Spotlight: Philippine Art
As they prepare for an upcoming exhibition next year, Luis Lorenzana, Michelle Yun, and Ken Hakuta share what’s in store for the Philippine in contemporary art
As they prepare for an upcoming exhibition next year, Luis Lorenzana, Michelle Yun, and Ken Hakuta share what’s in store for the Philippines in contemporary art
The early works of Filipino artist Luis Lorenzana have been collecting dust under his bed for 10 years. Rolled up and not cared for properly, the collection is composed of more than 100 paintings that did not sell back then. These artworks are far from what made Luis a popular artist today. After all, these were his early works created in a time when the artist was still experimenting with techniques and style. Luis kept them all these years but, to his surprise, an art collector from the United States bought the entire lot, every piece of artwork, just a few months back.
It was Japanese-American art collector Ken Hakuta who made the purchase. He first bought one of Luis’ works at an auction by a gallery in the US last February. It was in a chance encounter at the Hong Kong airport where the collector and the artist met. Then Ken decided to visit Luis’ studio in Manila.
“I visited his studio and there was nothing much in there because he would paint very slowly,” recalls Ken. “It’s not like he had 20 works, very little. Then I saw that Jose Rizal painting, which he had framed. What is that? It doesn’t even look like something from him. It was his old painting. Then he decided to show me a bunch of old works, which were under his bed. He said, ‘You know, I really never show these to people.’ I was shocked! First of all, they were so different from his current works and there were so many of them, from 2005 to 2006. Back when he was starting out.”
Ken fell in love with the works and initially bought 13 paintings. He returned a month later to buy the entire collection.
“Artists, when they become successful, like Luis is now, all their old works are gone. It’s very rare for an artist to have or keep his old works. When I came back a month later, I bought some more and I loved it more and more. I think very archive-ly, that it’s important to have the whole archive. So I decided that I have to buy the whole thing. I think Luis wasn’t sure he wants me to sell the whole thing. Later, he found some more, this bunch of oil paintings on canvas in her mother’s house. There were 180 paintings, that’s a lot.”
Luis is a contemporary artist who mixes pop culture references with his surrealist paintings. He likes to mock modern society, which is why a retelling of classic artworks is prevalent in his works. His Venus is a recall of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus where Venus looks like the modern version of a surgery-obsessed woman surrounded by syringes. Luis’ works have traveled around the world making him one of the most celebrated Filipino contemporary artists today. His early works are a personal, social, and political commentary, a collage of surrealist images and texts.
Luis is just happy that his old works landed in the right hands. But parting ways with his artworks is not always the easiest, especially pieces he had held on to for many years.
“It’s flattering and scary. It’s very cliché but true, once you finish an artwork, when you part from it, it’s like losing a child. Now I’m like losing a whole family. The idea really appealed to me, that was why I entrusted everything to Ken. It’s a good idea that they will be intact, they will be together in one place. So 30 years from now, if someone wants to see them, they will be there together. This is wishful thinking, but if I really get famous someday, it is easier for people to study the artworks. And Ken is known for giving artworks to museums around the world,” says Luis.
Ken is a rather unique collector. He looks for artworks, buys what he likes, and saves them. Then he eventually passes on the art to museums around the world for future generations to see. As a lover of contemporary art, he wants the art world to shift focus and notice the beauty of Southeast Asian art, specifically Philippine contemporary art. He also owns works of other Filipino artists like Jigger Cruz and Marina Cruz. And since it’s rare to have the early works of an artist all together, he decided to exhibit them next year.
“This is a very exciting project—and it’s very hard for me to find exciting projects to get involved with. I thought this is really exciting and I want to promote Philippine art anyway, globally. I’m very active with a lot of museums around the world. I thought this is a very exciting undiscovered body of work,” he says.
He is working with Michelle Yun,
Ken is a rather unique collector. He eventually passes on the art to museums around the world for future generations to see. He wants the art world to notice the beauty of Southeast Asian art, specifically Philippine contemporary art.
the senior curator of Modern and Contemporary Art of Asia Society in New York, and they would be exhibiting the works of Luis in Manila in February 2017. Like Ken, Michelle was interested in Luis’s body of work, especially his early art. She will also be writing a book about the collection. She says that the presence of Filipino artists in the US is proof of the growing interest of Western collectors in Asian contemporary art.
“I do think there’s a growing interest, in terms of appreciation and also collecting. For a long time, I think contemporary Chinese art and East Asian art are what people felt comfortable with. But there will always be special collectors, especially those interested in contemporary art. They are interested in discovering the next big thing and I think Southeast Asia is becoming a region that more and more people want to discover,” she says. “I do think there has been more demand for South and Southeast Asia. I think also what contributes to that is the proliferation of international art fairs in the region, and people are becoming more mobile and getting more educated and exposed to the art here.”
Although it seems like the interest is there, it’s still hard to say when Filipino contemporary art will make it to the spotlight it so greatly deserves. Ken thinks it will happen in three to five years as museums look to more exotic places like the newly opened Myanmar. “I think once contemporary Filipino artists are included in some key exhibitions, that’s when it will happen,” adds Michelle.
“From my experience dealing with museums, there is a definite increase and it’s going to come in a big way in about five years, the interest in Southeast Asian contemporary art. Not right now. One of the best reasons it’s important to get Filipino art out there is because, it’s very hard to get curators, museum directors, and even commercial galleries to come to Manila. While they will go to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Jakarta, Tokyo, Seoul, and even Myanmar very easily, they won’t come here. That’s why it’s important to package this and get it out. Then it can travel.”