On Equal Footing

CEBU, Philippines — Thematically upscale but not uppity. Conventionally grounded but singularly distinct. Elementally simple yet appropriately standout.

These are among the apt descriptions of the creative presentation at the third level of Rustan’s Ayala Center Cebu – the most recent of the luxe retail chain’s “Rustan’s For The Arts” series. Titled “Rustan’s For The Arts: Kwadrado Artists,” and which ran until December 31, the show featured artworks by Caraga Region-born artists Chito Alegre, Ronnie Rudinas and Resty Sala.

Featuring works by members of the “Kwadrado” group, established in 2016, the show mainly highlighted life-in-the-countryside scenes that were rendered in varied styles, a curatorial slant that altogether gave the show a past-meets-the-future feel.

Collectively, the presented pieces were drawn from an insightful balance in the use of color, a quality that illustrated how different yet similar the styles of artists from Mindanao were from those who hailed from Cebu.

With all of its featured pieces rendered on square-shaped stretchers, the show stood by the group’s philosophy on equality in the arena of the arts – a creative view which the exhibiting artists professed by naming their group “Kwadrado,” which is a Visayan vernacular for “squared.”

As the square is a quadrilateral made of four equal sides and four equal angles, the group and the show invariably set a mitered take towards balance in art, setting on the addends, dividends and subtrahends that result to equal creative footings.