Happiness is a well-ordered room

Does the angle between two walls have a happy ending?” wrote J.G. Ballard as copy for a paid advertisement he put out in a magazine in 1960s. A literary surrealist, he always said his greatest inspiration came from art not literature, not to mention the urban landscape of modernist architecture and advancing suburbia around him. Before his death this year, the author of Empire of the Sun and the more controversial Crash said in an interview that “whereas the 20th century was mediated through the car, the 21st century would be mediated through the home.” Here, he implies is where the fun really begins where we can pursue our own “psychopathologies as a game.”

In essence, similar to forensic investigation, what do home interiors reveal about the inner lives of its occupants? Does the settee sitting below a picture of multi-colored rocks connote a deep-seated wish to return to an imagined childhood? Or is a painting of faceless Maria Claras hung on a white rectilinear wall an indication of a complicated relationship to one’s mother?

“Interior Motives” is a show composed of works by 15 artists that’s held in conjunction with the unveiling of Bo Concept store’s 2010 collection on Oct. 21, 2009. It began when Mawen Ong of Bo Concept and Mo Space asked a number of prominent visual artists to provide works for the various room settings for the launch. However, according to her, it soon became apparent that “the combination of ideas resulted in engaging the style vignettes more as a dynamic gallery space and not as a commercial retail space.” If anything, she thought that there was room enough to put up “an art show (that) moves away (hopefully) from the more traditional concepts of displaying art within the domestic lifestyle interiors that our collectors are used to. Or it could challenge the viewers to see what is art and what is not, or what is design and what is art.”

Participating artists include Juan Alcazaren, Poklong Anading, Felix Bacolor, Nerson Bajado, Engelbert Chan Chan, Lena Cobangbang, Louie Cordero, Geraldine Javier, Romeo Lee, Pardo de Leon, At Maculangan, Kaloy Olavides, Mawen Ong, Bernardo Pacquing, Gary Pastrana, Yvonne Quisumbing, Gerardo Tan, MM Yu and Reg Yuson.

“Bo Concept is a brand store of interior furnishings that suggest inspirations of living areas or lifestyles for the market to aspire to,” says Ong. As for the show, it’s a way of addressing the various ways that art can play a part in a home — perhaps not just to be hung on a wall or put in a corner, but something more engaging.

“But where does all art go after it is bought?” says Lena Cobangbang, one of the artists part of the show, when asked if she has any problem displaying art in homes. “There really is no problem with that. We always hang or fill walls with pictures — whether they are photographic prints, posters or paintings. Some designer furniture even has that built-in concept or aspiration to be sculpture. We call these focal objects ‘conversation pieces.’ A bowl of fruit carefully arranged on a table can also serve that purpose.”

For the show, she’s displaying two rugs bearing text that somehow indicates their use. In the given setting of a furniture showroom she says it “naturally sits well,” whereas it could “come off rather as self-conscious or awkward on the floors of a gallery.”

Juan Alcazaren adds that, “In general, everything will work because absolutely anything you put next to high design will look like art.” He also says, “All art can be stored at home.”

Playing upon the idea of modern living as a cycle of “Out with the old, in with the new,” he’s going to use old chair parts and arrange them leaving the building, perhaps in a cloud or a puff of smoke creeping or floating away. He adds, “As always, I’m trying to turn planned obsolescence into something pretty but not useful — I’m not recycling.”

But Yvonne Quisumbing believes that not all art should be placed at home. “There’s art that’s specific to certain places, like parks, museums or churches where perhaps its purpose is best utilized.” A graduate of interior design, she says that home is a place “where you are your true self… Where you wear no masks.”

For the show, she’s created a series of masks hung on a clothes rack as though peeled off. “I thought of masks and their relationship to a home, and came up with the conclusion that masks should not be worn at home, just like coats and hats are surrendered upon entering the house.”

* * *

Let no one touch our homes.

The example of the architect known as Le Corbusier should be noted. He designed and constructed living spaces with the declaration that it should be humans who adapt to his buildings — not the other way around. He was wrong. The inhabitants of his residential blocks have remodeled his designs to meet their own needs and aesthetic.

And as museums and institutions like, say, the Tate Modern or even the Cultural Center of the Philippines are in themselves impressive works of architecture — “vast totalitarian spaces that Albert Speer would’ve admired,” some say — they are so structurally authoritarian that they threaten to “overwhelm any work of art inside it.”

So, art finds a home in ours. Not just in our hearts where home is oft said to be but also in our heads, where we can truly start to come out to play.

“Interior Motives” is a project of Mo_space. Show opens on Oct. 21 and will be on view until Nov. 24 at the Bo concept store.