait Series, which successfully captures the subtle shifts of domestic details and gestures: the unconscious grace of hands primed for nail filing, the gentle bend of limbs while posing for a portrait, wisps of hair sweeping across clothes and flesh. Backgrounds are generally minimalist, pared down to basic or symbolic elements in order to draw more attention to the physical attributes of his human subjects. Positioning his figures as unconsciously captured in fleeting pauses, Ventura's portraits depict yet idealize ordinariness and normalcy. Ventura has also significantly attempted to portray and connect with the lives of people from the margins. His adept skills at figure painting, further honed in a series of works produced in 2007 and 2008, are given full rein to represent the lives and profiles of nightclub employees. Based on interviews with his subjects, Ventura attempts to bring the images and realities of those in making a living in the evening shadows to light. For instance, in the work, Black Apple, a pair of dismembered and decaying hands, shrouded in scarlet, and a black apple dripping with ooze casts an ominous spell on a naked woman. Eyes closed, the figure remains oblivious, or sensually immersed, depending how one sees it, to a foreboding flood of blood and gore. Positioning the erotic as a transgression of earthy and moral norms, this choice of themes treads across intricate cultural and gendered minefields. Ventura's Negative Light series, produced in 2009, shows another interesting trajectory within his body of work. Reversing the entire process of modelling, the artist proves to be equally adept at realistically capturing the stark and sharp tonal inversions of negative images. He seamlessly recreates, by hand, images normally associated with mechanical and digital photographic processes, capturing the effects as sharply as film. A commentary on the persistence of deviant behavior and antisocial activities in daily life, the artist literally paints his subjects - who symbolize the transgressions of established norms - in a negative light, portraying these portraits as a reversal of positive images. Olan Ventura graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from the University of the East (UE) in 1998, simultaneously winning the First Place in the Shell National Students Art Competition and UE's Artist of the Year awards in that same period. He went on to claim more citations, notably the Jurors Choice in the 2005 Philippine Art Awards, and continued to be a prolific artist as exemplified by his numerous one-man and group exhibitions in various galleries in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore over the years. His successive achievements as a painter led to Ventura's recognition by his alma mater as one of its Most Outstanding Alumni in the field of Fine Arts and Culture less than a decade later in 2007. (LIT)

1. BLACK APPLE, 2007, oil on canvas, 91 x 61 cm 2. FREE WHEEL, 2004, oil on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 3. FAMILY PORTRAIT SERIES, 2004, oil on canvas, 53 x 38 cm 4. NEGATIVE LIGHT 3, 2009, oil & acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 5. NEGATIVE LIGHT 7, 2009, oil & acrylic on canvas, 152 x 122 cm 28

OLAN VENTURA

CLAIRELYNN UY (b. 1974)

Belonging to a younger generation of Filipina painters whose art distinctly reflects their own visual and academic exposure to Modernist art, Clairelynn Uy has steadily built a collection of works consistent in terms of aesthetics and exciting in terms of evolving subject matter. Born and educated in Manila (earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philippine Women's University in 1996), Uy's art reflects the urbanity and contemporariness of her immediate surroundings and background. Her figurative paintings seamlessly juxtapose the vivid flatness of pop graphics and tangible qualities of hyperrealism, mixing and matching images culled from comics, toys, books, and downtown spaces. Preferring to work in oil on canvas, Uy makes the most of the medium's intrinsic qualities and potentials for realistic representations, wielding her brush to document the most minute and realistic details. This is exemplified in two works dating back to 2008. For instance, the painting entitled Something About Merry-Go-Round demonstrates her technical ability to capture not just the likeness of objects such as the mock horse in this traditional carnival ride, but the magical fascination that these festive images evoke in the viewer. Her mastery of technique is also demonstrated in a 2008 solo exhibition entitled Louder Symphony, Homage to Crashing, marked by her flawless rendering and juxtapositions of superheroes and arcade pinball games from downtown Manila. A work from this particular show, entitled The Amazing Boy from Midtown High, incorporates the iconic image of Spiderman in the complex obstacles within a pinball machine's interior, creating an interesting interplay of surfaces between machine and modern mythological memorabilia. Uy's photorealist painting technique props up the strength of her statements and thematic concerns as an artist. While her recent series of works has gone towards the direction of juxtaposing elements and objects from different visual and art historical traditions, her distinct style makes such merging and differentiation possible and recognizable. In Vanity Plus, for instance, she engages the concept of desire and the illusory salvation it promises by juxtaposing the nude figure of a woman, inspired from a work by the old Masters, with a more contemporary and flat graphic of a cardboard doll's cut-out dress. Another work entitled Exciting with Bruce, which was included in her first solo exhibition outside Manila in 2009, merges the flatness and graphic appeal of pop art and the seemingly three-dimensional image of a plastic toy. A multi-awarded painter, Uy was cited in the Shell National Students Art Competition in 1992, the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards in 2003, and the China Asian Youth Art Creativity Competition in 2006. She has been recently included by Nokia and the Philippine Daily Inquirer Lifestyle section in its list of â&#x20AC;&#x153;10 Most Exciting Young Artistsâ&#x20AC;? for 2009 - a timely development as Uy's art is now also gaining exposure at the regional level, through exhibitions in galleries based in Singapore, China, and the United States. (LIT)

1. VANITY PLUS, 2009, oil on canvas, 183 x 152 cm 2. SOMETHING ABOUT MERRY-GO-ROUND, 2008, oil in canvas, 76 x 76 cm 3. EXCITING WITH BRUCE, 2009, oil on canvas, 152 x 183 cm 4. THE AMAZING BOY FROM MIDTOWN HIGH, 2008, oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm 32

CLAIRELYNN UY

WIRE TUAZON (b. 1973)

Wire Tuazon’s paintings encapsulate so much the overwhelming emptiness of manufactured images. Though he juxtaposes seemingly “loaded” images culled mostly from mass media, books and the internet, with phrases similarly looted from such veritable ubiquitous sources, they convey nothing. They are dead, they are corpses recognized only for their forms, for their familiar iconicity, for their very reproducibility. He chooses to render them in a manner that approximates their reproducibility – flat, with no hint of any brush strokes, no overt expressive gesture desiring of empathy. Such has always been the case with the school of photo-realism which merely aims to technically match the photographic copy. In other cases, to surpass it even more by presenting a super-reality of the gloss of paint and superb super human craft of such gridded, almost slavish mimesis. If he paints figures, human figures, they are mere approximations of how they should appear or be recognized as photographed humans – posed, stilted in their actions, wooden. Their armature the very costume which conceals their absent anatomies. They are set in a tableau where the objects that surround them are, in contrast, rendered as how they are seen in the display cases of window shops or rather the sterile shelves of supermarkets – crisp, clean, clear. The glint of metal as the shiny aluminum can on Black Dance, the sheen of plastic as reflected fluorescent light (as seen on the phone on View Finder vs Apology Line) but as anonymous as typical of what they are as objects. Mostly as assembly line products. Mostly made from synthesized artificial components formulated in a corporation’s research and development laboratory, as does the ink and the paper with which these images are printed, as does the oil with which these painted reproductions were made. Over all these images bear the patina of much use, like a bruise discoloring flesh unevenly, permanently; like water-spot stains yellowing indefinitely, rapidly, vapidly taking conquest of the whiteness of magazine pages. It’s not so much as the text which he overlays on them are the labels for these images whose fonts similarly parlay this “mass reproducibility” – in Helvetica, starkly white, consciously obtrusive, almost obstinate in this, but wanting in being a real commentary on the image it has partly obscured. It presents, however, a very jarring reading of this juxtaposition, which is probably intended by Wire, to elicit double takes, secondguesses, ensconce you out of your complacent familiarity with such, rethink clichés and meanings, redoubt the very search for meaning in such images and texts, reposition existence amidst all these. The titles confuse these even more. It is a contrivance that affirms the double negation of the juxtaposed image and text, yet not still a synthesis of these negations. Take for instance one work of his using a still from the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man are in a forest; the text overlaid it is Divine Comedy; the title The Invisible Forest. The subtext of the still is made apparent in overlaying Divine Comedy, yet the title infers in ironic explicitness of the image or the implicit meaninglessness of these combined components, all lost in the “forest” of these empty significations. This very style which he has cultivated for years, has become his trademark. His manufactured visual idiom. All derived from the sphere of the manufactured and to where he’ll contribute much in having his own paintings reproduced on books, on magazines, on newspapers, virtually on the cyber sphere, and on the collective psyche of this zeitgeist. 1. BLACK DANCE, 2006, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm 2. THE INVISIBLE FOREST, 2007, oil on canvas, 244 x 244 cm 3. THE STORY OF DECEPTION, 2008, oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm 4. ROTTERDAM KID LOVES WOMEN, 2007, oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm 5. VIEW FINDER VS. APOLOGY LINE (diptych), 2009, oil on canvas, 244 x 183 cm 34

