BENCAB at the STPI

Almost as familiar–or perhaps even more so–as Bencab’s tall, lanky frame and quiet face with eyes that smile and the shadow of white beard are the figures that populate his canvasses. Very often they are in size larger than life, for Bencab works on huge canvasses; but they are also larger than life because of the intensity and strength of character Bencab imbues them with, that very often they overwhelm viewers, instilling a sense of awe and even a touch of fear.

Bencab, formerly known as Benedicto Cabrera, is one of the best known, most sought after and thus most highly priced Filipino artists today. In the Asian art auction market, his works command top dollar. Critics and writers Krip Yuson and Cid Reyes rightly declare that Bencab "occupies a secure and permanent place in the history of contemporary Philippine art".

For a good part of this month, until the 25th, Bencab’s art goes on full show in Singapore at the prestigious Singapore Tyler Print Institute, where he was artist in residence in October last year. The exhibit, titled "Impressions", is, writes Ruoh Ling in the foreword of the exhibit catalogue, "a visual feast of exploding colours and movement which is due to both the artistic ingenuity of the artist as well as the possibilities afforded by technical support of the institution."

The Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI) is an international publisher and dealer of fine art prints and works on paper. Established in 2002 by American master printer Kenneth Tyler, STPI has a Visiting Artists Programme that allows collaboration between an outstanding international artist and the staff of the institute "to pursue new and innovative techniques" and to "push the technical and aesthetic frontiers of printmaking and papermaking".

The late Filipino artist Pacita Abad was artist in residence in 2002; the resulting works–whimsical and bold paper works called "Circles"–were exhibited in Singapore, Los Angeles and in Manila in 2003.

Bencab’s stint at STPI was a return for him to the art of printmaking, having taken a crack at it early in his career, though that "did not produce any noteworthy results," noted writer Reyes. He had an exhibit in 1981 devoted exclusively to etchings, a retrospective of works from 1970-1980.

This experience and exhibit in Singapore is a different thing altogether though. The exhibit opened last Friday with an almost typical Pinoy "fun" party, with Filipino entertainers even. Guest of honor was Ambeth Ocampo, chair of our National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

As we are unfortunately not party to either the process (Bencab’s residency) or the end product (the exhibit, although it is hoped that, like Pacita Abad’s, it will be exhibited in Manila sometime in the future), we are again quoting from Ruoh Ling’s foreword:

"Beholding the exhibition as an entirety, one appreciates Bencab both as an artist and a printmaker. There is no need for justification or excuse for him, with an illustrious career on record, to return to the making of prints, welcoming the various new possibilities offered with a child-like anticipation, unperturbed by the unknowing elements in this process but taking it in its essence–as an adventure. He has followed the flow of the process and the creations are sinuous and lithe, responding to the immediacy of the medium as well as his deliberate effort not to intellectualize his subjects. From etching to wood block to the unique paper pulp, the creating process presents such an array of demonstrably painterly gestures and technical abilities that it proclaims itself to be a contemporary artistic construction yearning to entice and to interact with its audience, both with the end product and with the process itself."

The artist shares the experience of this unique collaborative effort with Ling: "I don’t rationalize too much about the images or the composition. They come spontaneously to me in the process. they have to, I am working with a very spontaneous medium. With the etchings, the plates are used as sketch books and I etch directly on them. There’s hardly any preparation beforehand as most print making process would, instead it’s really an immediate response to the running paint. I find the immediacy of the medium exciting."

While the medium may be new territory for him, themes and figures from his artistic past intrude, as it were, into this new experience. There are strong hints of iconic bag woman Sabel, perhaps his most famous, as well as his Isadora, Larawan (migrant Filipinos) and Japanese woman.

Bencab first encounters Sabel in 1964, perhaps significantly also the year he takes on the shortened name "Bencab". Sabel, a bag woman, is said to represent for him "dislocation and despair".

Bencab started painting on walls and on the sidewalks when he was only seven, influenced by his brother Salvador, an artist. In sixth grade he won his first art award, and in high school augmented his allowance by doing illustrations for classmates.

As a fine arts student at the University of the Philippines, where he majored in illustration, Bencab began his long and still growing list of art awards with the first prize in a student art competition. He worked for different magazines as an illustrator and lay-out artist, and held his first solo exhibit in 1966 at Gallery Indigo. It was in this exhibit that he introduced Sabel.

His second show in 1968 at The Luz Gallery of 60 acrylic paintings officially launched his career; the following year he traveled across Asia and Europe, settling in London, marries and raises a family.

The next two decades were extremely busy ones for the artist, with a succession of exhibits in Spain, the UK, Columbia, France, as well as the Philippines.

He returned home in 1986 and took part in the People Power revolution. After an acclaimed homecoming exhibit at the Lopez Museum, he settles in Baguio, where he establishes the Baguio Arts Guild, the seed for what is now a thriving and bustling art community. After the 1990 earthquake that devastated Baguio, Bancab set up the Artquake fund-raising auction, as well as Art Aid, a healing workshop for children traumatized by the earthquake. He set up the Tam-awan Village in Baguio to preserve Cordillera culture and traditions, and from 1999 has been working on large works, many based on dance movements, including his largest work so far, a 9.5 ft x 7.5 ft commission entitled "Images of the Past".

As indicated by the works on exhibit in Singapore, there is much still to expect from Bencab: things new, exciting, spontaneous and, always, literally and figuratively, larger than life–as art is supposed to be.