A passion for modern art

The piece is called “Hearsay.” It’s an installation of green pipes connected below the ground by sculp tor Reg Yuson. When you speak from one end, the sound is transmitted to the other end and, just like actual chismis, the pipes are twisted and distorted.   

This is one of the featured installations in the Art Walk this afternoon at 4 and 5:30 by tour guide Carlos Celdran at Bonifacio High Street in Bonifacio Global City (BGC). The art tour is part of PassionFest ’08, a series of activities that combines play, art and music. PassionFest kicked off last April 20 with the 4th Annual BGC Fun Run and will culminate on May 31 with Fusion, a one-of-a-kind musical event combining the instrumentality of the Metro Manila Community Orchestra and the UP Jazz Ensemble conducted by maestro Chino Toledo. The show will be held at Bonifacio High Street and is open to the public. Two hundred seats will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis. Those interested may reserve with the Serendra Concierge.

Bonifacio Global City’s public art program is managed by Bonifacio Arts Foundation, Inc. (BAFI). BGC makes good on its promise of building “a city with a soul” by promoting art education and commissioning artworks by established and young artists.

Art here is seen not as separate from daily living, but as a way of life; to be appreciated as part of one’s everyday environment. This thinking doesn’t only nurture an artist’s creative spirit — but also the viewer’s. 

Speaking of the interaction between art piece and viewer, there is “Bearable Lightness,” a collaborative work by Reg Yuson and painter Ronald Achacoso. It is a cantilevered structure with centrifugal patterns suggesting a state of perpetual lightness. The work merges painting and sculpture and people are encouraged to get on the platform to “imbibe the sensations relating to the tensions between gravity and weightlessness, surface and depth.”

Yuson’s “Concerto” is composed of 20 freestanding floor chimes which, when nudged, produce chimes that can be heard throughout the 40-meter-wide park.

“Tinstaej #85” by Conrado Velasco is a thin, giant silhouette of a teddy bear, part of the artist’s series called “There is No Such Thing as Endless Joy,” a title that derived chuckles — and some protests — from people in Carlos’ first Art Walk two Saturdays ago.  What’s interesting about this piece is that there is a permanent shadow of the teddy bear painted on the ground so that even when it was raining hard during the tour it seemed as though the sun was out.   

Carlos’ art tour of High Street is a veritable lesson on the evolution of public art. Manila’s favorite tour guide says, “I love the public art at Bonifacio Global City. It’s the first time I’ve seen a development that includes public art as its thrust, especially contemporary art. It’s so easy to put up a sculpture of somebody holding a flower and a sword and sort of makibaka. Been there, done that. Here, the stuff you see is evocative, engaging. It brings art into the every day and art is very important when you’re trying to create a proper urban space. Urbanity is all about creating a community where art, people, culture and ecology coexist.”    

Carlos says he appreciates the openness of the development and the feeling that you’re not cooped up in a box, that once you step out of a store you see the rest of the city and “feel that you’re a part of a greater environment. It doesn’t feel like a controlled environment. I think this development has raised the bar now.”

His favorite pieces at High Street? “Hearsay” and “Specific Gravity,” both by Reg Yuson. The latter is a suspended boulder fountain that “orchestrates the connection between the audience as a mobile participant and their primordial affinity for gravity — a seemingly weak though strong force that defines the visible world as we know it,” as stated in the art statement of the piece. Or, in English, it’s an actual fountain that’s suspended by metal legs supporting a boulder on top.

“There’s so many layers to it. It’s a mix of organic elements plus it’s got a purpose — it cools the environment,” adds Carlos. “I like my art to have a function.”

Carlos relates this function to the history of public art and how it all had to do with veneration. “The crucifix was one of the first examples of public art. From memorializing God, it memorialized people like the Lincoln Monument in Washington and our own Rizal Monument. From there it became an abstraction. Today it doesn’t have to represent anything historical, it doesn’t even have to be massive.”

That’s how it is with High Street’s artworks: they are interactive, playful and reflect modern life in the city. “Art is not just for the rich or the poor,” he says. “There’s also high art and low art. Even if you say that art is not important to everyday life, art affects everything around you. This chair was designed by an artist. This cup, the clothes I am wearing, everything in this room was touched by an artist’s sensibility. It’s nice to just get it out and put it on the streets.”

Should public art always be understood by the people? Would it have failed if it wasn’t? 

“No, not at all. Art should not be there to pander. Art being not understood is not the fault of the art. Once upon a time, Picasso’s paintings seemed threatening and offensive. By challenging people’s notions of these things, you move forward.  If you keep sticking to the monumental kind of public art, it doesn’t challenge people, it doesn’t ask them to think.”

And perhaps this new way of looking at things is the most crucial part of Carlos’ Art Walk and BGC’s PassionFest series.

 “You realize that anything around you can become art. It plays on perception. You should always look at the world as an artist because if there’s one thing artists teach you, they teach you how to see.”