Wire Tuazon graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the University of the Philippines and one of the founding members of the seminal art collective Surrounded By Water which emerged in the 1990â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. He received the Thirteen Artists Award of the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2003. He has had various solo and group exhibitions locally and internationally. He was a Residency Project Grantee of the Japan Foundation Asia Center at the Ashiya City Museum of Art and History in 2001. (LC)

WIRE TUAZON

TATONG RECHETA TORRES (b. 1979)

Tatong Recheta Torres attributes the horrific theatre of his works to the eccentricities in his childhood, particularly in his tendency to construct imaginary scenarios over imaginary friends. Narratives are fundamental to his practice; each of his series maps out respective plots of the bizarre and often repulsive. His commitment to storytelling carries on throughout his body of works, whether a series is a speculative sequence or dealing with a more introspective theme.

This nightmarish theme can be traced from Dominion, his first solo exhibition, to his subsequent shows Spotlight Dilemma and The Most Genuine Regret. The history of Torres' characters evolved from the obese to original villains. They exist in a fantastical if not parallel universe, and come full circle in the disfigurement of common people. His exposure and the comfort in horror films are responsible in his choice of portraying the hideous and eerie. Left Protect and Ominous Omega, for instance, come from Torres' uniquely conceived fairy tale of Spotlight Dilemma – that is, if fairy tales have any room for albinos, warts and six-legged villains. On the other hand, the horror of 48-Hour-Mash is not because of the probability of the subjects appearing in otherworldly or overimaginative states. They are frightening precisely because the couple can be any couple, only that they are deformed in what looks like some sort of physiological disease. Each series likewise corresponds to particular regrets and personal anxieties identified by Torres. If his first solo exhibition grapples with fat-angst, Spotlight Dilemma looks at the disillusionment of the hero – that the hero, in return for his role, does not necessarily have all his human functions intact. Childhood dreams of flying, and other haunting frustrations, are disintegrated through his painting series in The Most Genuine Regret. The variety of scenes and subjects that come out of the genre proves that the capacity of horror to penetrate every imaginable situation or even perhaps points its unlikely presence in everyone. The irony of Torres' characters is that even though they are not traditionally considered pleasant, the craft through which they are conceived shows the mastery of the hand. In all their ontological ugliness, they are shepherded into being beautiful. His aesthetics operates on the basic negation of traditional forms but on the disproportionate ratio of attraction and repulsion. The experience of the so-called “beautifully ugly” in his works requires a primal pull, an encounter of terror and compassion, a toss between flight and chase – like a disease, a plague. (SP) Tatong Recheta Torres graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture from the Mapua Institute of Technology. Aside from his three solo exhibitions Dominion (2006), Spotlight Dilemma (2008) and The Most Genuine Regret (2008), he has actively participated in major group shows in Manila and Singapore. He was part of the production team of the movie Shake, Rattle & Roll 11. (ed.)

1. SELF PORTRAIT, 2009, oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm 2. LEFT PROTECT, 2008, oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 3. OMINOUS OMEGA, 2008, oil on canvas, 152 x 183 cm 4. SUSPENSION, 2008, oil on canvas, 168 x 244 cm 5. 48-HOUR-MASH, 2009, oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm 38

TATONG RECHETA TORRES

JAY TICAR (b. 1972)

Jay Ticar is recognized for a niche composing of variegated visual art practices – from painting to a great degree of installation art as well as his involvement in the academic field. Setting plays a major part of Ticar's oeuvre as he perceives subjects of interests as backgrounds casting a wider net at contemporary sociocultural, art theory and personal issues . A number of his series in a way become documentations of his present locality, one being Japan. For instance, Enjoying Sunday at Yoyogi on my Wall is one where scenes of everyday objects and activity as the set on which his characters interact frozen, almost as signposts to definite cultural nuances. And although common symbols are incorporated into these works, Ticar's investigatory visual method of anti-subjective illustration takes them away from being universally definitive and remakes them into triggers for personal judgement. Often too does Ticar present actual settings – actual places more than referential elements pointing to a bigger region. For instance, as the concept of “home” has been given regard in several series, he has moved from particular cultural allusions to the examination of an exact setting. As houses nurture homes, he goes on to deconstruct and reconstruct his surrounding as part of his personality as with Ako ay Haligi (I am a pillar). He questions the mentioned notion, allowing ideals of a home to emerge in Castle. Choice Cuts becomes partly abstracted as he puts together elements of possibly the same house in different perspectives. In this analysis where certain angles and shots of a house are collated, he continuously injects the metaphor of instability. As Agung Hujatnikajennong notes in Ticar's Making Home exhibition in which he displays this series of askew houses: “There are sense of peculiarity and loss of gravity on those paintings, which give notions on his experience as an artist who considers a crisis situation as the main reason to live and survive.” Ticar latches on his visual imagery conceptual frameworks that aim to trigger an equation of questions. He provides this open-ended quality by leaving room for “purely expressive directions” and the incitement of his audience's instinct and imagination as he attempts to emulate the Rene Margritte belief in the essence of painting which is “the capacity to depict and inspire imagination on canvas in contrast to bringing about the artist's subconscious.” By adept arranging of metaphors, representations and commonly known or assigned meanings, he champions conceptual structures in painting and otherwise. For Ticar, to situate questions on where we are (be it an actual locality or a meta-position) is the most important activity that can be done to contribute in the progression of cultural and artistic practice. Jay Ticar acquired his Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts in 1996 from the University of the Philippines and his Masters degree from Tama Art University, Japan. Aside from being shortlisted twice in the Ateneo Art Awards, the country's prestigious award for contemporary art, his practice is supported by notable institutions such as the Asian Public Intellectual; Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture and Monbukagakusho in Japan, Selasar Sunaryo and Sanggar Luhur in Bandung Indonesia to name a few. Reputable galleries such as Tama Art University Gallery (Tokyo, Japan), Langgeng Icon (Jakarta, Indonesia), Cultural Center of the Philippines, The Drawing Room, Finale Art Gallery and Manila Contemporary, exhibit his works. (SP)

1. ENJOYING SUNDAY AT YOYOGI ON MY WALL, 2007, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm 2. CHOICE CUTS, 2009, oil on canvas, 274 x 183 cm 3. AKO AY HALIGI (I AM A PILLAR), 2009, oil on canvas, 183 x 274 cm 4. CASTLE, 2009, oil on canvas, 183 x 274 cm 42

JAY TICAR

RODEL TAPAYA (b. 1980)

