Complete and Unabridged, Part II

Above is a poster for an art exhibition.  It is one of a series of exhibitions marking Roberto Chabet’s 50th year or so of making art.  Roberto Chabet was one of my professors at the College of Fine Arts in the University of the Philippines.  The exhibitions were organized or initiated by Ringo Bunuoan, a curator, an archivist, and an artist.  This exhibition was co-curated by Ringo with Gary Ross Pastrana and Isabel Ching.  There are 51 participating artists.  Below is the work I submitted to be part of the exhibition.   The poster features a collage by artist, Kaloy Olavides.

To see a sample of articles on Roberto Chabet, visit

To see Ringo Bunuoan’s work, you may visit http://angelfloresjr.multiply.com/journal/item/2677

To see Gary Ross Pastrana’s work, you may visit

To see more works from the exhibition, you may visit

Dollheads

These are installation pictures of a painting I submitted for a group show at West Gallery in Quezon City.  The show was entitled; 2010 – The Year We Make Contact.  This show was part of a series of shows on the modernist imagination and popular science fiction.

For more information on the groupshow, please visit http://westgallery.org/exhibitions/2010-the-year-we-make-contact/  You may see the other artworks that were part of the exhibition there.

The following are notes written by Ronald Achacoso  for the exhibition:

The parallels that can be drawn between art’s search for the elusive Other and man’s search for an equally elusive alien intelligence, metaphorical or otherwise, make sense, given how both are driven by similar impulses, scientific and spiritual and emotional, not least of which is the universal longing for a sense of wonder, if not necessarily truth, and the even more universal longing for contact.

It’s no coincidence that the junk iteration of art, the pulp sci-fic and comic books and B movies ,that has weaned and has been celebrated and exhaustively fetishized to mine their aesthetic by the rotating group of artists – – – Ronald Achacoso, Alex Aguilar, Daphne Aguilar, Felix Bacolor, Dodo Dayao, Raul Rodriguez, Miko Sandejas, Omar Taleon and Cris Villanueva – – -is voracious with alien life, with a densely populated universe, with the ubiquity of cosmic others.

2010: The Year We Make Contact is the third in a trilogy of group shows begun with 2007’s Destroy All Monsters and with 2008’s Them! that meditates on close encounters and all its diametric permutations: evidence and mystery, contact and disconnect, presence and isolation.

2010: The Year We Make Contact runs from Jan 12 to February12 ,2010 at the West Gallery on 48 West Avenue.

Ronald Achacoso is a writer and artist.  You may easily get preview of his writings and art by doing a web search of his name.

Indestructible Babies

The following is a write-up or press release written by artist, Raul Rodriguez, for an exhibition of my drawings in 2009:

Alive and dead…the graphite awaiting signs of life…the drawing hand marks the line between the living and the dead…perhaps some wishful thinking that these images of catatonia could switch from being “still life” to playthings amusing the imagination…some distant imaginings which may still be budding and precocious to conjure games, dreams and more toys of the mind. These could be the telltale clues that preclude all art, though inanimate, may one day take the sensuous forms of sculpture, of murals and monuments as though living testimonies of life shaped by the creative. But momentarily the prowess lies on the power of the lead tip to bring back to 2-dimensional existence the vagaries of the 3-dimensional.

This first solo exhibition of Miko Sandejas belies the fact that artists summarily execute their genius by the tip of a Mongol or a Steadler, for that matter. Drafting is the mother of all recorded art. The things we see in our mind’s eye will soon be unleashed by the mere contact of lead on paper surface. Miko, if you have talked with him for more than 3 instances on art, would come across to you as a thinker sifting through volumes of art information with a kind of indiscreet crusade to save painting, at least, from mindless inauthenticity. You would conclude by then on your 4^th or 5^th conversation with him that on the works presently displayed he had modestly chosen the medium of pencil to sparingly funnel onto paper the massive ricocheting ideas he had been brewing up in months. Someone who had studied seriously painting (especially under Roberto Chabet) in the UP College of Fine Arts and earning units in art history can be likened to Don Quixote braving an art world in full swing in its marketability and more so plummeting into commercialism. Miko’s works would strike as one rare fish swimming upstream against the tide of the sleek and the likable art we commonly see nowadays. He would be a lonely soul up for grabs, not on the bargaining table, but on what matters in art. The pencil shall speak as powerful as oil paint, canvas, bronze, marble or any expensive vehicle to connect things of the real to the unreal, between life and the lifeless.

