Papelmismo

Below is the exhibition notes I wrote for the second Papelismo Group art exhibit at Galerie Anna in 2014)

Essay 65. P A P E L M I S M O

Benjie Torrado Cabrera, Renato Habulan, Alfredo Liongoren, Arnel Mirasol, and Pinggot Zulueta will unveil at the Galerie Anna, PAPELMISMO,  the sequel to their critically-acclaimed 2012 show, PAPELISMO.

Joining the five this time are Thomas Daquioag, Neil Doloricon, Alfredo Esquillo, Egai Talusan Fernandez, Emmanuel Garibay, Pablo Baen Santos, and Allison Wong-David. Except for one or two, this roster of exhibit participants include names who belong to that group of brave souls who dare bucked the political and cultural establishment during the Marcos regime and went on to make bigger names for themselves in the Philippine art scene. Collectively referred to as the Social Realists, they are firm advocates of the art of commitment and social change.

This is the second in a series of shows mapped out by Renato Habulan for this group of artists intent on elevating the status of works on paper here. The first exhibit, Papelismo, held at the Crucible Gallery, showcased works done by the artists in the course of their careers as editorial cartoonist, book illustrator, printmaker, and painters. The present show, meanwhile, will present works created especially for Papelmismo. While a few of the participants utilized segments from their old artworks, which they cut and recomposed to recreate new art pieces, most of the works are entirely new.

The medium is the content is the original thematic parameter laid down by Habulan for Papelmismo, which hinted at a rather conceptual approach, because this implies a manipulation of paper to turn it into the artwork itself.

A few adhered closely to that dictum. Some did not. Nevertheless, the process they used in fashioning their artworks differed much from what they've done in the past.

Two good examples of artworks that hewed closely to Habulan's guidelines are BENJIE TORRADO CABRERA's paper reliefs depicting groaning mask-like faces breaking out of surfaces littered with paper strips. Torrado Cabrera is one of the Philippines' master maker of fine prints. He is not contented with just churning out the usual outputs of a printmaking workshop, like etchings, woodcut, and lithographs, to name a few. He had up the ante, in a manner of speaking, with his innovative printing technique spin-offs - like his sculptures of transparent flexi-glass cubes, for example, engraved with arabesques and other abstract patterns that he had exhibited a few years ago. Those are trailblazing works that deserved applause from both critics and artists alike.

RENATO HABULAN was a founding member of Kaisahan - the group of Social-Realist painters that "flourished" and gained renown during the Martial Law years. A Thirteen Artists Awardee, Habulan had had several solo exhibitions to his name. His solo show at the Hiraya Gallery in the early 1980s, where he displayed his signature work "Kagampan" was notable. It was a critical and commercial success, and earned him his niche as one of the stalwarts of the Social Realist School in the Philippines. Gathered in that show were Habulan's now iconic images of farm workers, industrial laborers with their machines or tools of production, and people who earned their living on the streets, like the itinerant peddlers.

Habulan had exhibited extensively abroad, most recently in Singapore, where he exhibited mixed-media assemblages, among others, that reveals his long-time fascination with the material manifestation of folk beliefs and religion.The title of that show,  which was actually a collaborative exhibit with Alfredo Esquillo, was "Semblance/ Presence." For the present show, Habulan cut out images from his old drawings which he afterwards arranged in layers within frames. The resulting pieces, which are also assemblages really, are novel and stunning.

This series of exhibitions to assert the significance of paper in art making was Habulan's brainchild. This shows his single-minded approach in promoting whatever his advocacy is at the moment/. That is integrity- and that coupled with his prodigious artistic talent are the reasons perhaps for his status as a most sought after artist here, and in Singapore.

ALFREDO LIONGOREN burst into prominence in the early 1970s, when the prestigious Asia Magazine featured him as an artist to watch. It was an early taste of fame because Liongoren was only in his twenties then. His works featured in that article were gestural abstractions, for which he seem to have a natural flair, because in one Art Association of the Philippines competition on the theme of "400 years of Christianity in the Philippines," he won first place for an abstract which he admitted to have finished in just one night.

But Liongoren's skill doesn't stop at just creating abstracts; he is an adept watercolorist too. His watercolors of still lifes and landscapes, with their muted colors and precise brushstrokes,would put many watercolorists working today to shame. Liongoren also has a knack for theater. He is a vibrant teller of anecdotes, a raconteur, who reinforces and punctuates each telling with frisky showmanship - which makes performance artists here, whose idea of performance is staying inert for minutes, look rather introverted and shy.

Although Liongoren was not with Kaisahan at its inception, he continues to advocate to this day the need for an overhaul of the country's power and social structure. In an article on Papelismo, Filipina Lippi wrote that Liongoren's frustration about inequalities and greed have been pushing him to create a "dagger-like art" - one that is easily understood by the masa - to intensify anger and indignation against the lack of delicadeza among powerful politicos who hold on to power while remaining inept at solving the country'c problems.

Although not really a member of the mainstream social realist group, Kaisahan, ARNEL MIRASOL was also an ardent proponent of social realism. In fact, his Best Entry winning piece in the First Metrobank Painting Competition in 1984, "Hungry Child Dissected," was a social realist painting through and through. Mirasol had also tried his hand at editorial cartooning in the late 1980s, for the We Forum Publications and People's Journal.