Rodel Tapaya’s canvases on Philippine mythology and folklore is an extension of his work on mapping communities and the visual device of grids, initially done in acrylics on burlap. Later, he explored maps as a logical outcome of superimpositions of locality on the grid of longitude and latitude. By “going deeper” into the subject, he explored communities in Looban and Lunan series, and examined types of people in Tauhan and later in Parables, folk wisdom. In 2006 he worked his way into representing characters in Philippine underground mythology and later, one-panel narratives of the same local lore. His early low key-toned and brown-hued compositions were painted on the heavily textured grounds, allowing for his images to be plotted along the intersections of the weave. But in later works, Tapaya experimented with the layering of visual patterns, evident first in his Parables series and later in his Mythology series. As an artist, Tapaya finds himself working deeper into folk consciousness, re-interpreting and reassessing narratives of the immediate present with that of the legendary past. Of his later series on patterns, Daydreaming is a good representative. A face emerges from a field of horizontallyoriented decorative patterns and the artist delineates the elements of a woman’s countenance, her eyes tilted to her left, her smallish hand propping her head in a gesture of lovestruck reverie. The artist betrays a comical approach and we wonder at the stuff that streams within and through the subject’s mind as she flitters away in this daydream, of which she is also, pictorially, part. Si Ricardo displays the same technique as Daydreaming, with the delineation and emergence of a feature from a sea of patterns and decorations. This, however, is a painting of a character (a tauhan) presumably lifted from a series that serves as a prelude/addendum to a more narrative work. Tapaya has worked with several of such character-based works, some of which are derived from caricatures of persons in real life or in lore. Ricardo, is a such a character - pensive, wary and almost at the ready to be pounced by an adventure or mishap. Yakap combines Tapaya’s early grid-constellation technique with patterns in a unique work that is at once organic-ornamental and narrative. The painting describes a scene from a story in which a character embraces an amorphous creature - that looks more like a swooning mermaid. In many of the artist’s works, this one can be appreciated more for its interesting interweaving of visual patterns than for its narrative content. The forms overlap each other from distinct systems of figuration - grid, contour, pattern - and yet nothing disturbs the harmony of its transparencies and overlapping shapes that remind us of Cubist visual fields. Ang Paghahanap sa Ibong Adarna represents a segment of Tapaya’s myth-bound works. It is the artist’s take on the tale of men (in one story, they are knights) who venture into the enchanted forest in search for the legendary Adarna bird whose song puts men to sleep and whose droppings turns mortals stone. The painting represents the moment of search, an adventure into the forbidding foliage of the forest and the struggle of the men to find a path among the shrubs, vines and brambles. A suggestion of the bird, the object of pursuit rests above, among the “branches”, but the two main characters are oblivious to it, and their gaze is cast sideways into dangers real and imagined, of beasts and of memories of home. 1. ORIGIN OF THE MOUNTAINS, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 183 x 107 cm 2. DAYDREAMING, 2007, acrylic on burlap, 102 x 76 cm 3. SI RICARDO, 2008, acrylic on burlap, 102 x 76 cm 4. ANG PAGHAHANAP SA IBONG ADARNA, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 5. YAKAP, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 44

Origin of the Mountains is a pictorial tableau, an illustration of a myth on the creation of natural phenomena out of the contestations of divine beings. Taking leave of the narrative of the myth, we focus instead at the figuration that Tapaya brings forth to represent the story. The artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main technique is the creation of forms from linear patterns and block shapes, with lines crossing and describing images into and outside the bulk of forms. The head of the divinity is the only object well-rendered, everything else is drawn out from conjectures of forms rising from constellation of hidden points, along linear intersections than dominate the foreground of the work. Cloud-forms and water-forms are organic shapes that hover above and below the central figure while a dog-like character is superimposed upon the rising peaks of round mountains in the lower register of the canvas. Rodel Tapaya studied Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He won the Grand prize for the Nokia Art Awards as a student, an international competition that made him travel and study in New York, Seoul and Helsinki. He was short listed to the Ateneo Art Awards, and was a Finalist to the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards, and a residencygrantee to the Freeman Asian Residency, Vermont Studio Center in New York. He lives and works in Hagonoy, Bulacan, with his artist-wife, Marina Cruz. (RJH)

RODEL TAPAYA

CJ TA�EDO (b. 1979)

CJ Tañedo brought the image of a misty, even smog-filled, landscape in his early works in the late 90’s. These paintings were often populated with a single figure, usually a female of Asian beauty, poetically rendered as an embodiment of some kind of sentimental memory. The artist brought visions of such stylized Pre-Raphaelite vignettes until his awareness turned to the grittier shades of moral reality. If the painter were a playwright then Tañedo would certainly be writing tragedies. Not that the artist’s works are morose in spirit, but the melancholic overtones of his imagery and his themes await the cathartic moment when the message of his works awaken the elective affinity between subject and viewer. There is indeed something of a jeremiad in his works, but also in some cases, a saccharine romantic aura that surrounds the work even as longhand scribbles of poetry run parallel along the works’ edge. Leper Messiah comes as an indictment of a popular charismatic religious leader whose background as a businessman has long made skeptics of the fewer numbers who are wary of his message. The artist may seem to ally with the skeptics as he represents the religious leader (styled also as a servant) as a dog, whose preaching turns the ground into cracked fields of famine and a long plume of smoke foretells of an ominous event of apocalyptic retribution. A gust of wind catches an umbrella upturned, a ritual symbol used by the leader to catch the “money” that would rain down from heaven if only the masses would believe, in him. Inquisition Symphony No. 4: Blind Prisoner shows a woman bound in veils of white while declaiming or protesting her innocence of a charge. A roman coliseum smolders in the background along with a church that is consumed by smoke and flames. Does the artist indict the centuries-old persecution of churches against each other? Echoing his early series Requiem is a poetic dirge of a dying river nymph who clutches a figure of the Child Jesus as in supplication for a miracle. A city encroaches from the background and the sunset-lit sky proclaims an end to a day and an era of myth. The river is dying, and thus also memories of its beauty. Finally in Inquisition Symphony No.1: All Flesh is Vanity an image of Diego Velasquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent is transformed into a monster with a reptilian skull for a head and located in a surreal world of suffering and toil. The image dissolves slowly, like acid, into the stained canvas in a metaphor of moral corrosion amidst the presence of faulty, or incapacitated religious leadership. (RJH) CJ Tañedo studied Fine Arts (Major in Painting) at the University of Santo Tomas. He was a consistent finalist in the Shell National Student Art competitions and the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards. He received the Merit Award for Outstanding Artistic Expression in the Nokia Art Awards (2000) held in Seoul, Korea and was Juror's Choice at the Philippine Nokia Art Awards in the same year. He is a founding member of Tala Gallery in Quezon City. (ed.)

1. LEPER MESSIAH, 2007, oil & acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 2. INQUISITION SYMPHONY NO.4: BLIND PRISONER, 2008, oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 3. INQUISITION SYMPHONY NO.1: ALL FLESH IS VANITY, 2008, oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 4. REQUIEM, 2005, oil on canvas, 122 x 152 cm 48

CJ TA�EDO

MARIA TANIGUCHI (b. 1981)

The simple definition of utopia allows for it to be read as the ideal place, one that cannot, and does not exist. It is a state so unattainable that everyone paradoxically desires it. Abstraction as presented by Modernism, the Futurists’ focus on speed and destruction, the centrality of archetypes, the search for paradise via the desire for the Tropical, are all subjects that Taniguchi’s works touch upon. Each one of these modes consider the notion of an utopic search, one attained through various manners, be these through the pinhole of perfection, a journey to escape, or the flourish of destruction to attain a future unblemished by the present. In Taniguchi’s practice these are but fields that pivot around her inspection of the range of approaches to the utopic. She is not interested in investing in the idea of Utopia itself, she is more keen to scan the lines that lead to and our desire for it. This scanning steers her to garnering information using the most current articulation of utopia, the Internet, wherein processing of information is open to all, thus bearing a type of “egalitarian openness,”i characterized by speed and the often practiced idiosyncratic drift through its data.

