MANILA, Philippines — Alwin Reamillo’s latest one-man show, “Pharmasika 633” at the NCCA Gallery along Heneral Luna Street in Intramuros, is not open to the public, but the artist can invite friends or interested viewers to look at the work up close and personal, after catching glimpses of it on the internet through Facebook or other posts, a sort of cyber teaser.
So far, through snatches seen, what’s evident is Reamillo’s long-lasting obsession (or is it fetish) with the piano not only as musical instrument but as metaphor and motif for his work— a construct within a construct, if not being the construct itself, palpable as wood and ivory keys. Which should not at all be surprising, the artist having grown up in a piano maker’s store at a corner of Singalong, which jeepney riders might have noticed long ago in the old neighborhood.
A regular contributor from a leftist magazine of yore, Midweek poet and art critic Jojo Soria de Veyra wrote the liner notes for “Pharmasika 633” and puts us closer to an understanding of the artist’s work. Soria is something of a musician himself so it is no great theory that it takes one musician to understand or at least appreciate another.
Not that Reamillo is a real honest-to-goodness musician but his work sings, or at least what we’ve seen of it, like flashes of lightning on the horizon he’s come a long way from Makiling High School for the Arts days, where he was influenced deeply by the forest among other enchanted tropes, including indigenous materials and maybe even the late great Santi Bose. Then it was Artistang Gutom (ANG) group composed of Makiling alumni such as the Red brothers, Ian Victoriano, Henry Frejas, John Sabado, Pablo Biglang-awa, exhibiting in places like Pinaglabanan galleries in San Juan post-EDSA, those were heady times.
It was, of course, inevitable that Reamillo would be named among recipients of CCP’s 13 Young Artists Award before he turned 40, beating the cut-off date with years to spare, and in an exhibit in that edifice by the sea the artist as enfant terrible let explode a firecracker while in one section was sprawled what looked like carcasses of little piggies. Or was no art critic just dreaming that up?
The artist also delved into filmmaking, entering the alternative short film competition of CCP with his then girlfriend Cherry what’s her name, the Gory Parturition, featuring sonographs or sonograms of a childbirth in progress, where the random reviewer first encounters the word parturition.
Long years of pause and hiatus, monsoon, and next we heard Reamillo is in the southern hemisphere with an Australian wife. He comes home intermittently for group or solo shows, now it seems he’s more here then there, one such homecoming in Malasimbo 2014, where he worked on an on-site installation while the bands played world music and in that rolling terrain the counterclockwise flush of water in the other hemisphere was just a memory, thick scent of weed in the air as zen aficionados were doing it in the bushes.
What is it about “Pharmasika 633,” ongoing at General Luna until end October, still closed to the public in a double lockdown in the walled city, with Soria referencing found objects and matchboxes, details of the past from detritus of the ever-present subconscious? We understand, then, that an artist can set up an exhibit not meant to be seen, at least not by the hoi polloi, just as no art critic can review it much less have any article published because no one will read it, everything an assumption of ghosts, in invisibility lies the indivisibility of the artist, always a step ahead.
The ghosts here are mostly those of Antonio Luna, who was a pharmacist and musician before becoming a military general, and Andres Bonifacio, the great plebian as throwback to the artist’s previous show at the same venue in 2013, Tinubuang Lupa, and the two national heroes form a formidable duality on the wooden wings of a moth or butterfly, a large-scale work that may soon enough be recruited to the national museum.
Originally scheduled to open last year but set back due to the pandemic, “Pharmasika 633” sought to also involve indigent adolescents in the Intramuros area in a concept of bayanihan, who will be taking music lessons from music majors and students from various conservatories, perhaps culminating in a parade of pianos winding through the streets of the walled city in a kind of surreal La Naval.
Well, there’s a reason for the medicine cabinets hosting slowly burning candles, a clutch of assorted musical instruments hanging from ceiling culled from out of job musicians between cruises, and inspirations, influences and contributors ranging from Rica Concepcio, Egay Navarro, Popong Landero and Katya Guerrero to At Macalungan, Kerima Tariman, David Sicam, Cesar Hernando (Botika Bituka Butiki) and Ian Victoriano, the last with a short story and accompanying piece titled “Labi” about a general who wakes up finding his things rearranged, and the narrator losing his way in the throes of enchantment and coming across an epiphany; it might just be music that will be medicine for the national race.
A man and his piano can only go on improvising, improving his craft — who cares if some figment of imagination is always looking over your shoulder, it comes with the territory like that commercial where the conscience helps the consumer decide what brand of soap to buy?
“I prefer the second ending,” Reamillo said of a story where the reader is given the option to choose between two possible endings. The piano goes on playing, the man eats his pionono as jellyroll Morton sings jelly jelly jelly so far from home.
Little lamb says to dragonfly, will you be my McCartney, sir? Outside my window jelly jelly jelly so far from home. But for Luna and Bonifacio, and a son surviving a bus crash in the Cordilleras continuing the musical legacy of his father.
Maybe Reamillo never had fun with Dick and Jane, but did so (and how) with Spot. Singing the boondocks pink, that’s the Stars on 45 playing nonstop on inter-island vessel as we follow the bouncing ball to “Pharmasika 633,” no not closed on Sundays despite the double lockdown in Intramuros, a man and his piano can have their pionono and eat it too.
Have you noticed how the landscape rearranges itself almost two years into the long-running pandemic? Landmarks disappear then pop again in entirely new places, or else sink into ground only to resurface in a different part of the archipelago under an assumed name, all a matter of improvising on the piano like wings of fortune or missed opportunity. Glenn Gould and his Bach variations looking for a jukebox that was no more, except in a hypothetical pharmacy where long ago and far away it was also October in Manila, the noble, ever loyal.
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NCCA Gallery is at 633 General Luna Street, Intramuros, Manila. Email gallery@ncca.gov.ph for more details.