The Reign Of Grid

Leading abstractionist Norberto "Lito" Carating, with his flamboyant, ever-audacious spirit still intact, has once more given way to his startlingly bold visions. In the opening show of Avellana Art Gallery (220 Fresno Rd., near Leveriza in Pasay City, where the former Arts & Associates Gallery has relocated), Carating’s new works easily stand out among the rest for their atypical use of colors, textural effects and gridlines that dominate his canvases.

Over the posh lobby of the high-rise Pacific Plaza Towers in Fort Bonifacio, Carating’s large-scale works tease the eyes and provoke the imagination – a virtual cacophony of densely-layered geometric configurations that seemingly float in space – even in the company of such abstract-art titans as Lao Lianben, Rock Drilon, Nestor Vinluan and National Artist Arturo Luz.

Such has been the stuff of Carating’s art since the halcyon years of Lamanlupa and Anilao, two thematically intertwined realms in subterranean and underwater universe that, in the artist’s probing and provocative eye, yielded a treasure trove of images. Just a few years back, he, too, surprisingly came up with a body of works in acrylic, of lushly shaped, squiggly, coiled and coiling forms that seemed to multiply in wild profusion. As to be expected in Carating’s oeuvre, these works were done in large-scale format, the best possible way for the artist to give fruition to his uncharted field of imagery.

Carating’s recent abstractions evoke time as states of feeling, the artist’s own way perhaps of capturing its distillation, with its attendant forms, colors and textures to guide us by. Having outgrown his usual proclivity for color-for-its-own-sake aestheticism, he has opted this time to submerge color rather than allow it to be the controlling element. ("Sa halip na nalulunod na kulay, kulay na mismo ang nilulunod ko," expounds the artist in his own words.)

In his "Metallic Mist" series, the dominant image is that of the grid – fine, harmonious lines created by directly incising on the painted surface with help from a hardened metal tool fashioned from some cake decorating tool. The results is a cross- hatched pictorial field, where silver suffuses the canvas with swaths of potentially luminous glow. Carating’s works, at least in this series, are understatements in color, with hints of orange to underscore the optical colorism.

This is not, however, to downplay the more colorfully exuberant pieces, as Carating is admittedly one avid colorist who can go to town with the most uncanny color mixes and contrasts imaginable.

In "Angelus," for instance, Carating is properly meditative, if not contemplative, in his hues, marking the time of day when darkness is just about to set in, the color of the setting sun subsumed by an evanescent glow in the black, greying field.

Two other works – "Black" and "Tierra Griz" – are clearly transition pieces, serving to bridge the old with the more recent. The former employs thick, white and grey blotches directly squiggled from paint tubes onto a stark-black background, while the latter shows a pictorial field seemingly a-wash in thick splashes of paint, and, again, using finely-combed incisions that suggest a rippling movement.

Then there’s "Bukang-Liwayway," a huge, pictorially-rich canvas where, under special lighting, Carating’s colors – cobalt blue, cadmium orange – come out startlingly luminous. Triangles, squares, rectangles and such other geometric forms dominate this fourth-dimension landscape, with gridlines creating the all too-essentially textural effects.

Carating’s new works are clearly a departure from his usual style in that they show the artist in a new, unheralded phase of his development. The densities in color and image, the sweeping and spontaneous movements of brush and palette knife, the boldly entrancing effects – all speak of an artist who revels in the sheer joy of abstraction, takes great delight in its freedom, and, in a reciprocal act, shows it in a surge of pure energy.