Art as Meditation Device

 

Essay 40. ART AS MEDITATION DEVICE

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol

There are several strains of abstraction here in the Philippines. I will cite though only those I consider as the five clear-cut strains together with their most noted practitioners. First on the list are the gestural abstracts of Jose Joya; second, the geometric abstracts of Arturo Luz; third, the color field abstracts of Nestor Vinluan; fourth; the minimalist abstracts of Lao Lian Ben; and fifth, the abstracts depicting organic forms of Hernando Ocampo.

RICO LASCANO's artworks are abstractions yes, but they don't seem to belong to any of the abstract styles I mentioned. His works resemble figurative Chinese watercolor paintings transformed into non-objective abstracts. Although painted in opaque acrylic with touches of graphite here and there, Lascano's paintings project instead the fluidity and charming delicacy of pure  aquarelle.

Rico H. Lascano received his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts major in Visual Communication from the University of the Philippines (UP), where he garnered one of the top awards for his graduation thesis. He would win later on several other awards from many Creative Guilds and Advertising Congress competitions.

Currently an instructor at the UP College of Fine Arts, Lascano had also been busy doing commissioned works like the interactive sculptures for the Ayala Bonifacio Foundation's Mind Museum, the sculptures for the Terra Park at the Bonifacio Global City (BGC), and the series of paintings for the private villas of Solaire Hotel and Casino and for the Isabella Ballroom of the Makati Shangri-la. What's more, paintings by Lascano can also be found displayed at the Ascott Hotel in BGC, the City of Dreams in Pasay, the One Shangri-la Place in Ortigas, and the residential projects of Architect Ramon Antonio and Budji+Royal Architects/Designers.

Lascano has had seventeen one-man shows, and had joined group shows not only in the Philippines but also in the USA and Singapore. His works were featured in books like "A Guide to Art Collecting", "The Best of World Art" and "The Philippines - Impressions on Continuity". But what made Lascano felt honored the most was when the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and the Mastercard International chose his works to be part of their permanent collection. Lascano is represented in Singapore by the Momentous Arts Gallery, and in Berlin by the Ronewa Art Projects.

Zen-like, meditative, and tranquil were the adjectives used to describe Lascano's works.   But I don't see stillness in his works. I see motion - arrested motion: motion captured by a camera. That's how images moving sideways  look when captured by a camera. Blurred. Hazy. But that's perhaps the exact intention of Lascano, to blur things up, to make them hazy, and have them assume an appearance that is hypnotic and spellbinding.

The painting "Pondering" represented best the arrested motion I was talking about. When viewed from afar, the impression we'll get is of carps flitting about in a pond. Which they could be except that they don't look like carps at all when viewed closely. They are but blotches and streaks of dark colors created by sure flicks of the brush. I daresay that this series of subtly colored abstracts could perhaps be original and uniquely Lascano's. But original or not, the sheer elegance of Lascano's works coupled with their power to induce introspection and meditation would place him on a par, sooner or later, with Jose Joya, Hernando Ocampo, and Arturo Luz - National Artists all.