Either way, Igan D’Bayan has a unique way of looking at the world. Rock and roll is the glue, the catalyst, and the redemptive power behind it all. You can get a glimpse of that view in his first one-man art exhibit titled "Apocalypse Jukebox," which opens tomorrow, 6 p.m., at The Crucible Gallery, fourth floor of SM Megamall A, Mandaluyong City.
Beware: the paintings – mostly in oil and acrylic – are not your typical Filipino sala fare. Dark (literally), sardonic, and full of cryptic imagery, they express a soul forged in a crucible of rock-and-roll stew.
"Some people might say no one would want to display my paintings on their walls, which is okay with me, because they’re not furniture to begin with," Igan says with a laugh. "I am grateful to Sari Ortiga of The Crucible for allowing me to display my deranged portraits of doom."
For some, D’Bayan’s work conjures up German Expressionism, Surrealism, or the nightmare canvases of Francis Bacon. Egon Schiele, Daniel Richter and "Gonzo" illustrator Ralph Steadman are also influences. Using saturated colors and working within an often flattened, compressed compositional space, his work also brings to mind Jean-Michel Basquiat and even Paul Klee – if Klee grooved to Radiohead, that is.
As with many tales of artistic genesis, in the beginning, there was rock and roll. And it was good.
Igan recalls his high school days in Malabon where he felt like the archetypal outsider. Alienation and bleakness were his two closest companions. Rock and roll literally provided another way of looking at the world. "My only solace for a long time was rock music. For me, it presented views of salvation and redemption."
These tales are told in paintings with titles like "Bone Machine," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "One Day, I Am Gonna Grow Wings" – all references to song lyrics and titles. Then there’s the series of "Exploding Head" pieces, including "Watching the Wheels" (John Lennon), "Sympathy for the Devil" (a demonic Jagger), "Life on Mars?" (Bowie at his glam best) and "Before I Set Out For The Road, I Was The Road" (a quote from Dylan). They’re heads, all right – removed from their contexts and set against apocalyptic, mutant backgrounds. Igan says he got the title for the exhibit from a regular feature in Britain’s MOJO magazine in which musicians list down 10 songs they would want to hear as the world is ending.
There’s a certain whistle-in-the-dark cheeriness in that concept, and humor in Igan’s paintings, too, though you might have to look harder to find it. "The humorous-absurd aspect (is there), as if you could die and laugh at the same time. I’m trying to push the images to absurd limits. It’s a Filipino trait: there’s still something to look forward to, no matter what." Thus the facial expressions in "Waiting in Vain" (showing a man on a toilet, seen from above) or "Salvador Dali’s Head On Fire" may resemble frozen rictuses – but they’re also comical, if not downright funny. Igan is influenced by graphic novels, as well, including Steadman’s tableaux of horror and the childlike figures of Basquiat and Keith Haring.
Being an urban dweller himself, Igan connects with the daily horrors of city life. And, like any good Lit major from UST, there’s a lot of fear and loathing in his work. His most ambitious piece, perhaps, is a double panel called "Nostalgia Is Selling Roses on the Avenue of the Dead." Inside an oppressive apartment, a bone-white face attempts to reach inside its own skull for a memory while, nearby, blue and purple figures (Harlequins? Batmen?) dance on, oblivious. Outside, flower vendors blithely peddle their wares. Igan is not a fan of painted flowers, it turns out: "You won’t find me painting flowers and still lifes," he says laughing. "Other people can do it better." And while others may be concerned with painting flowers, and being nostalgic about life, Igan’s piece seems to be telling viewers that there’s a riot going on outside.
Other recurring motifs in the "Apocalypse Jukebox" show are exposed ribs – suggestive of emptiness or absence inside, but also of stripping away the outside layers to get to the core. "In this age we’re always obsessed with beauty. I’m trying to say there’s always something beneath the beautiful (below the surface). That’s the more interesting part of a human being. Not just what is presented in public but what is going on inside."
There’s a more material explanation behind the ribs and images of empty stomachs: "There were times when I couldn’t afford to buy food and I was so hungry. And that’s how I still see myself at times. It’s a void, an absence… I’ve always pined for someone, or something that’s not there." Maybe absence makes the art grow stronger.
Cramped rooms, crowded figures also occupy D’Bayan’s canvases, and it’s a reflection on the space that we occupy in this world. In "For a Moment There, I Lost Myself," a man’s head is shown trapped inside a box, while around him stand vast- open vistas. "I live in a very small condominium, and feel cramped every day, and I’m trying to juxtapose this feeling with wide-open spaces that I don’t own."
Aself-taught painter, Igan has not traded in journalism for the visual arts; it’s just that he feels he can express certain things better this way. "Working as a writer is somehow not enough," he says. "There’s still a void. There are things I can only say in images, something ineffable that can’t be expressed in words."
And it all comes back to using images to catapult oneself out of a less-than-beautiful world. Igan explains: "With painting, I’m after the same effect that music has had on me – to approximate the feelings that I had when I first listened to ‘Bitches Brew’ (by Miles Davis) or ‘OK Computer’ (by Radiohead)."
He recalls the liberation, the transcendence and the connection he once felt, jamming out to rock records when classes were done: "After school, all I had to do was play a rock album, and I found something I could relate to. It’s something that had to do with my life, my alienation or sense of bleakness." To be sure, this is a common experience for millions of unnamed rock fans – the kids who go through school looking for a voice that speaks to them, and finding it in rock. Perhaps now they find it in hip-hop or hardcore rap: a voice of rebellion for each new generation. As with the overwrought poetry of Roger Waters and other rock alienists, rock music could leave you with the comforting notion that your separation somehow made sense – because somebody else was singing about it.
Igan D’Bayan, though, has gone from being a fist-waving rock fan to learning to express that angst, both through words and images. Think of his paintings as a visual accompaniment to his rock and roll wanderings. And rock on.