From what lens do we view life? From the darkness or the light? From where do the shadows speak their loudest, in the darkness illumined by shafts of piercing light?
There is an art exhibition ongoing now of an artist who has chosen to draw our attention inward and to focus on light’s transfixing drama against the shadows. I write about this because of the transcendent power that art can give us. This is something we often miss today in a world so noisy and technologically driven. We are sorely lacking in experiences that allow us to go deeper into ourselves. This is the power that real art can give us. To move and inspire us enough to bring us back into reflecting about our true nature, even as we survey the world around us. I write about the collection because the artist himself was not even sure he wanted to exhibit his quiet works. And the collector was himself tentative in showing the paintings in his possession. I thought this is so strikingly different from the way the art scene and market is out there: noisy, dynamic, pushy and often out to make a buck. And so this exhibit, Light in the Darkness, came together.
The exhibit features paintings and drawings by Danilo Arriola from the collection of the artist and Arriola’s first collector and patron, architect Dan Lichauco. Both hailing from the University of Santo Tomas, architect and artist share a love for the classical and somber, simplified subject matters that speak with symbolic meaning.
Ariolla lives a life full of creative zest, despite a debilitating illness that reduces him to a wheelchair and renders him color-blind. But his handicap is not seen as one, as he continues to express himself in his art, a creative soul seeking to express life despite the thoughts of his faltering health. And so he focuses on the commonplace as he lives in this limbo world of never knowing if he can get up and paint, if he can move his body, if he will even wake up alive. His experience: the human drama of the physical decline even as the spirit sings with creative fire, the eyes see beauty and the artist’s soul knows it must share this beauty it sees from simple inanimate objects — a sea shell. An angel statue. Some dried everlasting flowers. Baskets, old and broken. These are objects often left unnoticed in some storage room or curio-cabinet, or hunted down by the artist unceasingly in markets when he feels strong to go out.
Arriola’s choice of objects are the kind that stand insignificantly on the side, as life unfolds before them. And the artist, he coaxes them out of the shadows, allowing a hint of light to fall on their surfaces to illuminate the minute details that define their form. And they stand there, haunting images that stare back as mirrors to the viewer’s own subconscious analogies. The experience of seeing his paintings draws you deeper into yourself. His uncanny talent is his ability to choose an object intuitively perhaps connected to his own memories, infuse it with personal meaning, scrutinize it to bring out the drama, highlight it like in theater, create a mood around it while coaxing the play of light against shadow. The inanimate throbs with an other-worldly presence. Hushed in their simplicity, the unnoticeable is made iconic, majestic and timeless.
Using the techniques of chiaroscuro that create dramatic intense light and shadows on the objects, his paintings are somber reflections of life and death, presence and mood. He shares with us the piercing beauty of objects subtly touched by light and always seen from the perspective of shadows. Light captures an object in a moment. Or is it a moment that captures the light amidst the shadows?
Ariolla uses classical techniques of the Italian masters like sfumato, widely used by Leonardo da Vinci, who would blur the edges of his subjects and thus softening them. As Arriola explains, “chiaroscuro” is the genre in which the great classicist Caravaggio excelled, and who, incidentally, was one of the Italian masters who inspired him when he studied at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy in 2004 as a scholar from a personal grant of then senator Jamby Madrigal.
Arriola’s pictorial images are guided by the curving “compositional spine,” where he carefully studies the placement of objects on the pictorial surface constantly drawing focus inward and to the center. His intense scrutiny of objects begins with his graphite drawings also on exhibition. His drawings hark back to a discipline from school in Florence where days were spent drawing precisely from litographs and pieces of classical sculpture. Each focused object, scrutinized and drawn with utmost detail, assumes a monumental iconic presence in its simplicity.
The exhibition also includes a reconstruction of Arriola’s studio. This installation gives us a glimpse of the artist’s creative space and sanctuary, and his interaction with this. With his wheelchair at the center of it all.
Light transforming the darkness is both the experience of the dawn and the dusky twilight. It is observing the changing play of light and shadows. It is about reflecting on the eternal symbols of hope and despair, life and death, and the limbo of the unknowing. It is the Spirit’s presence that speaks quietly amidst the sham and drudgery of life and capturing the quietude of transcendence.
The Light in the Darkness exhibit at the Yuchengco Museum will run until June 18. It is part of a new exhibition program that will showcase artworks from private collections of art collectors, artists and creative personalities.
Called Choices: Collections of the Personal, the program draws from personal collections and art pieces, allowing patrons to select works of art from their own collections and to share their passion for art and the stories behind each piece.
(Yuchengco Museum is located at the RCBC Plaza, Ayala Ave. corner Gil Puyat Ave., Makati City. Museum hours are Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, call 889-1234 or visit www.yuchengcomuseum.org.)