Claude Tayag draws metaphysical circles

MANILA, Philippines - For 35 years now, Claude Tayag has steadfastly pursued his career in art, not only as a painter, but also as a sculptor, food and travel writer, and in recent years, a recognized master of the art of food.  And in all these aspects, he has revolved in the Philippine context, in their inspirations, in their materials, in their impulses, deeply and genuinely folk at its best, but with their fare share of the Manila urban, indeed, of the cosmopolitan. He has felicitously absorbed all these, growing up in the fastidious folk-urban connoisseurship of the Pampanga towns. 

As an artist, he is also situated within the larger circumference of the art world, particularly of Asia. And in this particular series in which he dwells on the form of the circle, he comes closest to Asian aesthetics and the tradition of calligraphy.

Of course, the circle is a worldwide universal symbol — its material form is that of a snake biting its tail, on the spiritual level, it is construed to mean eternity with no beginning and no end. It is said that the early Renaissance artists held a contest as to who of them could draw a perfect circle with one stroke. It was Giotto alone who could meet the challenge.  In Western culture, the snake may be tainted with sin and evil, but in the East, the snake is the guardian of Buddha and a holy symbol.

But Asian artists, Chinese and Japanese are not so much concerned with the meaning and perfection of the circle, but rather with its execution and its particular material characteristics. They first take into account the instrument, brush, ink or pen, utilized in the work and how it interacts with the ground or paper.  And here, one necessarily becomes sensitively aware of the subtleties and differences it lends to the form, whether large or small, whether sharp-edged, soft, porous or modulated in tone.  Is it a unilinear form or found as rhythmic concentric circles? Does it suggest echoing rhythms in space or time? What, likewise, are the textures that it brings to the form?  Is it dense and impasto-like, as in the white lines on black ground or thin as a whisper?  In some, the circles are intertwined within each other or form overlapping rhythms. These many contrasts are evident in Claude Tayag’s new circle works titled “Black on White/White on Black.”

Drawing a circle necessarily involves movement which includes growing outwards and returning inwards following an instinctive built-in mathematical impulse.  It is a movement which begins with small movements of the wrist, then involving the arm, and finally the whole body in swaying, even dancing, motion, as even the Western abstract expressionists have practiced.  As such, in both the East and the West, it becomes a physical exercise involving the entire body and recalling the highly imaginative tai chih exercises of embracing the moon in its enlarging and diminishing phases. Often, Claude lays a large blank sheet and enjoys the physical freedom of drawing upon it, evoking voyages or peregrinations in space.

In these works, the artist retraces his footsteps to an earlier work, “The Black Mountain” done as part of the mural project of the CCP in 1990.  Both draw their artistic inspiration and impulse from Asian thought, its valuation of calligraphy, intuition, spontaneity and unimpeded movement.  More than ever, art making is not limited to refined but circumscribed movements of the hand and wrist but is a wholistic experience involving body and soul. Art is not only reflective, but liberating as well, as it releases all the impulses, desires, images, and aspirations that lie just beneath the surface of our material skin.  Likewise, what is important is not primarily the end of the journey, or the arrival at the destination, but the journey itself as a physical and spiritual experience.

Also, Chinese or Japanese calligraphic drawing, as Claude Tayag has done in this “Circle” series, also leads the viewer to the artist himself. Like the trees in the high mountains which get their particular configuration from the winds of the open skies, the calligraphy of the circle derives its special form from the artist who draws it, because such inevitably involves the artist’s personal energy, its ebb and flow, as it courses through his network of veins and heart itself.  Thus, these works, zen-like in their simplicity and intensity, are particularly treasured by people and friends of the artist, as a trace of his individual living pulse, his own unique voice or touch in a particular time and place.  

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The show is currently ongoing until Nov. 15 at The Gallery, Arts in the City – FVR Park, Federacion Drive corner 7th Ave., Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City (right across NBC Tent). For inquiries, call 889-3028 or 346-3684, e-mail info@artsinthecity.ph, or visit www.artsinthecity.ph.