In her work entitled Chair After Dürer and then After Grcic, Taniguchi precisely exploits the dexterity developed to work one’s way through the net. This work uses Dürer’s lithograph, Melencolia I, as taken from a Wikipedia entry, is a kernel for her ideas. She cannily lifts Dürer’s 1514 rendering of a polyhedron (also known as Dürer’s solid), turns this around, and crystallizes its contemporaneous possibility into Grcic’s design. This effortless slip from one form to another fundamentally shifts the objects’ meaning; in this case, from Dürer’s solid as part of the metaphysical contemplation of melancholy to the ubiquity of a Grcic chair. This devolution enacts the characteristic peculiarity that informs Taniguchi’s persistent use of the net as her well of ideas; by lodging on to ambiguous objects on which myriad skins can be assigned and re-assigned, whilst keeping its form. The importance of surfaces (or skins) is most easily understood with O, wherein a drawing of a brick wall is methodically built up by hand through two months. Surfaces are for Taniguchi essential to our experience of any object, but not vice-versa. She reasons that we are unable to refer to the being of anything without first perceiving it through our senses, often the visual. We can then easily peel away the surface, this being our visual reference, then attach this to another form; in a way, drag the surface to cover another. Thus the form continues, whilst the surface becomes an unnecessary accessory, even superfluous. She creates subtle references across objects through their exterior as material.ii This process is consistent in her projects: paintings, sculpture, edition prints or video. Untitled/Crystal Palace (2009), works on the same principle. A visit to the Crystal Palace, places Taniguchi within range of the Dinosaur Court. Part of the euphoria that brought about the creation of the Crystal Palace (the latter a celebration of the Industrial Revolution) was lent perspective when the dinosaur models were later found to be alarmingly inaccurate, and then ignored, eventually falling into disrepair. The Industrial Revolution, seen as a major turning point in English history is considered as moving towards a new future removed from the past and its manners of being. Taniguchi sidles this ‘wrong’ reading of scientific development with that of a ‘factual’ description of Gaugin’s work “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” (1897). What she achieves is the cobbling together of two fictional narratives (that of extinct and inexact models of dinosaurs, and four different descriptions of the same painting on Gaugin’s take of the exotic as paradise) of two totally unrelated subjects; each, however, essentially pertains to how their version of utopia fails. 1. GOLDSMITHS MFA DEGREE SHOW, 2009, Crystal Palace, South of London, England 2. A PLACE AMONG OTHER PLACES, 2009, stack of offset litho prints, 64 x 90 cm x variable 3. O (6,000 painted bricks), detail 4. O (6,000 painted bricks), 2008, acrylic on canvas, 304 x 136 cm 5. STUDY FOR A RAINBOW MAKER AFTER DÜRER, NUTS AND BOLTS, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 83 x 108 cm 6. CHAIR AFTER DÜRER THEN AFTER GRCIC V.3 I, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 91 x 91 cm 7. CHAIR AFTER DÜRER THEN AFTER GRCIC V.3 I & V.3 II, 2009 and UNTITLED (MASK), 2009, cement and paint (installation view) 52

Initially included as part of her degree show, the video may not have been meant as a stand-alone work but one consciously juxtaposed amongst a larger network of objects built upon tenuous connections. These connections appear to light upon each objects’ surface only to bounce off towards another, from which it bounces off again, much like a game of bagatelle. This process stems from the artist’s application of the net, clicking on links to make her way through the net’s vast store of information. Each click is seen as nuanced nudges toward chunks of information. A mask, drawings of wood veneers, a painting, non-edition posters, the video—are objects that maintain this loosely articulated cosmos. Each object is meticulously produced, the slowness of such a process in direct opposition to the speed with which her use of the net’s associations come about. With her non-edition posters A Place Among Other Places and the video Ghost the bond between surfaces is more direct, wherein Taniguchi works her way to a precise sense of utopic paradise. In these works the exotic, ie the Tropical, is represented by the iconic image of the Western production of paradise. These representations are escapes into the unknown, as represented by photographs with similar components: the un-abating sun, sand and similar foliage. Again these are mere surfaces and their repetition across the net, pulls it further away from the individual experience to an abstract form, an idea of what a tropical paradise is.

Taniguchi’s concern for surfaces, the porous skins that overlays objects, (these she considers as abstract archetypes to be covered) is to a certain extent articulated in architecture. Architecture creates shells to contain space; it informs abstract space when clad with (specific) materials. Taniguchi’s investigations problematize how we perceive such, and react to it. As Alain de Botton writes, “…we have to open ourselves up to the idea that we are affected by our surroundings even when they are made of vinyl…” Space is as much the potential of form as the various skins - each one dragged to crystallize forms producing credible objects. Through this we return to, and end with Dürer’s solid, a non-object.iii By making it pass through Grcic, Taniguchi informs its solidity, taking it from an intellectual conundrum towards a projected function. In 1950, Wilhelm Waetzoldt wrote that “Somewhere, so it was believed, the key to the understanding of the whole must be hidden; somehow it must be possible to make inanimate objects speak!”iv Taniguchi, through her diligent inquiries proffers such a possibility. Maria Taniguchi works between Manila and London. She completed a BFA in sculpture at UP College of Fine Arts, and an MFA in Art Practice at Goldmiths in 2009. Her work has been recently shown in London, Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Melbourne. (JC)

iIn “Trends of Hierarchy and Anarchy: Comparing the Repercussions of Print and Digital Media” by Amanda Griscom http://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/infotech/asg/ag17.html . This again is an impossibility as not everyone in the world has access to a computer to access the net. iiA more in-depth discussion regarding the meaning and

problems of universals is necessary to unwrap this idea further. iii“In all the writings on the engraving and its iconography, no

clue can be found regarding the origin of the strange-shaped block, or what it was that induced Dürer to include it in the picture…”Could it possibly pose a mathematical problem, something like the squaring of the circle?” in The Geometric Body in Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I, http://www.jstor.org/ pss/750979 ivibid.

MARIA TANIGUCHI

CHRISTIAN TAMONDONG (b. 1976)

The puer aeternus or archetypal inner child is the core of painter Christian Tamondong. With childlike vigor and enthusiasm, his paintings abound with the hyperactive energy of fantasy, no less saccharine than his range of highchromatic coloration and levitating compositions. Yet most of Tamondong’s curious canvases are not really about childhood at all and a great number point to insights gained from kindergarten and the schoolyard conflicts that make us grow, become mature. In other words, there is a ruse in his choice of imagery, one that the artist seeks his viewers to be attracted to at first, and then transcend so as to decipher the less innocent content of the work. However, the “behind the scenes” reality is not so readily apparent.

Up Up and Away is a typical image associated with the puer, who is almost always winged in classical art. This painting shows children aboard an aircraft that floats carelessly across a perfectly azure sky. Clouds have smiling faces and birds fly alongside the craft. Propellers and boosters both power the vehicle, and yet their flight less than furiously forward, but uncannily vertical, like a wayward balloon that reaches for the upper atmosphere. The illustrative work, Princess Chloe’s Blue Frog, may be a flyaway page from a child’s storybook. In such tales nature and men can commune with magical ease and all that is icky can turn into something “sugary nice”, if worded in the proper context. But is this a scene from a fairy story or is the painting but a representation of a girl and her pet? There are no other clues in the work. Following the format of the passage of a day (like Duc de Berry’s Book of Hours) Tamondong illustrates his idea of a full day in a series of four vertical paintings. The first, Rise & Shine shows a rabbit waking up, and stretching out from his log/ bed. It is an idyllic morning, heralded by a multi-colored cock crowing into the sun, amidst a harmoniously hued foliage. Seize the Day follows the first affirmation of morning with an assertion of taking control of the rest of diurnal time with exact deliberateness. There are suggestions of frenzied activity - a wide-eyed boy at the bottom of the painting exudes wonder at the complexity of the whole matter. Tea Time is a time of respite, of drinking up the thoughts of a day to a rescinding pace. In Goodnight Lullaby, dark blue and violet expresses the end of all activity and a cat curls up beneath a black fluffy cloud and a sparkling star. (RJH) Christian Tamondong studied at the Philippine Women’s University and is a member of the Cavite-based art group Anting-Anting. He was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards in 2004 and has constantly been winning awards and earning citations at local art competitions such as the PLDT-DPC National Directory Cover Visual Art Competition and the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Art Competition. (ed.)

