Fourteen pieces comprise the collection. The number certainly alludes to the 14 Stations of the Cross. The subject matter of the show, however, does not entail the various stages that document the rises and falls of Christ on His way to Calvary. Rather, it focuses on the culmination of the passion of Christ, the crucifixion.
The drawings, all titled "Kristo," are more than one year old, having been done in December 2001 yet. But it is only now that Dizon finally decided to show the works via a public exhibition. In keeping with the sobriety of the Lenten season, he has done away with the usual cocktail reception to open the show – sans fanfare, in a manner of speaking. Instead, people are simply invited to walk in and view the pieces at their own pace for the duration of the Holy Week. Viewers are also enjoined to pause for awhile, mull over the pieces, and meditate on the significance of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice on the cross.
Dizon did two albums of what he now calls his crucifixion series. The first consists of 14 works, 24 x 18 inches, done in acrylic on paper. The second set is slightly bigger at 30 x 22 inches, also executed in acrylic on paper. The ground in both sets is 300-gsm Arches paper.
The exhibit is a landmark in the artist’s career as it marks the first time that he is showing religious art for an exhibit. It also comes at a point in his life where, for his day-to-day living, he derives inspirations from the teachings of Christ, for which he is truly grateful.
The 14 drawings are all powerful as they limn a faceless Christ in deep agony and suffering. The varied positions employed by Dizon in drawing the series present the crucified Christ in various contortions, the arching body aching for mercy. The series in a way reinvents the celebrated Crucifixion scene of the Isenheim Altarpiece done by Mathias Grünewald.
To this date, Grünewald’s work remains a savage picture of Christ’s degradation in Golgotha, as well as "a stunning vision of agony, grief, and horror. Christ hangs from the cross at the moment of death. His hands distorted by the agony of the nails, His feet twisted and distorted by the huge nail that transfixes them. His body is spattered with bloodstains and His head, sagging to one side, streams with the blood flowing from the crown of vicious thorns. No other Crucified Christ in all Western art exceeds this one as an expression of the full ghastly horror of Christ’s terrible death."
In Dizon’s interpretation, the cross is not shown. Yet, the absence of this most powerful symbol of the Christian faith does not in any way diminish the impact of the works, whether visual, emotional, or spiritual.
Unlike popular crucifixion paintings that show the dying Christ flanked on his sides by the two thieves crucified with Him, Dizon’s crucifixion focuses on the tormented body of Christ alone, foregrounding the concept of the Corpus Christi, i.e., where the body of the crucified Christ is separated from the cross. The realistic depiction of Christ in torment traces its beginning from the ninth century when the Byzantine Church introduced the image of Christ set on the cross, naked except for a loincloth called perizonium, and with eyes closed in death and blood flowing from His sides.
Like Grünewald’s, red paint spurts all over the place, simulating blood. In Dizon’s crucifixion, the red paint, when viewed as a concentration of gestural drips around the head of Christ, represents the crown of thorns that adorned His head in that hour of wretchedness and mob ridicule.
The 14 drawings convey tons and tons of anguish, owing pretty much to the bold, agitated and liberal strokes by which Dizon portrays the suffering Christ. The almost abstracted forms are largely brought by Dizon’s ingenious use of the close-up view. Doing away with elaborate details, he zooms in on Christ wringing in pain. The appropriation of the fish eye view in photography also contributes to the struggle, and here he copiously contorts, distorts and disfigures his forms for utmost dramatic effect.
His superb handling of colors also comes to fore. He ingeniously uses color field as background, instead of the usual craggy landscape made familiar by Carlo Crivelli during the Renaissance. This way, the twisted forms float in vague space, only to be anchored by the throbbing lines outlining the forms, as if to suggest the quivering and repeated pains inflicted on the body of Christ.
Dizon’s series imparts an air of contemporaneity. The forms are at once a blend of abstraction, science fiction and folk traditions. The sci-fi look is reflected by the almost knobby, robot-like and almost silvery metallic rendering of the crucified body of Christ. The folksy quality, on the other end, manifests in the highly colorful treatment of the background, reminiscent of the costumes participants don in the Senakulo during the Holy Week.
The amalgam of influences may well be a reflection of how the Christian faith today has been fraught by the many events and circumstances that have continually exerted significant dents – both constructive and destructive – on the life of the Church, whether in terms of its dogma, its rituals, and paltry as it is, its administration.
The combined artistic devices enable Dizon to inspire piety. That even in the midst of despair, desolation, war and epidemic, a greater life awaits us all, as embodied in the promise of Christ’s Resurrection.
The crucifixion was never represented in Christian art until some 400 years after the actual event. The lack of such representations stems from the fact that the crucifixion at that time was regarded as a horrible and humiliating punishment inflicted only upon slaves or at least non-Roman citizens. It was officially abolished by Constantine as part of his pro-Christian policy, but still continued for some time. By the early fifth century, people were prepared to accept representations.
The early representations showed Christ with eyes wide open, with nary a hint of degradation and suffering, as though to proclaim His victory over death. The majestic figure – alive, clothed and triumphing unscathed over the cross – remained the model for nearly all Western crucifixions until the end of the 12th century. This emphasis on victory is characteristic of all earlier representations, known as "Christus Triumphans."
In the 13th century, a more realistic image of the crucified Christ was created in Italy, which showed Christ no longer indifferent to death but suffering and dishonored by His ordeal. In this type, widely referred to as "Christus Patiens," Christ’s eyes are closed, the head is bowed, and the body sags markedly. From hereon, the crucified Christ was represented, in consequence of emotionalism and humanism of St. Francis’ teachings, as a victim whose agony was the price paid for man’s redemption.
Dizon studied fine arts at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts from 1973 to 1976 where he was a consistent scholar. Since his first one-man show in 1977, he has participated in select group shows, both in the country and abroad. His last solo exhibit entitled Tampipi was held at the Philippine Center Gallery in New York in 1999.