Eleven stories from Filipino artists

The rest of the globe went crazy over the World Cup, but the current Philippine art scene cannot be less preoccupied with another 11 – the nine paintings and two sculptures that comprise the Philippine contingent to the 21st Asian International Art Exhibition (AIAE) to be held this year in the tiger state of Singapore.

Though there is no common thematic approach that binds the art works – well, at least not ostensibly – there is a distinctive narrative quality in the works of National Artist Bencab, Sid Gomez Hildawa, Susan Fetalvero-Roces, Pandy Aviado, James Gabito, Jevijoe Vitug, Lydia Velasco, Clairelyn Uy, Winner Jumalon, Ramon Orlina and Jun Vicaldo, submitted for the 2006 AIAE.

Or are we just imagining things? There’s the old saying how every picture tells a story, and that a painting can impart more than a thousand words, but what is it about art that turns into a cat that got our tongue? There is a story, stories even, independent of the artist, hiding here somewhere.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Bencab’s "Ang Liham," a signature work of the man who has dedicated a lifetime of art to what may be described in the now somewhat devalued term, Filipiniana. But then such painting, in this case an acrylic on canvas, is instantly recognizable. We see "Liham" and know it is unmistakably Bencab, just as we cannot take an Amorsolo other than an Amorsolo, or an Ocampo other an Ocampo. What is the terno-clad woman in the painting reading in the letter? Either a note from her loved one, or a message of thanks for the state of Philippine art, which anyway may be one and the same.

It is not Jacob’s but rather "Philip’s Ladder" that the concurrent poet-architect Sid Hildawa represents in his charcoal and rubber strips, the black and white steps a sober departure from plain abstractions. A Hildawa poem painting this time devoid of any words suggests that visuals can take care of themselves, whether going up or down or – depending on which way the painting is hung on the wall – sideways for the Philip persona or painter’s alter ego. The ladder on the other hand can only be interpreted as a means to a better view of Philippine conceptual art, and the obsession with straight lines echoes too benchmarks and graphite dreams.

Susan Fetalvero-Roces’s "First Shift - Linkages" is part of a series with the overwhelming use of leaves of the guyabano tree, imported from as far as Quezon province, and whose patterns resemble kaleidoscope refractions if not the bottom half of an hourglass with counterpoint colors of blue and orange. While the work is mixed medium on canvas, the viewer cannot help but imagine the same piece transposed on, say, handmade paper and in smaller size, which could no less boggle the mind.

Who should reinvent himself as "surfer" dude but the acclaimed printmaker Pandy Aviado, whose acrylic on canvas has a zigzag blur at the center like a shadow about to tee off in the horizon bearing secrets of the sun? The colors used though are more subdued than mad, suggesting the abstract vision of any surfer dude at the moment of the great wipeout, when all is sun and sea and black holes of deliverance. It’s possible that this work was conceived in Boracay, where the artist was part of a group show last summer.

Another of the old hands is veteran glass carver Ramon Orlina, one of two sculptors in the group. Orlina’s "Ang Maya" depicts the most common Philippine bird about to take flight, but the rendition in bronze asahi glass is anything but common. The artist’s glassworks continue with a relentless distilling of the form, dating back to his "Phoenix" of a few AIAE’s ago. What is the common denominator between bird and glass? This has been a signal concern in Orlina’s craft of late, which has gradually struck a fine balance between motion and stasis.

The Philippine contingent has traditionally combined the old with the new, or at least relatively fresh faces in the local art scene. The other sculptor in this year’s batch is Jun Vicaldo, whose "Pandora’s Box" in synthetic bronze reworks the creation myth of Malakas and Maganda, herein emanating from an egg-like sphere instead of the generally accepted bamboo node. The perfect sphere is in fact a perfect fit, but when it is cracked open to reveal a man opposite a rather pregnant woman, what pestilence or blessings are soon to follow? To keep the sphere closed would be prudent, but how long can the furies be contained?

The sad-eyed and topless lady of the highlands comes alive in James Gabito’s "Fading Culture," a compassionate portrait of a Cordillera woman done in the conventional oil medium. There is a latent eroticism as may be expected with the subject, as the viewer can revel at the symmetry and texture of one exposed breast against alternate patterns of light and earth parchments that resemble dried animal skin. This homage comes naturally to the painter, same with the photographer Eduardo Masferre decades ago in the Cordilleras.

Performance artist and painter Jevijoe Vitug’s "Nursing Globalization" is a multileveled representation of the overseas contract worker shifting through different metamorphoses, from nurse to videoke artist, anything to ward away the subterranean homesick blues. Windows give a view to the nurse whose stethoscope morphs into a karaoke mic, or is it vice versa? Blood pressure readings can easily be transposed into videoke scores on our wheelchaired planet, and the OCW as subject of social commentary remains underexplored.

More of the feminine principle – or at last what we know or have come to understand of it – are manifest in the works of Lydia Velasco’s "Handog" and Clairelyn Uy’s "Miscellany Brown." Both deal with solitary figures at the center of the painting: in Velasco’s, a veiled wraith holding as offering a sheaf of long-stemmed flowers; in Uy’s, a huge patchwork quilt teddy bear that sends up memories of childhood. The flowers of "Handog" give off the scent of vendors plying their wares outside Sunday church; "Miscellany" reminds us of a line from British writer Ian McEwan about a jigsaw piece and why we keep it even if the rest of the puzzle has long gone missing.

This year’s Philippine contingent to the 21st AIAE comes full circle with Winner Jumalon’s portrait, "Bencab," a fitting tribute to the National Artist in the year of his winning this most prestigious award. The painter finally becomes subject, here done in oil but with an uncanny woodcut effect and an even uncannier resemblance to the artist awash in oil and possible confetti, who has influenced many a young painter and, in more ways than one, has created a genre unto himself.

We were going to say "Mabuhay!" except that it may be superfluous though not exactly a waste of time; too many things are happening in the local art scene like in the recently concluded World Cup.

Better to say, this AIAE cup runneth over.

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The show opens on July 19.