Miko had referenced particularly these images of dolls he copied by hand based on photographs. But that’s not all. He mentioned that in this imaging process a Paul Klee image the “Angelus Novus” (or new angel, perhaps angel of what is novel), a lone floating figure from a nebulous domain of unreality, arrived as a convenient visual nexus point. Klee as master draftsman of childlike naiveté may have marked significantly in the conception of the show simply to present evidence that no amount of pigmentation nor technical justification (as can be seen immediately in the color translucency and definitive drawing axis in Klee’s art) may run counter to the inarguable supremacy of drawing as the first line of conception in art and maybe the last interpretative grid when looking at a picture. “The Thinking Eye”—Klee’s magnum opus book may strike a chord to Sandejas’ works since, like Klee, there is something more than the image that fascinates the eye. The “whys” stirring the inquisitive thought more than the “how’s” that lays premium to precise technique is where the aesthetic balance rests.

For Miko the whole set of drawings, when hanged, should be viewed as a set of disconnected diagrams. In addition, diagrams from the craft of paper folding figured in his production. Paper folding diagrams shape the 2-dimensional into a half-step higher close to 3-D and yet retains its lovely flimsiness. In drawing you could play with the image, with your hands, with the paper you draw on. The graciousness of drawing’s freedom is its own law. In explaining why dolls for a subject matter, “Blade Runner”, the cult sci-fi flick of dark future, was also discussed by the artist. The movie highlighted lifelike robot dolls as artificial flesh. This then would correspond, according to Sandejas, to paintings as depictions of artificial life, like vinyl dolls.

In my conversation with Miko, he looked back to Holbein’s warped hidden skull in “The Ambassadors” along with musings on the “still life” as reminders of death. Behind every still life hides a skull; the sign of decay. The “still life” motif (“vanitas”) as painting and drawing epitomizes life’s vain preoccupations and desires, reminders of our fleshly mortality. Life can be dead still. Collectible dolls reverberate as grotesque signs of vanitas and stiller life. Inversely, artificial life/dolls are visions of immortality too. These drawings reverberate in that way.

The nuances of the lightness of touch, the gravity of shading, the density of tones and the varied directions of strokes from Sandejas’ hand may show drawing’s unique virtue to simulate life from a dead object. This is the living drama of drawing. Artists draw to draw life even from cadavers. We may conclude on this note: Not by our innate fascination with what snuffs out life but with what drives us to rise above dark death shall we find the gift of drawing as a lasting itch (that won’t go away) artists would scratch for years to come. Come to think of it, the art of drawing doesn’t die so easily.

-Raul Rodriguez

For information on mag:net gallery, visit http://www.magnetgalleries.com/main.php

For information on Raul Rodriguez, check the web or visit http://rkfineart.com/c_selectedmemory_bio.html

http://www.artinasia.com/galleryDetail.php?catID=0&galleryID=339&artistID=3837&view=5

IT WAS ALL ABOUT YOU

This was a statement prepared on a photo installation from Miguel Sandejas, Taren Lulu, and Fanshen Peteros for a project on popular art and culture

Shitting, pissing, puking, and other private matters happen in a public toilet amidst the hustle and bustle of urban crowds and structures in anonymity. Graffiti in a public stall isn’t so out of place to the urban dweller as well. Like other public toilet activities therein, reading and making of graffiti occur in hidden and in private, amidst the movements of crowds.