1. UP UP AND AWAY, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 91 x 122 cm 2. PRINCESS CHLOE'S BLUE FROG, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 91 x 61 cm 3. RISE & SHINE, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 31 cm 4. SEIZE THE DAY, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 31 cm 5. TEA TIME, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 31 cm 6. GOODNIGHT LULLABY, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 31 cm 56

CHRISTIAN TAMONDONG

YASMIN SISON (b. 1973)

Yasmin Sison’s paintings are masking devices which can be read/viewed formalistically as a play of contrast between actual and perceptual texture. A form of surface treatment that serves to unnerve our perception of how a picture is made, reproduced and differentiated as the painted picture being a mediated facsimile. However, her method of painting combines techniques that transcend perceptual reality in how its picturesqueness approximates the gloss of photographs, where most of her images are based, with the very materiality of paint itself and where the strokes are lined with the gravity of paint. This is seen especially in her earlier works which demarcated the textural boundaries of material and image. As she juxtaposes textures, combining the near trompe l’oeil techniques of copying the decorative patterns superimposed on the figures, thus flattening them in one surface that amplifies further the wallpapering effect that conceals the woodwork that is the material support of these paintings. Yasmin began her painting project using images from fashion magazines whose lay out and staging mimic film stills – a purported narrative distilled into costume, setting and props, but inordinately chosen for its graphic quality. These magazine spreads form a construct from the luminal/nominal psyche for fantasy, feeding off on the projected persona where its desirability is rooted from the very fiction played off in this very projection. However, these figures are “cloaked”, “blanketed” by cut-out patterns from wallpaper designs, wrapping paper or thickly impastoed by paint as though ectoplasmic fugues have taken over these figures. Yet despite these surface interferences, the image remains flat, its reality resonated on the very production of its image. This very technique also surfaces the mutability of this image projection, as especially from the purported fantasy from these fashion magazine lay-outs, beyond the latent commodity fetish these sort of photographs have but reaching inward as well to the plush interiority of a “dream world.” Despite the vapidly generic spaces these figures are set, a distant space compresses time into a plastic reality of the painted image: here a 19th century divan juxtaposed with a post-WWII lamp in a room with a 1930’s chinoisserie wall paper and orange trees burgeoned with iridescent fruits on a lawn that’s more carpet-like than botanically-viridian. This best illustrates what Susan Sontag says of photographs : “Through photographs, the world becomes a series of unrelated , free-standing particles; and history past, past and present, a set of anecdotes and faits divers. The camera makes reality automatic, manageable and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery.” Thus, the cut-up, the collage, the smear that Yasmin employs is this disruption that enables this projection, a masking as a form of vignette tabula rasa, a blanket, a ghosting from a surface shell of costumes, adapted personas, as in “jackets, carpets, wrappers, and covers”, ‘dwelling’ in such as a means of “fashioning a shell for ourselves.” (Walter Benjamin. The Interior, The Trace. The Arcades Project) In a latter series, she paints children frolicking and posing in dense thickets of wood, fallen leaves, wild grass and mossy undergrowth. These children are wearing masks of animals, standing in defiance, the girls in pinafores and peter pan collared Sunday dresses, looking head-on with awkwardly coy 1. ORANGE MADONNA, 2006, oil on canvas, 183 x 122 cm 2. MAY, 2006, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm 3. VIOLETS, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 137 cm 4. THE CONFRONTATION, 2009, oil on canvas, 183 x 137 cm 5. URSA MINOR, 2009, oil on canvas, 122 x 91 cm 6. THE BILLY GOAT GRUFF, 2009, oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm 58

mischief. These are pictures replete with metaphors of the id and the subconscious which fairy tales are rife of: the teeming forest, the wild but anthropomorphed animals, lost children, play-acting, masquerade, the velveteen fabric of toy stuffed animals; echoed in the plush setting of the forest and in the calligraphically billowy but structured handling of drapery and clothing that these children wear. This series takes off from Joseph Campbell’s Hero of A thousand Faces where he posits that a hero has to undergo a journey into another world and makes this as a quest to earn a reward or be bestowed with powers that will supplant the hero’s messianic role. It is a narrative structure that runs through all adventure stories and which children try to emulate even as they grow up, contributing to a faith in their made-up myth about surmounting obstacles and where a projected self is vivified further in the archetypes from such myth. Whether contoured by fashion and costume or masked by the wish fulfillment provided by play-acting and masquerade, Yasmin floats these aspirations in her paintings as a recourse ritual to personal myth making, and from where springs forth a memory that is rather dreamed is begotten from the wrappings of worldly things, from objects, from words, from pictures – the eternal transference of a mutable psyche. Yasmin Sison holds two baccalaureate degrees in Humanities and Fine Arts from University of the Philippines Diliman, aside from earning MA credits in art education. One of the founding members of the seminal independent art space Surrounded By Water, she has been exhibiting locally since the 1990’s, and her works have been featured in a number of exhibitions in the Southeast Asian region. She was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists award in 2006. (LC)

YASMIN SISON

PAMELA YAN-SANTOS (b. 1974) Her first medium of choice was print, but Pam Yan-Santos felt the need to “extend” the possibilities of the print process and integrate it with painting. This concern gave birth to her quilt-inspired combine paintings which were part of her first solo, Phase Patterns in 2002. But it was in 2004 that Yan-Santos invested her concerns as a mother and as an artist into a direction of work that documented the growth of her son Juno and peripheral issues of home, from which materials included serigraphy, workbook sheets, Juno’s drawings, painted surfaces, photo stencils and texts became organic parts of a piece. The center of Yan-Santos’ works are often enlarged block prints of photographs of their domicile, immediate surroundings, family members and houses, laid down in acrylic on a ground of worked surfaces, sometimes from pieces of sheets or drawings. The iconography of the work is further extended by the use of phrases like “go upstairs” or “shoes”, are meaningful catchwords used in the training of a mother to a child. (We can call these “imprinting” of social behavior codes). In her recent series, the artist uses old photographs from her album in creating parallel relationships of her personal history to that of her son’s. In Make a cake! Make a cake! Yan-Santos creates a statement of parallels to her own childhood thereby initiating a dialogue on the subject with the viewer as well.

Positive Thoughts is an olive green work foregrounded by a serigraph depicting her husband Jose John Santos III. The main image is inscribed with scribbles and a collaged text while a thought balloon filled only by plus signs indicate the reason for the title. An open blue tap spills water on his head, like a sort of baptism or feeding of water into the mind. The work is an expression of inspiration that seeks to find completion. Openings is a grid-like work featuring different paint and printed surfaces, an interplay of mustard and steel blue windows. This work represents the artist’s first trials into her painting-print integration scheme and makes use of the pictorial device of a quilt. Each area of texture was culled from a surface from her new home, the artist being newly married at that time and trying to find her place in her husband’s home. A magnum opus in scale and in its unique distillation of subjects close to the artist’s heart, Making A Living Room, is Pamela Yan’s work for the group show of winners to the 2009 CCP Thirteen Artist Awards. The main work is a large combine panel that uses print and painting to describe the rooms and activities of the house of an artist husband-and-wife. Creative lives checked against the needs and schedules of domestic existence, Yan seems to convey the harried and hurried dimensions of parent/artist/homemaker. The slashes between roles is deeply conveyed in the abruptly cut and shaped elements of the work: a veritable pastiche of personal experience. To emphasize, a contrapuntal installation of a sofa is laid directly in front of it. Are we expected to take a leisurely seat to witness the lives of these artists in their domicile/workplace? Cow-Sheep originates from an exercise of identification of animals and their relationship to things like grass (food). The work represents the efforts of a mother initiating her child into the complexities of language and finding their references in the actual world. By illustrating concept-complexes, Yan takes us 1. OPENINGS, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 91 x 122 cm 2. COW-SHEEP (diptych), 2008, acrylic, collage & serigraphy on canvas, 91 x 122 cm 3. MAKE A CAKE! MAKE A CAKE!, 2008, acrylic, collage & serigraphy on canvas, 122 x 152 cm 4. MAKING A LIVING ROOM, installation at the Cultural Center of the Philippines' 13 Artists Award exhibit, 2009 5. MAKING A LIVING ROOM, 2009, acrylic, collage & serigraphy on canvas, 244 x 610 cm (4 panels) (Left to right) 5.a. THIS IS A _____ROOM 5.b. WHAT TIME IS IT? 5.c. COLOR INSIDE THE LINE 5.d. CHECK THE THINGS YOU USE TO GO UP 6. DRAW WHAT'S NEXT (diptych), 2008, acrylic, collage & serigraphy on canvas, 91 x 183 cm 7. POSITIVE THOUGHTS, 2008, acrylic, collage & serigraphy on canvas, 122 x 61 cm 62

to the origins of our ground of speech and world. With Make a Cake! Make a Cake! the artist uses pictures from her own past, her birthday party to ruminate on the possibilities of her son’s future. A series of yearly parties? Celebrations of growth and individuality through time? It is a sentiment that spills into Draw What’s Next a visioning exercise that includes three images of the artist’s self and a rocking chair. Yan’s work here demonstrates how a mind inquires into the possibilities of what can happen, in a work that is fully realized in the present. Pamela Yan-Santos finished her BFA at the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines (UP), Diliman. After winning in the Print category in the Art Association of the Philippine’s annual competition and participating in the Triennial of Small-sized prints, Yan turned to painting from which she has had a number of solo shows. She taught at UP for some years before settling fulltime in painting in mid-2000. She co-founded the artist-run space Art Informal in 2004. She was a Finalist to the Ateneo Art Awards in 2009 and received the CCP Thirteen Artists Award the same year. She lives and works in Pasig City. (RJH)

