Entrapment metaphors

Cabinet, an exhibition of works of Singaporean artist Baet Yeok Kuan, opened last week at the Corredor, at the UP College of Fine Arts in Diliman, Quezon City. Cabinet is now on view at the Ayala Museum until March 15.

The works in this exhibition come from the three-week residency of the artist at the UP College of Fine Arts. Baet inaugurates the exchange program entered into by the UPCFA and the Ayala Museum with the Sculpture Square in Singapore to bring three-dimensional and related art practices into new grounds in the region.

The works in exhibition, however, are not limited to sculpture. The collection includes works on paper by Baet who is also a full-fledged painter. While he finished painting at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), he had been doing sculptural works long before he entered school. At the time Baet enrolled at NAFA in the mid-1980s, the sculpture program was still in the drawing board. It only came to be implemented as an academic offering in the late 1980s when Baet already finished his painting diploma. For his part, he continued studying art at the University of Central England in Birmingham, United Kingdom, where he obtained his MA in Fine Arts (Sculpture) in 1992.

There has been no turning back for the artist since then. Baet’s art repertoire at present largely includes sculptures. In fact, Baet is principally known in Singapore as an exponent of contemporary sculpture, teaching the art form at NAFA when not doing art, aside from representing his country in leading international art fora and festivals. Lately, he has been writing a weekly column for Thumbs Up, a newspaper for children 12 years old and below, aimed to educate a large slice of the Singaporean audience about art and further the gains of contemporary sculpture.

Cabinet as a solo exhibition closely follows Dilation held at the Sculpture Square in 2002. It reflects quite succinctly Baet’s harnessing of art, in this case sculpture, to address issues and concerns as they relate to his personal response to the environment, both natural and manmade.

The idea or feeling of entrapment in the urbanscape of Singapore comes very palpable in Baet’s works. Changes are happening very fast, leaving people no choice but to adapt to and embrace these changes without necessarily or fully understanding them. Almost always, these changes are offered in the altar of globalization. Thus, the society exacts rigid expectations, if not demands, as it assigns individual members functions to best serve its interests.

But where does the individual right come in? While Baet does not seek to offer solutions to this nagging social problem, he provides in his works vivid descriptions of this state of seeming inadequacy of the people to exercise choice. The dilemma in present-day Singapore to let go of traditions in favor of technological progress, convincingly etched in Baet’s works, further muddles the air.

This fear is eloquently illustrated in Baet’s works where fishing traps, cages and claws are used as metaphors of the entrapment the artist feels within.

In depicting this state, Baet creates tension in his works, particularly in the dialogues that ensue in the artist’s adept manipulation of materials and forms.

The use of highly linear materials like steel bars to enclose sensual sculptural forms in resin provides a highly charged conversation between the chosen materials. Steel, in the hands of Baet, is tempered to assume curvilinears, thus infusing it with some submissive quality. Resin, on the other hand, is hardened to assume rough and boulder-like forms. Arrestingly, the forms are often installed in teetering and precarious positions that tend to defy gravity, thereby depicting distress, if not unease.

One idea that informs Baet’s works is the device of repetition to give his works rhythm and movement. For Baet, repeating forms is akin to meditation, or saying prayers day after day. In this case, the works of Baet assume a very contemplative quality. While they portray unsettling social conditions, they are very quiet in their distillation, devoid of any histrionics. As forms are repeated, Baet pares a particular notion to its essentials. Thus even in its starkness, it still speaks volumes. Baet’s Buddhist-Taoist upbringing probably exerts this liberating influence on his art.

The inclusion of the six drawings on paper in the exhibition underscores the deep alliance that Baet forges between drawing and sculpture. Baet, after all, is both an accomplished painter and sculptor. For Baet, the drawings are the documents by which the process of conceptualization happens spontaneously. Inhibitions are unabashedly shed off as his shapes and colors assume childlike meanderings. The sculptures, in their autonomy, are the tangible results of "precision" planning and thinking, ably reflected by the structured manipulation of materials and processes like molding, casting, hammering, forging, and welding.

The residency has provided Baet the opportunity to hold "open studio workshops" at the College, affording him to engage in informal discussions with the faculty and students on his ideas about art while at work. Baet also interacted with well-known Filipino artists on various critical issues obtaining both in Singapore and the Philippines, as well as swapped ideas on shared issues, ranging from the cultural and the social to the political.

Similarly, Nestor Olarte Vinluan, as artist-in-residence at Sculpture Square in Singapore from March to April 2003, will have the chance to connect with fellow artists in Singapore and the faculty and students of both NAFA and the National Institute of Education.

It is in this light, therefore, that the Program intends not only to bridge cultural distances, but more significantly, to encourage professional and student artists to view art and the world in the context of the diverse art communities – each one of them unique – that abound in the region.