Which Philippine contemporary artist is for you?

The much-talked-about Art Fair is here and you might be completely clueless. It can be quite intimidating when you find yourself sipping bubbly next to a critic or an ilustrado looking to talk about the higher meaning of art. But here’s the thing: you don’t need all of those things.

Art Fair Philippines 2014 celebrates the works of our contemporary artists and makes them accessible to people like you (that’s why it’s set in a parking lot). So suck it up, puff your chest out, and head to the fair to see what the buzz is about. All you’ll need is a set of eyes. If that doesn’t appease you, maybe this ridiculous guide will.

If you don’t know where to start, here’s a primer to help you navigate local contemporary art.

Renegade

You like the dark, the weird, and the absurd. Maybe you have a slight case of ADD. You like Banksy, and are not afraid to profess that you are very in tune with pop culture. It keeps you balanced, and it’s sometimes very meta. You are a Ronald Ventura who draws his imagination into large-scale photorealistic compositions. His work often references pop culture icons, but within the context of his world, it’s darker and more aggressive. For the Art Fair, he presents his sculptural pieces in a single installation.

Conceptual

You are analytical. If the Little Prince showed you a drawing of what looked like a hat, you would take the stance of an imaginative child and say that it looked like a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant. If you were Jose John Santos III, you would ponder the eloquence of a seemingly normal object. Jose John Santos III takes everyday objects, like a bag, and invites us to look at it differently. It’s because they become the main subjects of his hyper-realistic paintings. In the Art Fair, his installation further delves into the bag. With an event like “Yolanda,” he tries to understand its heroic nature, which at that time signified hope (via relief goods).

Street

You love komiks or graphic novels, Andy Warhol and graffiti. You’re lowbrow, and enjoy things easy to digest. You’re not uncomfortable with grotesque, in fact it excites you, but you like that it can be sprinkled with a little glitter. Bulging eyeballs, protruding tongues presented in street-like art: doused in colors and movement. You are a Louie Cordero — funky shapes, acid colors and plain fun. For the Art Fair, he creates amorphously shaped ping-pong tables, an installation piece in which he has also asked some people to play actual ping-pong on.

Folk

You enjoy a few anthropological reads, National Geographic, and folk music. You love stories, especially the borderline fantastical. You like tribal patterns and a little bit of magic. You were dressed as Frida Kahlo for Halloween. You are a Rodel Tapaya, who appropriates tales from our local communities like the B’laan, the Ibanag and places like Zambales, into murals of fine art. He puts into pictures our oral traditions, like seeing your childhood imaginations on canvas, mixing elements and symbols from nature and bringing them to life.

Classy

You love beautiful things: fine, intricate, ornate things. Beauty is not subjective to you, it is clear from the get-go. The catch is, you are quite the intelligentsia yourself. You are a Pio Abad, who uses familiar mediums like a lovely silk scarf, and injects it with ideologies. For the Art Fair, his silk-screened scarves are decorated with a figure of Muhammad Ali, alongside some findings from Marcos’ personal archives. Place Ali next to Imelda Marcos’ embroidered slippers and add in a few other luxury items — it sure makes for a pretty scarf, but stands for a bolder statement.

Nostalgic

You have a collection of porcelain dolls and dollhouses. You see yourself as a girly girl, but really it’s more that these feminized objects carry a sort of nostalgia for you. You like dresses. You are a Marina Cruz, who constantly plays around with the themes of the dollhouse and the doll. Her work plays on the statement of the role of the woman in a gendered world

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The Philippine Star is the media partner of Art Fair Philippines 2014.You can catch it until Feb. 23 at 6/F and 7/F of The Link, Parkway Drive, Ayala Center, Makati City. Art Fair Philippines 2014 is organized by Philippine Art Events Inc. and co-presented by Ayala Corporation, Ayala Land, Ayala Land Premier, Alveo, and Swatch.

Participating galleries include Altro Mondo, Archivo, Art Cube, Art Informal, Avellana Art Gallery, Blanc, Boston Gallery, Canvas, Crucible, Equator Art Projects, Finale, Galleria Duemila, Light and Space Contemporary, Liongoren Gallery, Manila Contemporary, Mo_Space, Nova, Now Gallery, Pablo, Paseo Art Gallery, Secret Fresh, Richard Koh Fine Art, Silverlens, Taksu, The Drawing Room, Tin-Aw, West Gallery, and 1335 Mabini.