PAMELA YAN-SANTOS

JOSÉ SANTOS III (b. 1970) An exemplary figurative painter of contemporary sensibilities, José Santos III creates works that are characterized by tableauxlike compositions of a contained or defined space, populated with symbolic objects and figures that tell a story in meaningful gestures. His paintings are quiet, if thoroughly polished, executed in a meticulous style of harmonious tones and muted colors. The artist culls his subjects from archival and digital photographs, fragments of memorabilia, and personal effects - objects found in his studio and home. His figures often feature faces from his immediate circle of relations including his own visage, yet they are deliberately posed in a manner reminiscent of religious art replete with calm meaningful hand and body postures. The artist’s usage of a unique visual narrative for his works border on dream language and are structured in a system of puns, free association and personal codes that defy literal or easy interpretations. Santos pursues this code system for his imagery, which if deciphered leads to unexpected references to personal experiences and realities. Yet often the openness and incongruity of his iconography leads to various possibilities of readings that also accommodate the viewer’s own. In Forum, a fairly recent work, a sort of conversation is occurring and yet all of its participants are either unwilling to participate (the horse-headed man, the flat-headed man and the painter who is facing away) and unable to speak (the bespectacled man with a head of stone, the lady in the creased full-sized poster). The chairs and tables are rendered in their silhouettes and one wonders whether such a caucus is a meeting of minds at all. Heavyweight depicts a man holding a pair of strings on which two figures sit opposite each other in a gesture of conversation. Like they were weightless, the stolid man at the center is also impassive to the engagement occurring on his sides where the man on the left (uncannily resembling the man in the center) lets down his wrist and hand to denote a point has been given. The woman on the right does not respond, and continues with her chore of fishing, unaffected by the presences of both men. The Discussion also features the same uncanny failure to get across or communicate, even as both man and woman in the work face each other while seated on facing chairs. They each bear a golden string-can telephone, but neither seems to have said a word, or they have paused in between silent conversation. A golden ladder descends from the painting of a jeepney and finds its footing in between the two. What does this mean? Like almost all of his works, these paintings evade a straightforward narrative, although their imagery is tell-tale. Lifeline, a site-specific painting for a private hospital in the City of Taguig, is a gargantuan canvas of life-size proportions whose segments illustrate or represent the various disciplines of the medical profession. Most of the figures are in the state of what appears to be diagnostic gestures: physical examinations, internal examinations, testing of physiology, analysis of anatomy. The work that comes close to this scope and site is Carlos Francisco’s mural, The History of Medicine at the Philippine General Hospital. But while Francisco’s masterpiece is an epic, narrative and at times instructive work on the evolution of the medical arts in the Philippines, Santos’ take - a much contemporary one - is a rational, almost detached, (I can say clinical) frontal presentation of the medical arts as is, in the metaphorical sense and image. Weather Vane is a work that belongs to a series of non-figurative canvases which the artist has painted after witnessing the detritus left from the destructive flood of typhoon Ondoy in 2009. While the range of objects painted in the work comes from the artist’s studio, the painstaking naturalistic approach in this canvas reveals Santos’ obsession with conjuring solidity by means of theatric single-source lighting and mastery of producing harmonious tones. In effect, the crispness and 1. THE DISCUSSION, 2006, oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm 2. HEAVYWEIGHT, 2007, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm 3. WEATHER VANE, 2009, oil on canvas, 183 x 152 cm 4. LIFELINE, 2009, oil on canvas, 152 x 732 cm 5. FORUM, 2008, oil on canvas, 152 x 183 cm 6. BEHIND THE SCENES, 2009, oil on canvas, 213 x 267 cm 66

softness, the flatness and bulk of his subjects are conveyed with astonishing bravado. Things left behind, or things that are in the periphery of our lives take center stage. With this work and similar others, Santos defines life and existence from the context of one’s refuse, paraphernalia and collectibles. It is the periphery and circumference of objects where one’s engagements are waded through every single day. José Santos III graduated BFA from the University of the Philippines. During his college years he became a member of the group Salingpusa. In 2000, he received the CCP Thirteen Artists Award while he was a faculty of the UP College of Fine Arts. In 2004, he co-founded Art Informal and became active in exhibitions in Asia, including solo shows in Singapore and group shows in Beijing, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur among others. He has also exhibited in New York and was a participant to the Bangladesh Biennial. Santos lives and works in Pasig City. (RJH) 3

JOSÉ SANTOS III

We hope you enjoyed this complimentary preview of WITHOUT WALLS: A tour of Philippine paintings at the turn of the millennium

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Biographical notes on the authors ISABEL CHING (ICH)

LENA COBANGBANG (LC) JOSELINA CRUZ (JC)

Lena Cobangbang graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in Fine Arts. She was one of the recipients of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 2006 and was one of the participating artists in the 2008 Singapore Biennale. Apart from her artistic practice, she writes, curates exhibits, and is also involved with the independent film-making circle doubling as production designer. Joselina Cruz is an independent curator based in Manila, Philippines. She was curator for the Singapore Biennale 2008 and one of the networking curators for the Jakarta Biennale 2009. She received her MA in Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art (RCA), London and has worked as Curator for the Lopez Memorial Museum in Manila and the Singapore Art Museum. She curated You are not a Tourist, for Curating Lab, Singapore, co-curated the exhibition, All the Best: The Deutsche Bank Collection and Zaha Hadid, and was curator-in-charge of the Tapies retrospective at the Singapore Art Museum. She recently curated Creative Index a multi-site exhibition for the Nippon Foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship 10th Regional Anniversary. She curates exhibitions, writes essays, reviews, criticism, and art commentary.

MARC GABA (MG)

Marc Gaba is an author and a visual artist. His solo art shows include When or When (20 Square Gallery, 2009), The Distance Between Color and Light (Mag:net, High Street, 2009) and Postcapitalism (Mag:net, Ayala 2008). He also shows work through Art Cabinet Philippines. His work in poetry has won numerous awards including a Palanca and the Boston Review poetry award, and has appeared in VOLT, jubilat and the most recent Philippine PEN anthology, among others. He has released two chapbooks, How Sound Becomes a Name and Nouveau Bored, and his first full-length poetry book, a Dorset Prize finalist, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press.

RIEL HILARIO (RJH)

Riel Jaramillo Hilario is an active participant in the discourses of Philippine contemporary art, having taken the roles of art events organizer, curator, writer, art educator for the past ten years. Recently he has focused on his work as an artist, specifically as a sculptor in wood. As a writer Hilario has written a number of monographs on artists such as Lino Severino, Jim Orencio, Jose John Santos III, Emmanuel Garibay as well as several essays on the Salingpusa, Antonio Leano, Mark Justiniani, Pamela Yan, Rodel Tapaya, Marina Cruz-Garcia among others. He has also read papers and given lectures on Philippine contemporary art at the RumahYKP space in Ipoh, Malaysia in 2005; in the First Asian Art Museum Forum in Beijing in 2006 and The Multi-faceted curator workshop in Jakarta in 2006. He is a co-founder of ArtInformal and was Execon member and secretary of the National Committee on Art Galleries from 2004 to 2007. In his six-year stint as curator for the Pinto Art Gallery and the Boston Gallery, he was involved in development programs and projects for young Filipino artists.