According to Charles Baudelaire, experiencing the modern city is akin to that  of a stroller. a loafer, or a flaneur.  The flaneur moves through the city as in labyrinth.  He moves through its streets, hidden spaces, and crowds in anonymity.  Strolling connotes a leisurely pace to observe, to read, and even to write.  In strolling, the flaneur is said to experience the fearful pleasures and attractions of the city.  Bathroom graffiti and public bathrooms are among those hidden spaces of the city.  Viewing and making bathroom graffiti are among those fearful pleasures that strolling through the city affords.

Graffiti found in public toilet stalls are like ejected matter or waste, like the dirt and fluids people deposit from their bodies. They pertain to the flesh, in that base matter sort of way. But in another sense, it is of the flesh, the human or sinful nature; all that is ignoble, hidden, embarrassing, and shameful.

These particular inscriptions occur here for a reason. The site accommodates their becoming. The privacy and anonymity of a public bathroom allow this use or abuse; to dish out the dirt, to rage, or to be one’s cheekiest self. It’s walls are the opposite of sacred taking in the dirt and slime of urban being. Like the back of a public bus seat, it becomes a person’s confessional of his worst and potentially embarrassing. There’s a saying that from out of the mouth, the heart speaks. Upon bathroom walls, people reveal a bit of themselves in a fashion they may not otherwise. Unlike the wall’s of buildings and bridges, these messages are for the most part secrets or intimate in intention. Care for a rendezvous? Call this number. I am guessing that these are also impulsive on many occasions; a product of boredom.

People may ignore them, but there is a  fascination similar to reading a dirty secret, to listening to a lewd joke, to laughing at the rantings of a lunatic, and to finding something unexpected. As Joan Rivers said most recently, “I’m going to watch Charlie Sheen at Radio City Music hall, just to hear what screwball thing he says next.” We enjoy taking these crazy things in. For the most part, these are considered inconsequential nothings. In other words, they are nothing to be meditated upon. Some questions come to mind. Why is this impulse to look, however obscene, compelling or tantalizing? Why are they embarrassingly interesting to look at?

For one, public bathroom graffiti can be sexually charged. It is blatant and ridiculous in it’s declarations and revelations. And if we think of Baudelaire’s idea of the flaneur, these psychological  or imaginary spaces; are potentially fearful yet pleasurable to a visitor. The reader  is a voyeur into these dark spaces.  They belong to crowds; the whispers of anonymous walkers.

At a men’s toilet at the Faculty enter of the University of the Philippines, I took notice of what some people had written on the walls: some philosophies on life; calls to action; lewd confessions; telephone numbers; invitations to a rendezvous, and other inscriptions. These were things that people left behind; their waste, to be covered up by a re-paint after a few months or so.

Susan Sontag comments in her essay called “On Photography”. ‘The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world ‘picturesque.’ (pg. 55) Photography is an apt way of actively experiencing these  spaces of the city.  It is was obvious  measure to take.

I thought of collecting them as photos and transplanting them.  Taking bathroom graffiti from being of little value or little interest as a means to transform the experience of the pedestrian.  Transplanting them as a photographs into the broad day-lit paths of pedestrians would for one create an anonymous voyeuristic experience apart from their routine.   A goal would be to affect routines of passersby and  reveal the familiar yet hidden experience of bathroom graffiti; something that is a part of their geography.

The sites: the stairwell of a university building can be a likely stage or a meeting place for an audience. This stairwell has a bulletin board with posters, announcements, advertisements, and the like. These are posts of images and text that people, students and faculty, pass and read every day. This would serve as the new site for photos of bathroom graffiti. The graffiti to be re-viewed will be from the bathrooms of the same building and similar buildings around the university campus. These are bathrooms that are repositories of layers, messages, paint, and scrawlings from people who inhabited the building throughout decades past. Potentially, the people who made them are the same people who pass the stairwell to stop and view its bulletin board. This served as one underlying logic why the stairwell was chosen. That is the graffiti represent habits and thoughts not only of specific people but of a populace.

