Rock Drilon’s public art

At a time when art exhibits come and go, Rock Drilon’s large-scale abstract works are privileged in a way many of his contemporaries are not: They get to be displayed the whole year round.

Installed in the lobbies and hallways of corporate buildings and offices, the artist’s immense, intense canvases fill these spaces as pieces of public art. While galleries themselves are technically public spaces, they are settings arguably more imbued with aesthetic – and less utilitarian – intent. Instead of galleries where people purposefully view the works on display, Drilon’s acrylic canvases populate spaces where everyday transactions and exchanges unfold at a frenzied pace.

Rock Drilon’s works may be generally described as non-figurative explorations and responses to feeling and form. For a long-time practitioner of abstract art, creating large-scale works for public buildings using the eloquent yet oftentimes evasive vocabulary of abstraction poses little, if no, conceptual difficulty. The philosophical outlook underlying Drilon’s style whose roots can be traced from Abstract Expressionism is characterized by a rebelling against tradition (such as the dependence on familiar objects for visual reference and inspiration), and the spontaneous demand for expansive expression. The preference for doing large-scale works was in a way a material manifestation of this outlook.

In such settings, Drilon’s works exceed the aim of self-expression. More than that, they respond to the functions of the architectural spaces they inhabit and the events that occur within these spaces. There lies the challenge of his talent: to find and convey processes and sensations so personal to so wide an audience.

Public art, though, is a relatively new venture for Drilon, whose lobby paintings, as they might be called, all date from the mid-90s until the present. Although the artist has been producing large-scale works since the late ’70s, patronage and display of these were then limited to individual collectors and foreigners. (A story goes that once, his entry to the AAP annual painting contest in the ’70s was disqualified because it was oversized. At the exhibition that followed, his painting was left out in the cold in a corridor so the organizers could prove their point. Much to everyone’s surprise, AAP founder Purita Kalaw Ledesma wanted to purchase Drilon’s painting except that the late Jose Joya beat her to it. In the late poet Leo Benesa’s review of the exhibition, the art critic commended Drilon’s work and questioned the judges’ decision. In the years to follow, size restrictions were abolished in all AAP annuals.) But for audiences more familiar with monumental sculptures or history paintings displayed in communal spaces, Drilon’s large-scale works testify that public art need not be representational in form, nor commemorative/narrative or merely decorative in function.

His work, "Prayer," installed at the ABS-CBN broadcast center, for instance – Drilon’s largest commissioned work measuring 5 m x 3.5 m that took three scaffoldings to construct – complements the network station’s busy interior by drawing the viewer to its aura of contemplation. Predominantly pastel hues and white obscure the underlying color fields, while a few elements – a dark grey plane, the familiar vertical yellow streak – persist. The ensuing effect simulates a luminous, serene haze shrouding any superfluous elements. This is in contrast to the network’s polished interiors of dark marble and glass, with people coming in and out at a hurried pace. Drilon narrates that the work’s first patron originally wanted a painting reflective of the jarring atmosphere in the station, but was quickly overruled by his father, who wished for an attempt at balance instead. This decision resulted in the commissioning of a monumental statement of introspection coexisting with the station’s frenetic energy.

Comparatively smaller public artworks also exist. At the World Centre Building Lobby in Makati, two of Drilon’s paintings facing each other evoke dual states of minds and dispositions. "Paean to the Moment 2," for example, retains a careful balance between white, neutral and geometric shapes. "For Nana," the painting opposite it (and which is regrettably positioned far too high in the lobby to be fully appreciated) reflects a more mutable dynamism on the part of the artist. The predominant feature here seems to be a green pastel loop making its way erratically and haltingly across a background of entanglements. His "Paean to the Moment 1-C" at the Palisades Building, Makati and his more introspective "Instructions for Life" series displayed at the Shangri-La Makati Ballroom are also testaments to the reception of abstract works as public art.

Another of Drilon’s major works, "Paean to the Moment 1," is positioned along a brightly illuminated walkway-cum-museum at the exclusive Pacific Towers Plaza Lobby in Fort Bonifacio. Sharing the security-tight premises with other modern abstract pieces by more senior artists like national artists Arturo Luz and Jerry Elizalde Navarro, this work is a testimony to the artist’s fusion of dynamic and reflective energies in a single work.

Aside from being the exhibit centerpiece in Drilon’s "Paean to the Moment" show held in 1999 at the Ayala Museum, the work also served as the base from which his current show, RESONuANCE, takes off. Featuring a centerpiece "RESONuANCE 1," inspired by his Paean series, the exhibit (organized by the Galeria Duemila and curated by Bernardo Paquing and Juan Alcazaren) is a sharing of the artist’s personal modes of feeling and artistic processes.

Its relation to Drilon’s previous lobby works, as one might call them, lies in their mutual celebration of the quality of intensity – whether in the works’ purpose, process or scale. For Drilon, who lives life the same way he creates his intense canvases, the continued creation of public art involves not just a mastering of monumentality but a parallel broadening of spirituality and zeal to create as well.