LISA ITO (LIT)

SIDDHARTA PEREZ (SP)

266

Isabel Ching graduated with a Masters of Arts (Art History & Theory) with Merit award from the University of Sydney, Australia in 2001. While practicing as a lawyer in Singapore, she had been a contributing writer of VEHICLE: Contemporary Visual Arts and part-time lecturer of art history and thesis supervisor for the Masters degree at LA SALLE College of the Arts. She was later based in Hong Kong as the Assistant Director of the Osage group of galleries and also organized select exhibitions, experimental initiatives, symposiums and workshops under the not-for-profit Osage Art Foundation. At present, Ching writes and curates on an independent basis. Current projects include contemporary art in The Philippines and Myanmar.

Lisa Ito-Tapang studied Fine Arts (major in Art History) at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in Diliman. A freelance art writer, she has published articles in publications such as Asian Art News, Art In Site, Pananaw Philippine Journal of Visual Arts, Ctrl+P: Journal of Contemporary Art, Art Manila Quarterly, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Graphic and www.bulatlat.com. She currently works for an environmental nongovernment organization. Siddharta Perez is an art writer from Manila.

Galleries & Institutions We would like to thank the following galleries and institutions for their assistance: FUKUOKA ASIAN ART MUSEUM

7 & 8th floor, Riverain Center Building 3-1 Shimokawabata-machi, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka City, Japan http://faam.city.fukuoka.lg.jp

ARTINFORMAL

277 Connecticut Street, Greenhills East Mandaluyong City, Philippines http://www.artinformal.com

BLANC GALLERY

2E Crown Tower 107 H.V. del Costa St., Salcedo Village Makati City 359 Shaw Blvd. Interior, Addition Hills, Mandaluyong City Shops 9 & 10, The Peninsula Makati, Makati City http://www.blanc.ph

BRITANIA ART PROJECTS

68 Sgt. Catolos corner New York Ave. Brgy. Immaculate Concepcion Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines http://www.britaniaartprojects.com

FINALE ART FILE

Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound 2241 Chino Roces Avenue, Makati City, Philippines http://www.finaleartfile.com

GALLERIA QUATTROCENTO

3F Art Space Glorietta 4 Ayala Center Makati City, Philippines imetanuy@gmail.com

MANILA CONTEMPORARY

Whitespace 2314, Chino Roces Avenue Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati City, Philippines http://www.manilacontemporary.com

METRO GALLERY

455 P. Guevarra street San Juan City, Philippines http://www.metrogallery.ph

NOVA GALLERY La Fuerza Compound

2241 Chino Roces Avenue, Makati City, Philippines http://novagallerymanila.com

OSAGE GALLERY Hongkong: Osage Kwun Tong, Osage Open, Osage Soho China: Osage Beijing, Osage Shanghai Singapore: Osage Singapore http://www.osagegallery.com PASEO GALLERY Artwalk 4th level Bldg. A, Megamall, Mandaluyong City Artspace 3rd Level Glorietta 4, Ayala Center, Makati City Interior Zone, SM North Edsa, Quezon City http://www.paseogallery.com SILVERLENS GALLERY 2/F YMC BLDG 2, 2320 Pasong Tamo Extension Makati City, Philippines http://slab.silverlensphoto.com/slab.htm THE DRAWING ROOM 1007 Metropolitan Avenue, Metrostar Bldg. Makati City, Philippines http://www.drawingroomgallery.com TIN-AW ART GALLERY

Upper Ground Floor, Somerset Olympia Makati Makati Avenue cor. Sto. Tomas st., Makati City 1225, Philippines http://www.tin-aw.com

WEST GALLERY 48 West Avenue, Quezon City, Philippines http://www.westgallery.org 267

Collectors and Photo Credits

268

Costantino Zicarelli 1,2,3,5 4

Private collection John Valenzuela collection

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Paulo Vinluan 1 2 3 4 5,6

Andoni Aboitiz collection Mario Que collection Olivia B. Yao collection Patrick Reyno collection Private collection

Photography by Raena Abellana (c/o the artist) Photography by Raena Abellana (c/o the artist) Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Raena Abellana (c/o the artist) Photography by Raena Abellana (c/o the artist)

Liv Romualdez Vinluan 1-3 4-6

Private collection Paulino & Hetty Que collection

Images courtesy of Finale Art File Images courtesy of Finale Art File

Alvin Villaruel 1 2 3

Private collection Bobby Abastillas collection John Valenzuela collection

Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Winrum Publishing

Cris Villanueva Jr. 1-4

Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist

Ronald Ventura 1 2 3,5 4

Yorkie Gomez collection Artist collection Roberto Gopiao collection Miguel Rosales collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Image courtesy of the artist

Olan Ventura 1 2 3 4 5

Drs. Dan & Lorna Rodriguez collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection Dr. Robinzon Fernandez collection Carlos O. Cojuangco collection Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Bong Lim Photography by Winrum Publishing Images courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of the artist

Clairelynn Uy

Private collection

Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang

Wire Tuazon 1 2,5 3 4

Stanley & Ana Abbey Chan collection Private collection Ed Cua collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection

Image courtesy of Finale Art File Images courtesy of Finale Art File Image courtesy of Finale Art File Image courtesy of Finale Art File

Tatong Recheta Torres 1 2,3,4 5

Tina Fernandez collection Private collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection

Image courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Jay Ticar 1 2,3,4

Sunyata Wangsadarma collection (Jakarta, Indonesia) Image courtesy of Budiman Darmansjah Private collection Images courtesy of Manila Contemporary

Rodel Tapaya 1 2,3,5 4

Trickie & Randy Lopa collection Toddy & Mel Francisco collection Private collection

CJ Ta単edo 1,2 3,4

Sunyata Wangsadarma collection (Jakarta, Indonesia) Photography by Winrum Publishing Private collection Photography by Winrum Publishing

1-4

Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Bong Lim Image courtesy of Budiman Darmansjah

Maria Taniguchi 1,2 Install View 3,6 Olivia B. Yao collection 4,7 Olivia B. Yao collection 5 Olivia B. Yao collection

Images courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of Osage Gallery

Christian Tamondong 1 2 3-6

Dr. Robinzon Fernandez collection Glenn Chua collection Glenn Sia Su collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Glenn Chua Photography by Winrum Publishing

Yasmin Sison 1 3 4 2,5,6

Dr. George Soo collection Brian Villanueva collection Roberto Gopiao collection Private collection

Photography by Mariano Ching Photography by Mariano Ching Photography by Mariano Ching Photography by Mariano Ching

Pamela Yan-Santos 1 2 3 4 5.a 5.b 5.c 5.d 6 7

Artist collection Dr. Robinzon Fernandez collection Jia & Gabby Estrella collection Install View Paulino & Hetty Que collection Joanne & Kirk Young collection Dr. Joven Cuanang collection Paulino & Hetty Que collection Toddy & Mel Francisco collection Dr. Robinzon Fernandez collection

Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang (c/o the artist) Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang (c/o the artist) Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang (c/o the artist) Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang (c/o the artist) Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang (c/o the artist) Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang (c/o the artist)

José Santos III 1 2 3 4 5 6

Nolan & Marisol Alonzo collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection Olivia B. Yao collection St. Luke’s Medical Center, Global City collection Private collection Paulino & Hetty Que collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Bong Lim Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang

Jaypee Samson 1-3 4

Private collection Mike & Michelle Tomacruz collection

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Don M. Salubayba 1,3 2 4 5

Private collection Private collection Trickie & Randy Lopa collection Yorkie Gomez collection

Images courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Bong Lim Image courtesy of the artist

