KASINING ESSAYS by Arnaldo de Tondo

Essay 24. MONNAR'S DREAMSCAPES By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol REVERIE: DREAMS AND VISIONS, Monnar Baldemor's forthcoming solo show opens on April 2 at the Artologist Gallery. The exhibit will showcase Monnar's new collection of paintings that analyzes the dream state. Unlike his relatively recent works that are more mundane in character, being paintings that deal with mother and child themes, Lenten and fiesta scenes, and musician and circus motifs, his present collection are explorations and depictions of the workings of the human mind. Monnar's usual 'menagerie' of disembodied orbs that look like eyes, predatory animals, aircraft, and apparently malfunctioning electrical gadgetry are still present in his new suite. But he now took his art to a higher intellectual level when he tackled themes that teeter on the brink of surrealism. Which is not surprising really, because he professed in an earlier interview admiration for painters that were the collective embodimen...

Essay 23. WOMANATURE By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol FRANKLIN CAÑA VALENCIA  is just one in a long line of painters who have shown time and again their fascination with nude women as painting subject. For his forthcoming show, Caña will unveil paintings that belong to his Womanature series. Caña's paintings of women are not mere copies of how a woman's body ought to appear in real life. His female forms are stylized, and are prime specimens of a distinct style of cubism which he developed on his own way back in his early youth.  Caña revealed in several interviews that he hit upon this style when, as a child, he peered closely at marbles he held against the light, and saw at the center of the spheres the twisted metal strips that glow and glitter and formed patterns similar to those formed by the particles inside a kaleidoscope. These patterns inspired him to segmentize his figures into full and half-circles, crescents, and polyhedrons, with each translucent geometric shape overlai...

Essay 22. THE INTERRUPTED SAGA OF RODIE LAPAD By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol There were four Rodolfos among my group of friends. One of them is my younger brother Rudy. But those who knew him from way way back didn't call him Rudy. He is better known in our neighborhood here in Tondo as Buding. I was puzzled for a long time why he was called that. I finally learned why when he himself told me that Buding must be just a variation of Ruding. Another is Rodolfo Ollegue who was introduced to me as Rody Tuko. I don't know why he was given that derisive moniker. I perceived nothing in his appearance and demeanor that would remind one of a gecko. I could be wrong though. Playmates who knew him earlier than I did must have noticed a resemblance I couldn't discern between him and that lizard specie  Yet another Rodolfo was the late Rodolfo Valiente, whose nickname, Popo, was just a repetition of the last syllable of his name. But because he was asthmatic, we called Popo when he's no...