BY: YASUNARI RAMON SUAREZ TAGUCHI
In ArtPortal Cebu’s featured exhibit for the month, takes on the usage of the terms in this way are discernable but with a twist: they are used to serve as indicators of how artists “settle” into a sense of personal creative identity after embarking on creative jaunts in the ever-expansive byways of creative landscapes and modes.
Titled “Linugdang” and ongoing for the duration of the month at the ArtPortal Cebu gallery at the ground floor of the First Philippine Planters Bank in Pitogo, Consolacion, the show collects artworks that were made by established and up-and-coming talents who are affiliated with the artist incubator program.
The show’s curatorial score takes after the implications of the term “linugdang”, which
translates to “the settlement of dust particles to the bottom in water in waterbodies”, but is alternatively used to contextually mean where one lands or how one falls into his/her place after traversing through life’s peaks and troughs.
Plying on the where-onelands interpretation of the term, the exhibit features a selection of works that’re rendered by the hallmarks of traditional-representational styles, cubist-themed pieces, Dadaistinclined works, impressionist and expressionist-influenced tableaus and pieces that fall in the iconography tier, among many others.
The diverseness of the creative styles featured in the show nods to how diverse the world of art is, apart from alluding to how different-yet-similar
“Synthesis” and “amalgamation” are terms that’re widely used by art curators to describe and define the works of artists. Oftentimes, they are used to underscore how a work of art can stem from mergers of varied creative worldviews, disciplines, themes and styles, and are pretty much direct and straightforward in the way they are used to do so.
artists’ “settle” into finding themselves as creative daubers.
This aspect to the show essentially sets the terms “synthesis” and “amalgamation” as the summation that molds an artist’s creative world view – not necessarily as modifiers that singularize a definition for their creative style – and basically presents how influence and personal predilections compel artists to “settle” into a signature style.
Since its initial formation in 2014, ArtPortal Cebu has helped various up-andcoming artists make a name for themselves in the local creative arts sphere. The brainchild of Cebuano painter Celso Duazo Pepito, the artist associationcum-mentorship program regularly hosts a range of exhibits and shows that part the veil to what Cebuano talents have been up to with art and how these have an impact in the local arts circuit.