Hand of doom: The art of Igan D’Bayan

It was the taxi driver Mang Nards who briefed me on the various destinations of employees of this newspaper — the old maid who had innumerable apartments, the drunk man who has to be driven right to his doorstep, the talkative queer who lived in an exclusive village in Makati, the pretty young woman who stayed in Quezon City and took the taxi when her car was number coded, and Igan D’Bayan, whose paintings were always sold out even before the show started.

"Mabait ’yang si Igan, kaya lumalapit ang suerte. Bukod pa r’on, malaki rin siya mag-tip," so speaks Mang Nards, recalling one of his favorite passengers, among other STAR workers whose minute histories he has come to know for the duration of a cab ride.

We might as well say it, and if Mang Nards is reading this, he may as well be informed that Igan’s next exhibit and second one-man show opens on Feb. 20, 6 p.m. at The Crucible Gallery, fourth floor, SM Megamall A, where the Port Area’s resident artist will showcase his latest installment of lyric and humorous nightmares in oil and other sundry medium in "Long Live the New Flesh." The works are on view until March 11.

Now let’s hear it from Igan himself speaking in his artist statement: "The conceit was this: to present monstrous, mutated figures as if they were sitting down for a portrait, and to paint them as if they were emerging from a thick chiaroscuro soup, with available lighting provided by maybe an unidentified flying object — something so artificial that it has become extraterrestrial. Maybe something like Rembrandt-on-acid-meets-Resident Evil."

Somehow, after that quote, I am reminded of Shannon Hoon, and maybe also Ray Bradbury. When you walk into a gallery filled with D’Bayan paintings, at the flick of a switch assorted chiaroscuro chorizos come flying at you, skulls and crossbones looking for pirates, and the whole-hog wisdom of rock and roll.

Not that Mang Nards would particularly mind, the chorizos wouldn’t be half as bad as those sold at the turo-turo in Port Area.

It also seems wrong that a D’Bayan painting would be confined to a small space, in the privacy of a home, unless of course the room was a den (Dracula’s den, to be exact). That was an observation arrived at during the course of a conversation with the Straits cartoonist Dengcoy Miel in Singapore, who noted, "Hindi bagay sa living room ang paintings ni Igan."

But the artist himself will be first to admit that wholesomeness has never been his cup of tea, er, rather, mug of light beer. He says: "I never set out to paint pretty pictures... I don’t want to be a staple in parties and society columns... I don’t want to continue the ‘dialogue’ on art..." He begs off, never self-righteously, saying such is the role of other artists.

Well, that sounds like rock and roll to me, similar to the static coming out of Mang Nard’s car stereo, always a prime inspiration for artists in self-exile from normal acceptable society.

Take a look at his heroes and personas on canvas in the "New Flesh": "That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore" reprises a Smiths song of the same title; "The Man Who Taught His Asshole How To Talk" is a fitting visual parable straight out of William S. Burroughs; "Gimme Shelter" departs from a Rolling Stones song of the late ’60s like a Scorsese on speed goth; the "Metamorphosis" series is a tribute to the Kafka protagonist Gregor Samsa who one morning woke from a fitful sleep to find himself turned into a cockroach.

They are outsiders all, whose only form of deliverance comes through literature and music and, in D’Bayan’s case, painting.

Says Igan: "There is another way of approaching my ‘Disintegrations’ series. When I tried to look back on a few of my favorite things as a child — cartoons, toys, or fairy tale characters — I realized that even the past is not immune from change. Decay has set in, as well. We think of the past as one immutable pile of memories. Not in my case. Here I am, a damaged and disturbed individual, looking back at the past — and a damaged and disturbed past looks back at me. It’s like staring at the abyss and the abyss is staring back."

One would think that, if D’Bayan had not turned to painting and literature and music, he would have wound up a certified cynic or, worse, a nutcase.

There is at least one painting of his that I am intimately familiar with, titled, "I Sing the Body Anarchic." Mostly white and blue oils on canvas, the surreal convoluted bones of a man. Doing Roxlee and Ralph Steadman one better. Maybe Whitman is singing somewhere beneath the canvas. The painting gave my kids nightmares, or so my wife imagined. Something drastic had to be done. Which art really should be about — inspire one to take action, no matter if there are casualties along the way.

But things are not always that bleak at a D’Bayan exhibit. Remember the last lines of The Metamorphosis, when Gregor’s sister stretches her young supple body looking forward to life without the insect? That is exactly the feeling one gets while walking away from a D’Bayan, or at least one of the painter’s dark ones.

Life can and should go on, because there is no other choice but to walk the thin line between the fake and the sublime. Excuse us if we sound like rhymin’ Simon simple Simon. Igan the young gun again: "All I want is to make sense of my monsters and my mechanized life. To understand the pain of things..."

I was going to ask him if he’d ever heard the David Bowie album "Scary Monsters" and a song on it called Teenage Wildlife. There is another Bowie song that runs through my head right now, Wild is the Wind.

But here comes Mang Nards again waiting for a passenger, and while he picks his teeth after a meal at a turo-turo he could soon be getting ready to pose for a D’Bayan portrait. The bones sticking out like some white light.

What’s frightening and at the same time funny about Igan is that he’s really just getting started. There’s no telling what else he’s capable of putting on canvas.

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Igan D’Bayan presents his latest works in "Long Live the New Flesh," which opens on Feb. 20, 6 p.m. at The Crucible Gallery, fourth floor, SM Megamall A, Mandaluyong City. For information, call 635-6061.