A bulletin board follows certain rules that the bathroom walls do not. What sort of transformation would lifted graffiti from the bathroom stalls produce in a new and incongruous setting? How would passersby respond to perhaps familiar and somewhat private or isolated inscriptions transplanted into a more public stage? Note that they would be isolated in a way that they are cropped, hidden at first amongst the information noise from a plethora of posts but jutting out due to a difference from the normal content, format, and configuration.

We thought of people recognizing some of the images and deciphering layers of writing captured in the photographs. In the least, I had hoped it would be an amusing experience to see something familiar, but transplanted and out-of-place. Perhaps they may recognize their own thoughts they secretly wrote laid bare. ‘Welcome to Hell’, said one photograph. ‘How do I initiate a make-out session?’, pleaded another.

The Process: I believe that there is a transformation and a transgression of the familiar by way of pitting two spaces or surfaces together. One is a bulletin board in juncture or a transit in between classrooms. The other are the walls and stalls of a public bathroom. People interact with both spaces in part by reading and looking. One does not accommodate the information of the other.

I had asked random people to go into the bathrooms (particularly that of the ladies which I could not enter) and take photos of graffiti. I had no control over the selection or initial cropping of the images. The surprise of seeing what images they took was a pleasure. There were surprises. It was interesting to see what they chose. It seemed to me that some of the choices were familiar, like friends or inside jokes among the ladies that frequent the bathrooms. In the end, we printed all the images selected, changing little.

There would be no overall guiding rationale of selection in taking the photos; the more random the better. I employed a technique of asking ladies to take any 5 photos of vandals in their bathrooms. From there selection would be in our hands. We had gathered about 40 digital photographs.

The bulletin board was transformed into another object. It was no longer just a bulletin board. This was brought on by scheming; the breaking of its rules of privilege. We knew that only certain kinds of official sanctioned information are allowed on it. There was no asking permission if we could post on the bulletin board. We had planted hidden information. Our installation was not blatant. Was this also vandalism? To authorities perhaps. It is also a foil to vandalism, if look at the term’s historical meaning. Vandalism was the destruction of classical works of art blamed on the Vandals. We had turned a bulletin board, vandalism by sheer crassness, into a funny and thought-provoking exercise. We hoped that the object and experience would be thought-provoking and funny to the passersby too.

The photos of graffiti we argued would act as artefacts of disruption; tools (a wrench thrown into known gears of conveyance) or cards in game. The game board is the physical and ideological surface of the bulletin board; a space of privileged information subject to censorship. There can be no productive idea of subjectivity without a state of antagonism (2), the imposing image of the other, the nagging necessity of exclusion. Here an antagonist relationship between two kinds of information; private and public, hidden and approved. Two sources of relevant information and one audience; a body of students.

Consider this new object a product and equivalent/avatar or the underbelly of advertising; its detritus, noise, and waste. Cubist experiments made use of similar material and information – bits and slices of information from sources like handwriting, newsprint, and colored and textured paper.

The arrangement of the photos or selections were done in an ordered configuration on the bulletin board. The photos were pasted in a configuration – straight line across it. They consisted of cropped images of handwriting and peeled off paint on A4 sized photographs arranged in a line. We had other options, but an X configuration across the surface seemed too blatant. In these actions, I think there is that awareness that the bulletin board could become a painting / collage. Think of it as an object of melded or unified bits, where legibility or reading of separate bits and pieces of posters and photographs is no longer the focus. It becomes a single abstracted object. We were exhibiting photographs on a board that is not for that purpose and turning the bulletin board into a space for the artistic display of photographs.

1.  Jospeh Hart, A new Way of Walking (Utne Reader, July/August 2004)

2. Nicolas De Oliveira, Installation Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996) 27

3. Claire Bishop, Relational Aesthetics and Antagonism (Mass: October 110, 2004) 66

4. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Strauss,and Giraud, 1977) 55