Making art in a chaotic city
Book Review No Chaos, No Party Edited by Eva McGovern-Basa 218 pages Published by Almavida Holdings, Inc.
THERE WAS a brief period early in high school when I was enchanted with Tabuena’s watercolors, of elongated scenes of native mothers holding children in front of houses on stilts and carabaos with large curved horns and tall palm trees. I copied his works, repeating them and adding a variation or two but never departing from his style.
Then I discovered words and moved to writing. But my affinity with artists remained, I was always in awe at good paintings that make me swoon, tear, or be ecstatic. Artists have a more formidable task of communicating “visual words” than we ordinary wordsmiths.
I met many of the artists and their works featured in this book, No Chaos, No Party, at the Manila Contemporary gallery some years back. The gallery’s impresario, Valentine Willie, had a knack for identifying artists who excelled in their craft, had a feeling, a message, and which delighted me visually.
The book’s publisher and fellow artist Valeria Cavestany took me to parties at these artists’ studios and had some delightful conversations. Having met and heard them speak of their craft before confirms the interviews they gave in the book; I could hear their voices as I read their accounts.
There are, among the 28 artists, a thread of past common experiences and artistic maturity. Many had gone to the University of the Philippines and some fell under the sway of the artist Roberto Chabet who seemed to have instilled in them the process of self-discovery and a demanding work ethic.
Of the 28 artists, nine employ photography, one of them using images to later adapt to canvas. Several employ collage, others create with objects for sculptural pieces. One is a performance art dancer.
Each artist has a unique perspective and contribution to contemporary art but I am especially drawn to some of the featured artists. There’s Ling Quisumbing Ramilo with an affinity for found objects, many of them wood, and, in some cases, reshaping them to create a profundity that enraptures viewers like myself not just for the object but its history as well. She explains her work: “I like the idea of using inanimate objects that most people overlook to convey some sort of vulnerability, some humanity, and I have chosen building structures and combining unrelated objects to write my poetry. For example, when I use sandpaper for my work, it’s not just about the texture, it’s the residue left on the surface, an old color of paint that’s familiar to me. Most of them were collected from the renovation of my grandmother’s house. Each have markings of a familiar color or surface left on the abrasion. I know each piece of sandpaper, who used it and where it was used.”
Another artist, Maya Muñoz, has arresting works. They may be the restrained orderly grid patterns or the ethereal imperceptible layers of white or the gashes, color swipes and drips on canvas. They all give pause because there is an attempt by Muñoz to communicate in short hand — like she says, in “Haiku.”
The interviewer asked what inspires her: “When I’m watching a movie, there’s something, a phrase somebody says that I like so I write it down. For me, that’s a complete painting already. Or I’m listening to music or reading something, a book or a poem. Or somebody says something that I really like. And then I just kind of amble around for days or weeks until I’m ready. It’s different every time. It’s always exciting, that initial burst of inspiration.”
A perceptive eye — 360 degrees in orientation — with years of street training and lugging cameras does yield results. The reserved but ever cheerful M.M. Yu, her aesthetic instincts mentored by Roberto Chabet, hones in on ironic images, or those similarly patterned and lined, transforming them into visual meditations of the city’s grit.
She is the veritable fly on the wallpaper sky, never obtrusive, yet skillfully framing poignant city tableaus. There are usually no people in her images, just symmetry and tension in construction and objects. Despite the significant archive she possesses she has been disciplined to segment her subjects which results “... in photobooks because sometimes I find it difficult to explain my work. I wanted people to read my pictures as if they were reading a book.”
My partiality to photography includes vintage images and Norberto Roldan’s works with his principle oeuvre, that of old studio photos encased in wooden slats and glassed, have enthralled me over the years. Weaving a story from old photos, ensconced in wooden reliquaries, identities long forgotten, is the artists’ prerogative and magical charm.
I have followed Valeria Cavestany’s evolutionary body of work for close to two decades, beginning with the dainty floral settings to vintage Chinois to illustrated light boxes to whimsical animal sculpture installations, amusing crucifixes, and more recently, stuffed matrona dolls and many more.
This eclecticism she describes in her interview is “a certain desire to rediscover what you’re seeing every time, because if not, then everybody would commit suicide because nature is infinitely more interesting.”
When one recalls and sees the gamut of Cavestany’s works they match precisely what she says “... about experimenting with materials,” “...passionate about color and how color can describe explosive intensity.”
Cavestany’s works engages the viewer as she inserts wit and irony like the seated women in black in various stages of conversation. The acrylic on canvas is entitled Data Transfer.
