The funny business of art

(Part one)

What did I do to deserve this privilege and honor of writing a column about a topic I love so much, which is art? I am a terrible writer. I could barely finish my essays at university. There was always something about writing that scared me to death (even at this very moment I feel a bit queasy). Semiotics has never been my friend, as 50 percent of the time I communicate with my hands. Writing, versus speaking, makes everything you say official. For me, this is public execution in front of whoever may be reading this. So why write then?

As nervous as I am, I suppose I want to open up the private conversations I have with my friends to everyone — whether it concerns art, culture or society. I am not a curator, an academic; nor do I possess a significant art collection. What I may have is some experience behind me, having worked in art in Europe, and having been an art history major at university (if that helps). I promise, however, that what I can offer is my unrelenting curiosity and my most honest and sincerest reflections as I continue to experience the art world we are in today. Although the art scene in Europe is much larger and more established, I find that the emerging art scene we have  now is far more interesting and unpredictable. I am privileged to be right in the middle of the action, and I would love to share this experience.

I named the column after one of my favorite songs, Prisencolinensinainciusol sung in 1972 by Italian artist Adriano Celentano. Celentano is like the living equivalent of Yoyoy Villame in Italy: singer, composer, comedian, and a critic of contemporary society. His song Prisencolinensinainciusol, is a song made to sound like American English (sung like Elvis), but actually sung in absolute gibberish. I urge everyone to watch the video and to listen to the lyrics of this song, as it makes no sense at all.

(He tries to make a point though — in the ’70s where everything looked and sounded American, especially in Europe, he wanted to illustrate the world’s inability to communicate.)

Yet we like the song, it sounds like a really catchy Elvis track. And if you strip away its actual lyrics, I think you might agree that we can all relate to its tune. This title was fitting as I wanted to write in the spirit of this song — with humor and openness, and a tune that we all can relate to. Even if what I write sounds like gibberish to others, my aim is not to impress but to allow a discussion. (I know it is not in our culture to react calmly, that’s why we’ve had so many EDSA revolutions, we can’t even count anymore.)

The first assignment given to me was possibly the most difficult topic I could tackle: Art Basel Hong Kong. The enormity and variety of this art fair is what makes it so interesting and complex: 233 galleries arrived from 37 different countries, with over 60,000 attendees from everywhere. Art Basel Hong Kong resembles a kind of gateway for the entire world to discover art in Asia, and this phenomenon has become so great that the entire art fair was brimming with enthusiasm to make connections and to discover new galleries and emerging artists.

This year I found myself interested in humor in art. I found myself concentrated on the funny and almost absurd pieces, which revealed some very interesting ideas from artists. One of the funny ones was by Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee at Gallery Skape. His installation involves sculptural armor consisting of a horsetail and horseshoes titled “Instrument” (2014). A five-minute video piece titled “Measure” (2014) shows the artist wearing this armor as he canters around an empty building, mimicking the sound of a horse in movement. “Through mechanics and a scientific approach to performance art, Lee ensures that his audience is not deprived of any sort of present,” writes Sarah Bolwell. The result is a kind of bizarre abstraction of equestrian performance. Lee exhibited in the South Korean Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Another strange group of installations that caught my attention was by the young Bagus Pandega from Indonesia, represented by ROH Projects. The show is titled “Clandestine Transgressions” (2015) which he describes as portraits assembled from found material such as mirrors, light bulbs, wooden doors, vinyl records, etc. His central piece titled “The Anthology Pt. I” is composed of an assemblage of vinyl records spinning frenetically surrounded by microphones attached to an even bigger record that holds the entire piece together. The artist describes this work as a compilation of secrets: “I recorded the secrets of people from all walks of life and different social classes, and so the movements of these sculptures are generated by the sound from their secrets.” It was quite a revelation to find the work so entertaining, only to find that the noise these objects made were the noises from different people’s most intimate secrets.

Hans Peter Feldmann’s “Seated Women Triptych” (2011) is composed of an overload of photocopies of famous women in painting, cutup and pinned on three panels (which reminded me of my high school locker during my pre-teen obsession with the Backstreet Boys). When I asked Alexandra from Mehdi Chouakri Gallery if the artist had a perverse obsession with women, her answer to that was, “I don’t think it’s an obsession. Feldmann simply loves women.” This childish documentation of cutting out magazine clippings and sticking them onto a surface makes me wonder if artists have become the new pop stars. I think it’s true in our society. We do love this celebrity culture in the Philippine art scene.

I’m short of space to talk about the funny things I noticed in the art fair; besides other works, there were funny people, too. But that’s for next time.

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Jam Acuzar is the founder and director of Bellas Artes Projects, an organization that runs art projects and residencies based in Bagac, Bataan. Having lived and worked with art and fashion in Paris and London, she shares her experience about being back home and her observations as a young collector in the Philippine art scene. While Jam and her team run Bellas Artes Projects, she also works full time in the construction and real estate industry.