Edd Aragon’s Trifecta

Grand events. Three of them, in a row, in the month of April. That’s a trifecta. Call it a hat trick, too. Whatever. There’s no underestimating the trickster Edd Aragon.

The 59-year-old artist returns home after 30 years in Sydney, not to retire, but to tease his kanto boy buddies with a curious shortcoming. Eschewing the solidity of the traditional cuatro cantos, a carrefours or intersection, or even a bottle, Edd does it one less if better by mounting a trilogy, a triptych, a three-point shot of a serial exhibition of artworks in three genres in three different venues. Their collective title is “Tres Kantos.”

Which is the prequel, and which the sequel, we can only guess at. That’s how Edd A. divagates from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. The Wizard of Aragon, in Aragon, only tells us what we want to know about the present. No, not in the mordant style of a Cassandra, since he only antedates Trinoma in QC, maybe even Tribeca in Manhattan. So let’s simply accept it as his way of applying an esoteric form of triangulation.

With Edd, we’ll never know. Maybe that’s why his nickname has assumed an extra level of dourness.

The first show, billed as “Digitalla Prima” and featuring digitally-manipulated photographs and scanned images, opens at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 6, at The Oarhouse, 1803 A. Mabini St. in  Malate, Manila. (Note: alla prima is Italian for “at once”)

“Pixels as paint!” enthuses Edd. “I’m now addicted to this wonderful, electronic canvas. I avoid gimmicky plugged-in effects. A simple paint program like Photoshop offers simple yet powerful tools; much like an ordinary lead pencil effectively used to sketch a pretty portrait in the analog world.”

“Mulat!” is the second exhibit, which opens at 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 12, at Banyuhay ni Heber Arts & Music Center on 170 Banlat Road, Tandang Sora, Quezon City.

This one’s an eye-opener, but only when you stand in space that’s lorded over by what we used to call black light. In the ’70s that got us off very cheap when the white areas in our tees started glowing luminous.

Now it’s called UV light. Down Under over a year ago, Edd exhibited paintings that no one could see unless the UV light was turned on. Art with a flair for contingency, right?

Shown were portraits of Pinoy rock stars such as the quintessential ragamuffin Pepe Smith, who even served as guest of honor. There, too, on the walls, glowing luminous, were portraits of Wally Gonzalez, Sampaguita, Heber Bartolome... For that show, Aragon claimed to have invented a new material for canvas painting: aragonite.

Strange fellow, I tell you. He must know that art has always factored in a weirdness quotient. He’s high up, very high, on the universal scale. Listen to him:

“I can’t help but think analytically when using ultraviolet-reactive materials as the process is tricky — e.g. using white paint to appear as black under UV light and developing the painting as I go. Brushwork is almost second nature. But the theme is my real palette, like bridging the old and modern-day heroes using musical and visual allusions in an alternative light. It’s almost like exploring the dark side of the moon.

“Truth is hard to perceive in the blinding day-to-day life and light. Beneath the prismatic chaos reside the ultra-violet rays of rapture for things unseen.”

Hah! Said like a seasoned blogger. Either that, or aragonite is edible.

Now, let me hark back in extensive digression to the day Edd A. first picked me off a hotel lobby... Wait, come to think of it, before that we must have encountered one another in Nonoy Marcelo’s rathole, er, studio, if you can call a pizza crust dump one. That must have been in the ’70s or ’80s.

Then there was 1996 or so when the best president we ever had, Fidel V. Ramos, took me along to Sydney for some brandy. Oh, and some speeches and signings on his part, and a video-docu on mine, and my crew’s. El Tabako also cut the ceremonial ribbon at the opening of a painting exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Gallery right by the Sydney harbor. On show were expat Pinoy painters that included Edd Aragon, Alfredo “Ding” Roces, and our old buddy from Ermita-Malate, Johnny Altomonte.

The next time I saw Edd, during the Sydney Arts Fest of 2006, he took me to his place where we had a late lunch of adobo and whisky while viewing The Filipino Channel. He had a music room with full rock band paraphernalia, but which also served as an exhibit hall for his paintings. On show too was the largest rolled joint I ever saw, with my name on it; such was his brand of hospitality. But of course it was an ersatz artifact, for purposes of photo-ops by the piano only.

He had chickens pecking about in his backyard, a self-designed greenhouse for pechay, all sorts of sculpture and installations, found objects, items purchased from flea markets, at which he fancies himself an expert, and various flora including healthy orchids and succulents. And he had a basketball goal on the wall of his extended driveway. Good onya, Edd!

When I had demolished him one on one, we settled on the porch for tea. Well, you know, there were smaller variants of the humongous papyrus specimen in that music room, but these were far from ersatz. We toasted to the real Macoy. Good onya, Edd!

