Dem great beasts of the nightly sessions
June comes like a great beast inching its weary way toward Pasong Tamo Extension, where at the Department of Avant-garde Clichés gallery the show of Manuel Ocampo, David Griggs and MM Yu has all but packed up after nearly a month’s run and the arrival of the rainy season. Let it be heard across the land the sound of frogs singing in celebration, but is it possible to write a review of the art exhibit “Hail to the Nightly Beasts of the Dark Sessions” without having actually seen it?
Ocampo is a painter who writes occasional art criticism, Griggs looks like a rock star who puts together video-like installation, or so we’ve heard, and Yu is best known as MM the photographer of urban happenstance though she isn’t above painting a mean canvas herself consisting of a wash of primary colors (again, so we’ve read).
Of the three, Yu’s work is most familiar with this guesser having seen it at the 13 artists exhibit some years ago and other group shows at the Megamall and Slab where her fine lomographic sense struck one as both playful and thoughtful, pictures cast in a an eerie yet humorous light.
Better yet, if the wonders of Internet can be availed, MM’s photos or at least the general run of them can be accessed with a click of a mouse, and quite worthy of note is the folio of portraits “People in the Neighborhood” which are deceptively simple studies of persons known to the photographer, the faces perhaps also familiar in the viewer’s and mouse handler’s neighborhood.
Lourd de Veyra the unemotional weatherman and band leader of Radioactive Sago, whose populist verse in drunken readings is often like pearls thrown to swine; the old master and MM Yu’s mentor Chabet of the UP College of Fine Arts, looking none the worse for wear; Alan Rivera the performance artist whose avant-garde demeanor has survived the virtual matrix like a hole in his shoe; the painter Pardo de Leon slim and svelte as ever with her lopsided smile easing into the camera; the sculptor Agnes Arellano whose subtle profile would make classicists and neo-classicists weep and not due to sore eyes; the rocker painter Myo Lee with a shard of hair falling across his face and across his face painted on the shirt he’s wearing; the filmmaker John Torres pensive and almost nondescript as if thinking up great ideas for his next project; the painter Mariano Ching and his artist wife in gardens of sunlight in what might be Cubao; Tado as the long-haired Tado, character actor; the father of Pinoy lomography At Maculangan no longer the short filmmaker having grown in stature; a woman named Katya, her feet and her cats and a cigarette in hand…
In Megamall or was it in Slab there was a picture of a dead cat with eyes out of its socket, and that of a dozing storeowner probably between shifts in Binondo, of wires and cables coiled like snakes and the glint of steel of yellowing jeepney, the positively 4th street layout of haphazard esteros and the signs and symbols of a city lost in itself, yet without any misplaced angst that for a change is a refreshing hand from one barely in her 30s.
At the CCP main gallery along with her fellow 13 Artist awardees, her work was a random adorable pastiche of old photos and gewgaws such as CDs and stuff that were an index of a young woman’s life and times, indeed placed rather informally that almost tempted the gallery-goer to lift a trinket or two, as souvenir of course, though here touching the art work made it a participative experience.
Hers was a rich exhilarating batch of 13, that included Kawayan de Guia who did the CD sleeve art of a Rivermaya album, filmmaker Raya Martin of the endless loop video, Winner Jumalon of the wildly colorful hut of progressive art, Kleng de Loyola with her stacks of installation laundry and existential clothesline of a performance, and MM’s fellow GI Christina Dy whose swabs of black and grey on canvas swirled a remembrance not just of things past but also of what may never have been.
Now that a chance has been missed to view MM’s latest work a train ride and jeepney stop away, this time alongside that of Ocampo and Griggs like an unholy trinity of the local art scene, the next best thing is to take another look at the city of our affections and persistent decay, for there hiding in the margins might be another Yu photo waiting to be taken, the shutter exposed to available light. If there’s nothing in this review — if it can be called a review — our apologies to the artists Ocampo, Griggs and Yu, we’ll try our best to have a real look see the next time the nightly beast is in town, those great sessions angling for the night, whether surrounded by water or under a state of blue sky mind.