Ian Quirante

Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing

Hannah Pettyjohn 1,3-5 2

Private collection Install View

Images courtesy of Silverlens Gallery Image courtesy of Silverlens Gallery

Lynyrd Paras 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Private collection Private collection Olivia B. Yao collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection Jonathan Lo collection Roberto Gopiao collection Trickie & Randy Lopa collection

Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Jonathan Lo Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Bong Lim

Jason Oliveria 1-4,6 5

Private collection Install View

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Elaine Navas

Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist

Maya Muñoz 1-3,5 4

Private collection Amanda Barretto Lim collection

Images courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing

Ferdie Montemayor 1 2,3 4 5

Atty. Joel Butuyan collection Private collection Dawn & Jose Maria Atienza collection Carlos O. Cojuangco collection

Image courtesy of Tin-aw Art gallery Images courtesy of Tin-aw Art gallery Image courtesy of Tin-aw Art gallery Image courtesy of Tin-aw Art gallery

Keiye Miranda

Private collection

Images courtesy of Finale Art File

Joven Mansit 1,2 3 4 5

Trickie & Randy Lopa collection Dr. Robinzon Fernandez collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection

Photography by Bong Lim Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Bong Lim Photography by Winrum Publishing

Neil Manalo 1-4 5,6

Private collection Olivia B. Yao collection

Images courtesy of Britania Art Projects Photography by Winrum Publishing

Joy Mallari 1 2,5 3,4

Private collection Toddy & Mel Francisco collection Private collection

Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Bong Lim Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang

Jose Legaspi

Private collection

Images courtesy of Drawing Room Gallery

Romeo Lee 1,2,3,5 4

Private collection Irene Cometa collection

Images courtesy of Manila Contemporary Photography by Winrum Publishing

Robert Langenegger 1,5 2,3 4,6

John Valenzuela collection Private collection Carlos O. Cojuangco collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Images courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of the artist

Mark Orozco Justiniani 1 2 3 4

Paulino & Hetty Que collection Joanne & Kirk Young collection Jia & Gabby Estrella collection Olivia B. Yao collection

Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Winrum Publishing

Winner Jumalon 1,3-6 2

Private collection Dr. Gary Lorenzo collection

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Geraldine Javier 1,5 2

Private collection Artist collection

Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang

1-5

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1,2

269

Geraldine Javier 3 4

Yorkie Gomez collection Julius Babao collection

Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang

Guerrero Z. Habulan 1,3 2 4

Private collection Atty. Joel Butuyan collection Bobby Abastillas collection

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing

Emmanuel Garibay 1 2,4 3 5

Atty. Joel Butuyan collection John Valenzuela collection Sugiharto Kusumadi collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection

Image courtesy of Atty. Joel Butuyan Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Winrum Publishing

Pedro Garcia II

Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing

Nona Garcia 1 2 3,4,5

Carlos O. Cojuangco collection Paulino & Hetty Que collection Private collection

Image courtesy of NOVA gallery Image courtesy of Finale Art File Images courtesy of Finale Art File

Mark Andy Garcia 1 2,3 4

Olivia B. Yao collection Carlson Chan collection Private collection

Image courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Lyra Garcellano 1,2,3 4 5

Private collection Ed Cua collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection

Images courtesy of Finale Art File Image courtesy of Finale Art File Image courtesy of Finale Art File

Carlo Acerden Gabuco 1 2 3 4 5

Private collection Patrick Reyno collection Julius Babao collection Norman Crisologo collection Julius Babao collection

Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Karen Ocampo Flores 1-5

Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist

Patricia Eustaquio 1 2 3,4,6 5

Private collection Install View Private collection Install View

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of Silverlens gallery Image courtesy of Silverlens gallery

Alfredo Esquillo Jr. 1 2 3 4 5

Mr. Hogi Hyun (Abacus Capital) collection Fukuoka Asian Art Museum collection Private collection Paulino & Hetty Que collection Olivia B. Yao collection

Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Image courtesy Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang

Kiko Escora 1-5

Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist

Christina Dy 1,2,4,5 3

Private collection Install View

Images courtesy of Silverlens gallery Image courtesy of Silverlens gallery

Ranelle Dial 1-3 4-7

Private collection Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of Finale Art File

Bembol Dela Cruz 1,4-6 2 3

Private collection Private collection Olivia B. Yao collection

Images courtesy of Finale Art File Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of Finale Art File

Anton Del Castillo 1,2,3 4,5 6

Alexis & Anton Lacson collection Trickie & Randy Lopa collection Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Bong Lim Image courtesy of the artist

Pardo De Leon 1,2,4,5 3

Private collection Terry & Biddy Que collection

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Kawayan De Guia 1,2,6 3 4 5

Private collection Carlos O. Cojuangco collection Trickie & Randy Lopa collection Install View

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

Leslie De Chavez

Private collection

Images courtesy of Silverlens gallery

Norman Crisologo collection Artist collection Mike & Michelle Tomacruz collection Olivia B. Yao collection Irene Cometa collection

Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Winrum Publishing

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1-6

Marina Cruz 1 2 3 4 5

270

Louie Cordero 1,2 3,4

Olivia B. Yao collection Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of the artist

Charlie Co 1 2,3 4

Fukuoka Asian Art Museum collection Terry & Biddy Que collection Marlyn Go collection

Image courtesy of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Images courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing

Mariano Ching 1-5 6,7

Private collection Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of Silverlens gallery

Jonathan Ching 1,2 3 4-6

Quimbo Brothers collection Virgil Prieto collection Private collection

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of the artist

Ronald Caringal 1 2 3,4

Bobby Abastillas collection Virgil Prieto collection Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Image courtesy of the artist Images courtesy of the artist

Annie Cabigting 1 2,4,5 3

Paulino & Hetty Que collection Private collection Norman Crisologo collection

Image courtesy of Finale Art File Images courtesy of Finale Art File Image courtesy of the artist

Lyle Buencamino

Private collection

Images courtesy of Silverlens gallery

Bruihn 1,3 2 4,5

Private collection Johnny Escaler collection Private collection

Photography by Koskol (c/o Silverlens Gllery) Photography by Koskol (c/o Silverlens Gllery) Photography by Carlo Ma. Guerrero (c/o Silverlens Gallery)

Lawrence Borsoto 1,2 3

Private collection Jia & Gabby Estrella collection

Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang (c/o the artist) Photography by Winrum Publishing

Elmer Borlongan 1 2 3 4 5,6

Private collection Artist collection Artist collection Nolan & Marisol Alonzo collection Olivia B. Yao collection

Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Mike Cheung (c/o the artist) Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Winrum Publishing

Plet Bolipata 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Dr. Joven Cuanang collection Bonjin Bolinao collection Artist collection Manuel Que collection Olivia B. Yao collection Paulino & Hetty Que collection Michael Madrid collection

Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Mike Cheung (c/o the artist) Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Mike Cheung (c/o the artist) Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Marya & Nathaniel Salang

Joel â&#x20AC;&#x153;Welbartâ&#x20AC;? Bartolome 1,3 2 4,5

Dr. Robinzon Fernandez collection Irene Cometa collection Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Winrum Publishing Images courtesy of Budiman Darmansjah

Andres Barrioquinto 1-3 4 5

Private collection Dr. Hazel R. Gazmen collection John Valenzuela collection

Images courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Photography by Winrum Publishing

Amy Aragon

Private collection

Images courtesy of Manila Contemporary

Marcel Antonio 1 2 3 4 5 6,7

Dr. & Mrs. Virgilio N. Bayot collection Dr. Toto Salgado collection Toddy & Mel Francisco collection Angelica Candano collection Douglas Candano collection Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Photography by Bong Lim Photography by Bong Lim Image courtesy of Galleria Quattrocento Image courtesy of Galleria Quattrocento Images courtesy of Galleria Quattrocento

Leonardo Aguinaldo 1 2,3

Dr. Robinzon Fernandez collection Private collection

Photography by Winrum Publishing Images courtesy of the artist

Leo Abaya 1 2 3 4 5 6

Michael Koh collection David-Martinez collection Dr. Colin Lim collection Patrick Reyno collection Artist collection Private collection (Switzerland)

Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist Image courtesy of the artist

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1-4

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