The next day I hooked him up by phone with Jim Paredes, who was still new to Sydney. They got together and fetched me from my hotel, and off we went to Ding Roces’ lovely suburban home. A sumptuous dinner was followed by a tour of the wilds that commenced from the magical backyard, then a sketching session back indoors, with Jim and I coming away with our instant portraits. Jim picked up a guitar and started singing. Edd brought out his harmonica, and soon we had an APO-Dylan concert going on. Good onya, Edd!

Now let’s hear it from Ding Roces himself, the eminent writer, visual artist, art critic, cultural historian, editor and culture columnist for the pre-martial law Manila Times. The following is excerpted from an informal lecture he gave on the Pinoy artist in Australia, titled “ The Filipino Artist as Invisible Man.”

“Edd Aragon and I go back to green years here in Sydney in the late ’70s. Edd successfully negotiated what for some other new migrants proved impossible, the difficult transformation from cartoonist for the Philippine Daily Express to editorial illustrator for the Sydney Morning Herald. Thrice he has bagged the prestigious ‘Artist of the Year’ award from the Australian Black and White Artists society.

“As well as occupying himself with serious painting and sculpture, Edd — who, let me tell you, is one hyperactive guy — is into music: wheezing the harmonica, banging the piano, and punishing us along the way with his singing while smoking whatever it is he is smoking. In like manner, Edd physically attacks wood with an electric saw, while also fooling around with paint that he calls aragonite, and smoking whatever it is he’s smoking.

“In our early years here in Sydney of the blissful ’80s, a handful of like-minded souls would get together wherever we could find a suitable room to sketch from life. Most often this was at the Kirribilli Community Arts Centre. We all had to pitch in to cover the model’s fee. Edd was, and still is, the great source for curvaceous models. Whereas sexy women take one look at me and instinctively cross their legs, Edd happily draws young chicks like moths to a flame.

“... As artists, we were invisible then. We remain invisible now.

“... Edd’s current work speaks to me about visibility and invisibility. Under ordinary light his new canvases are white and empty — invisible paintings. But under ultraviolet light, or what is known as blacklighting in the billboard advertising game, strange images appear.

“It seems to me, the new migrant to Australia is like these aragonite paintings — blank and invisible to those who only see from a certain cultural framework, those who apply only one special code for recognition within a closed, exclusively English-speaking mode.

“But place him under a different light, his own light, a light equally valid and equally luminous, and we might uncover perhaps unique noble traits and virtues. We may encounter basic humanity behind that anonymous facade.

... Good onya, Edd Aragon! May those mysterious rumblings beneath your clean white canvas give the Filipino artist a touch of visibility.”

Excellent. Thanks, Ding. Maybe it takes a Renaissance man to recognize and laud another.

Getting back to his three-cornered homecoming, for “Mulat” Edd will be showing 30 “invisible paintings” that still include rock and blues musicians (like B.B. King), as well as nudes and allegorical images. A major portrait is of Tandang Sora a.k.a. Melchora Aquino, “Mother of the Katipunan,” who was born in Banilad a.k.a. Banlat, almost exactly where the exhibit will be launched. It was Ding Roces who gave Edd his title for this piece: “Tandang Sora in Blue.”

Capping the trifecta is “Op-Edd!” — a collection of Aragon’s opinion editorial (op-ed) cartoons and caricatures published in The Sydney Morning Herald, including prints of his political cartoons currently on show at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. It opens at 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 19, at Maestro Masterpiece Art depot, second floor, Rm. 207, Seneca Bldg., 1152 E. Rodriguez Ave., Q.C.

Now, I tell you, Edd not only has a superb eye for mischief, but like the best political cartoonists, has always had the facility to absorb the narrative saga in any issue or controversy, and encapsulate it into powerful imagery that drives the essential point home.

Home is the global wonder for such paranormal kibitzers like Edd A., whose sleight-of-hand contouring of the imagination, vis-a-vis the collective unconscious, manages to approach the sublime. Why, if I were a Manila daily publisher, I’d pirate him right back from Sydney. Give him a full-color section and he’d topple governments weekly in the face of ersatz rice crises.

In Sydney, the subjects of his pen and airbrush snap up the original artworks that mythify or crucify them. How’s that for earthlings’ accolade?

So let’s have the empyrean journeyman have the last word:

“Newspaper culture is universal: artists and journalists working together but each in his own world and constantly aware of events and deadlines. My experience in Manila as newspaper cartoonist gave me confidence and the tenacity to work in Australian newspapers since 1980. I’ve always injected the element of the human form in my editorial drawings, and enjoy using manual airbrush to draw, then have these scanned and brought to a paint program, and rebirthed.”

Welcome back, Edd A.! Here’s to your rebirth in the old hometown, thanks to friends like Heber Bartolome and Ben Razon, photographer nonpareil, who both helped in organizing “Tres Kantos.”

Surely we’ll all enjoy the promised bonza rippa, Aussie red wine. And here’s hoping you enjoy your month here, with visits to Baguio, Iloilo and Boracay with your Bangaan Art Group buddies. Before you topple governments. Good onya!