There is exuberance and a strong peppering of beauty in much of Cavestany’s creation. Beauty to her is “... pleasing to the eye...,” dismissing horrible things as “... not unique.” As a painter “...visual impact is important,” she is always
“... conscious about whether I am contributing something new, beautiful, exciting and addictive.”
There are many more artists in this book that enthrall and provoke the senses. Jose Legaspi’s charcoal on paper with frightened faces and startled eyes like deer caught in headlights is the extreme in the range of highlighted works. I cannot take my eyes from his subjects, often wondering where the depths of the anguish come from.
His interview reveals a very turgid family life, being maligned for being gay, and entertaining a death wish, the anguish appearing in his works. He tells stories in his paintings and “... taunt(s) the audience.” I am one of the taunted. Living in the Bay Area in the 1980s, Manuel Ocampo was making his mark with huge grim-looking canvases of feudal castles, shrouded Klu Klux Klaners, swastikas, and crying shitting babies floating in mid-air. The shocking scenes resonated with a Filipino and Latino community recalling the excesses of Spanish colonialism.
I spotted his works with Mickey Mouse characters talking theory at the Venice Biennale years back, and his works today — globs, molecules, sharp edged in ominous greys — have that unsettling and bizarre feeling he admits in his interview as done to confound and make a viewer think.
His sojourns in Europe haves made him posit the notion that government and corporations should take a more supportive role of the arts, not intervening in content but in ways that would sustain arts groups, associations, and the concerns of artists from welfare to copyright. He thinks museums are outdated and artists spaces and small galleries in places outside Manila should be fostered.
Over the course of two decades, many of these selected artists — mentored and influenced by the likes of Chabet, Bobi Valenzuela of Hiraya Gallery, and Elmer Borlongan — have significant bodies of mature work and have in turn become mentors themselves either in a classroom, lectures, or informally to younger artists. Several of the artists — Mark Salvatus, Wawi Navaroza, Manuel Ocampo and Norberto Roldan — have set up artists spaces and free libraries for fellow artists. No Chaos, No
Party includes their services and adds at the end a list of galleries and art spaces throughout Metro Manila.
It’s refreshing to hear these artists speak clearly about what art is to them and the constant and persistent claims to be innovative, to present a visual perspective that words can’t fill, to eschew the monetary reward and strive for authenticity. Many of these artists, despite the odds and the pressure to get a job and be normal, have dug their heels into their craft and creative desires and have done reasonably well. They are formidable, respected, and feted, the current generation of artistic expression.
For much of the post war period and all the way perhaps to the turn of this century, artworks were — and this is a generalization — suffused with romantic nationalism, didactic proletarianism, nudity as novelty, and indigenous abstraction.
Thereafter came a shift. The regurgitation of these strands were scrutinized by artists and new approaches with new mediums and a pollination locally and abroad would set new standards. Like other aesthetes and critics, I spotted trends revealing the emergence of new artistic directions: militant but not literal; native yet universal; naked but profound; complex and nuanced; intense colors or their absence.
Art in the 2000s became exciting, with new galleries like Manila Contemporary opening up, old galleries expanding, works more dazzling and thoughtful, with opening wall statements that were understandable guides. It was about five years ago that the publisher Valeria Cavestany broached the idea of a book affirming the palpable artistic fervor in an unfriendly Manila. Just creating works in the city’s din and schlepping it across town to galleries is a pain. Cavestany recognized the self-sufficiency of artists and the bounty they produce with no sense of self-entitlement. Their efforts would be recognized and exalted in No Chaos, No Party.
This is not a “how- to” book from learning the craft to creating a work. There are 28 artists making a go with their work in a chaotic city, therefore the title. There are snatches of the creative process but No Chaos,
No Party dwells on the grime, diligence, and discipline these artists have exerted on themselves which will inspire readers, ingénues, and artists to plod on.
No Chaos No Party features interviews with artists Poklong Anading, Renato Barja, Jr., Valeria Cavestany, Lena Cobangbang, Francis Commeyne, Louie Cordero, Vermont Coronel, Leslie De Chavez, Dex Fernandez, Carlo Gabuco, David Griggs, Gino Javier, Eisa Jocson, Romeo Lee, Jose Legaspi, Pow Martinez, Maya Muñoz, Wawi Navarroza, Manuel Ocampo, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Iggy Rodriguez, Norberto Roldan, Mark Salvatus, Kaloy Sanchez, Gerardo Tan, Ryan Villamael, MM Yu and Maria Jeona Zoleta. It is available at artbooks.ph in Pioneer St., Mandaluyong, in APHRO, The Alley at Karrivin Plaza, and Finale Art Gallery in Makati City. It is priced at P6,000.