Scratch to a trope
Easy to get lost on the way to Loring Street, where the current Galleria Duemila show is “Scratch To An Itch,” a group exhibit of 12 artists mostly graduates from the UP College of Fine Arts under the tutelage of Bobby Chabet and Jose Joya and Billy Abueva, among others, now that art criticism is almost nonexistent save for the occasional art writing contest that tries to hold the fort; makes you wonder what the likes of Leo Benesa or Jolico Cuadra or even Pol Cacnio would have had to say about how this itch was scratched.
Though confined to two somewhat largish rooms, the gallery actually holds more than it contains, not just subject and material-wise but also when it comes to aesthetics and philosophy. The works come at you from all angles and then some, not only is it to see is to believe, but not seeing on whatever plane constitutes an act of faith. Gallery director Silvana Diaz mentioned how, in “A Blank Canvas Is Not Always Empty” by Alvin Villaruel, the painter let the brush strokes fall the same way light and shadow fell on the empty canvas in his studio, the painting, in effect, painting itself.
Of all the paintings on display that ruby Tuesday afternoon, one that I inadvertently missed taking a picture of was RM de Leon’s “Red Painting with Hector,” an oversight surely brought on by reliance on the available catalogue, but a glaring omission nonetheless since it was de Leon who coined the phrase that became the show’s title, the third of a trilogy that began with “Free Fall” in Altro Mondo and “Brand X” in Okada Hotel the past year or so. Thus painting is the itch that must be scratched, as natural as breathing else the artist perishes, and here the red Hector would be at home both on the walls of Duemila as well as the alleys of Loring as some kind of found graffiti, both high- and lowbrow riding in majestic tandem.
The grizzled veteran Joe Bautista continues to confound with lighthearted studied gaiety in his angular paintings and installations, short of painting on a T-square and other sundry instruments, dripping water bags evoking memories of hospitals while assorted removed soles that survived a Pinatubo trek are preserved in plastic laid out in their own gallery floor space. Surely this is not mere gimmickry, but a statement how art can at any time extend beyond the borders of a painting, just as an artist’s experience can be reduced to quantum light.
The curator Raul Rodriguez again playfully mimics passage of time in sociopolitical if comic undertones in “National Recliner Watches the Bigger Fuzz” that may not at all be lost in a Heavy Metal panel, with the viewer or inker to supply the missing bubble or lettering, the same way a reclining found object and actual 3D coat rack provide wayward mirror images a breath away from a half open door to a broom closet containing not brooms but paint, brushes, other paraphernalia.
It so happens that the exhibit opening on another rainy Saturday coincided with the death of another artist and painter — Roberto Feleo — whose work would have been well appreciated by this group, and Dan Raralio’s “Cryptic Vessels” wood-acrylic assemblage feels like indirect tribute to Feleo who was himself fond of merging the indigenous with the modern, meticulously combining miniature sculpture with painting.
Erik Sausa experiments with further digressions from vanishing point with “The Order of Disappearance,” though what is on show at the gallery is slightly different from what is in the catalogue, both however manifesting a great susurration of birds in flight.
Don Dalmacio’s geometric shapes in spray paint and acrylic form a diptych that would have paired well with the sounds of DJ Par Satellite on opening night.
Argie Bandoy with the omnipresent Swiss cross and mystery mouse, Jonathan Olazo who wrote program notes aside from a Warhol sendup, Jose Naval an anthropologist on a soul boat to more metaphysical discoveries, Ronald Achacoso’s found cartographies in oil on canvas, Al Cruz whose infinite dualities concept is the painting, are no slouches either, they complete the cast of 12 with no Judas in sight.
But who needs Judas when it’s only an itch that needs to be scratched, and art critic goes missing on another rainy Tuesday from Milan to Rotterdam, from Loring to Sagada, chasing the fumes of a dreaming muse?
