The Alborealis
A quick visit to the Art Informal gallery on Connecticut Street in Mandaluyong during the middle weeks of February would have the viewer mulling over the latest environment-conscious paintings by the Bicol artist Gus Albor, whose pastel-dominated canvases would delight even those not familiar with his works.
Greeting the visitor upon entering the large white paneled doors is the continuous silent motion of an electricity-operated compass, making nonstop its crazy arcs and tipsy tangents on the white side of the painting. “Climate” sets the tone for the show “Resonance,” the slow chipping away of ether and ozone layer, and the artist in the poker-faced middle trying to make sense of it all.
“Radiation” is another notable mixed media work near the entrance/exit, where in a not-too-lonesome corner a refurbished car radiator becomes the backdrop for an atomic-like cloud, again a subtle enough conceptual statement of the slow burn caused by exhaust fumes and other deadly gases from cars.
Two smaller works near the back of the gallery beside the outdoor patio also catch attention. “Musical Score,” possibly snapped up by a collector on opening night, does look like a music sheet, except that any notes previously there have been obliterated by whiteness. “Submerged” has quite literally a darker context, and leads one towards murky depths, as if staring at the hollow block aftermath of storm Ondoy and its waterlogged cities.
The series of acrylic paintings “Temperature” has the artist in his abstract, philosophical best, the gradations of light, color and shadow separated by the letter “T” that could stand both for the basic instrument T-square as well as temperature itself and the effect of global warming on the process of painting, as if the works themselves were placed in a patient, metaphysical kiln and not all the world’s thermometers can stop the shaping of art.
“Mantra” seems to be closer in spirit to one of the “Temple” paintings, in that both have a white square in the middle of canvas, the former having a darker make pervaded by an “X.”
For sheer interpolations into the subconscious one need only look at “Rumblings” and “Written” as the artist tries to reconstruct the alibata of the imagination and the figurative finds haven in a residential gallery; having these paintings around is like talking in one’s sleep — only to hear them talk back.
Writes Patricia Justine Tumang in her program notes: “The concept of black and white (positive and negative space), which figures largely in Albor’s works, embodies numerous meanings depending on the context.”
And what innumerable contexts there are. The Bicol-bred Albor came to Manila to study fine arts at the UE in the late ’60s to early ’70s, at about the time the Red Warriors were lording it over the UAAP with players coach Baby Dalupan recruited into Crispa.
The painter however is no basketball fan, and he says that the UE College of Fine Arts is in fact in Sta. Mesa at UERM, far from the Recto-based dribblers. The Albors moved from Naga to Manila and lived in an apartment on Libertad Street in Mandaluyong, where the commute to Sta. Mesa was relatively short. The young artist became a working student to help support himself through school, even venturing into comics illustration for a while, despite the slave labor wages.
At the UE Fine Arts they had a regular art journal, separate from The Dawn.
It was in 1976 when Albor won the 13 Artists award given by CCP, and among his batchmates were Judy Sibayan and the late Santi Bose. It was a good year as far as we can remember — the year of Ermita magazine and the first Crispa grand slam in the PBA.
One of his first shows was inspired by Jose Garcia Villa’s comma poems, the subtext of which possibly prefigured present-day explorations into the alibata.
Occasionally we used to run into him at Penguin Café and Gallery before it was shut down, where he would be with his Bicol posse, notably the fellow painter Dante Perez, with whom he had set up an artists cooperative in the old hometown before their gallery was wiped out by typhoon Reming in 2006.
At Art Informal it is the first time we are viewing his work up close. Sometimes a female fan or two arrive, long time no beso-beso.
Here again is Tumang: “The interplay of space, color, shapes, and shadows pervade Albor’s collection, as do the connections between human and ecological dissonance and the malleability of time.”
Or put in another way through paraphrase like a different version of the same paragraph: The malleability of the artistic spirit in the face of ecological disaster and other excesses.
The works themselves do not ride on any fad of environmental concern, the acrylic and other mixed media concrete statements that are quick to dry and to the draw.
Yet the painter leaves the door open to interpretation and other meanderings, not least the opportunity to grow. Because the artist has too much respect for the viewer, the art is never static in the Alborealis: northern Mayon lights, southern Bicol cross.