But it wasn't until he switched to picture book illustration that he had truly made his mark. His illustrations for the books on the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm are on a par, Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas say, with those done by German illustrators. Feeling that he had already exhausted the possibilities of picture book illustration and had nothing more to add to it, Mirasol went back to serious painting. Where his fairy tale illustrations are rather miniaturist in scale, his current output of "pure" paintings were all large format.

PINGGOT ZULUETA was an editorial cartoonist for many years for Abante. In the 2012 group show "Papelismo," Zulueta exhibited for the first time about 40 of his best editorial cartoons, which became an instant hit with the gallery-goers. An eye-opener of sorts, that exhibition made people realized that Zulueta belonged to that rank of top and much-admired political cartoonists working for different papers in the late 1980s to the early 90s. Now, that period, which encompassed Cory Aquino;s presidency, may be considered as the Golden Age of Political Cartooning in the Philippines because of the sheer number of talents working at the same time who turned editorial cartoons that combined wry humor with a high level of artistry.

Zulueta became a New Zealand citizen after he and his family emigrated to that country. When a job opportunity as photographer with the Manila Bulletin presented itself, Zulueta returned to take on that job..Among the press photographers active now, Zulueta could be regarded as the first among the more prominent ones. The reason for this is simple - Zulueta, aside from being very good with his camera is also a high-profile practitioner of serious painting. Before going into photography, and after his editorial cartooning phase, Zulueta actively painted and exhibited abroad- in Australia and the United States, among other countries. Zulueta's collaborative exhibition with National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario was landmark. The novelty of that show gained much media mileage for the two. In that show ("Makakatulog Ka pa Kaya"), Zulueta displayed what looked like photo reproductions of street children and other denizens of the slums streaked with neon-colored lines, and bordered with multi-colored excerpts of Almario's poems. That exhibit revealed what Zulueta is up to these days - experimentation. Zulueta had also done a lot of abstracts lately, all of which compare favorably with the abstracts of painters working exclusively in that idiom.

THOMAS DAQUIOAG's sculptural piece - "Sugo" is made entirely of paper. It is free-standing and is a fusion of a giant fish-like form and a toy-like warplane. The work, Daquioag said, is a commentary on the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Daquioag is a prize-winning painter who had recently added a Juror's Prize in the prestigious Philippine Art Awards to his list of achievements. He'd also done mural-sized paintings for the Co Tec Tai Medical Museum, one of which, the "Brain Drain", is an apt depiction of that disturbing (to some at least) phenomenon of health workers needing to leave for jobs abroad. With "Sugo," Daquioag trod on unfamiliar ground, so to speak, because it is a far cry from the oils and watercolors that he had already mastered years before.

NEIL DOLORICON, was also an editorial cartoonist- for the Manila Times. He had a distinct cartooning style very similar to comics illustration. Like Zulueta, Doloricon was, as a political cartoonist, way up there among the best. In 1997, "Monumental," the pioneering exhibit of large format digital art was unveiled at the Megamall Art Center. Doloricon was part of that exhibit, where his piece was a digital collage entitled "Spoils." Emmanuel Torres had this to say about his work:

"Equally puzzling is Doloricon's 'Spoils,' in which surrealism, appropriation, and pop art intersect. The lower portion resembles a commercial for food and beverage, but the upper portion is an allegory of sorts,in which a glum female model is flanked by two men pawing her, one of whom has the green head of an alligator. Somehow one gets the impression that the artist intends to equate materialism and consumerism with concupiscence and greed." 

We can gather from what Torres wrote that Doloricon was also into mixing social advocacy with art like all of his associates in the social realist movement. His dislike for the power-hungry and the exploiters suited him well in that bastion of democratic militancy which is the University of the Philippines, where he teaches in its College of Fine Arts, and of which he had served as Dean.

ALFREDO ESQUILLO was all the rage in the 1990s after winning a slew of awards from prestigious art competitions here and abroad. Esquillo was on a roll then. He won the First Prize in the 1993 Metrobank Young Painters' Annual. He followed that up with a bigger win (the biggest perhaps for any Filipino painter) at the 1995 Asean Art Awards, where he bested rivals from other ASEAN countries to garner the first prize. He dropped three notches lower in the next edition of that competition when he just placed fourth, but that is still a triumph of sorts, because he was the only Filipino to place in that edition of the competition. I surmised though that the judges simply wanted to spread the "dough" around and not pour everything upon the head of a single person even if he obviously towers above everyone else in terms of talent.

The title of his first prize-winning entry is "Ritwal" - a majestic hyperrealist mixed-media work. A pictorial critique of certain Filipino folk beliefs and practices, this painting betrays Esquillo's disdain for such traditions. Ritwal is didactic, iconoclastic, and thick with subtle sarcasm, and gave us a foretaste of the theme that would continue to preoccupy Esquillo to this day. In 1997, Esquillo mounted his first solo,"Masa Kultura," at the Hiraya Gallery. The show was an unqualified critical and commercial success, earning Esquillo a lengthy rave review from no less than Emmanuel Torres.

EGAI TALUSAN FERNANDEZ had began to earn fame for his hard-edged abstractions when the call to cast his lot with the "non-commercial" painters of dissent and protest beckoned. He heeded that call. It was a brave decision, but one that he doesn't regret to this day. Fernandez had achieved a lot working within the ambit of Social Realism. One of his monumental paintings, "Unfinished Painting of the Present", was acquired by the Singapore Art Museum.

His 1997 show at the Art Center, SM Megamall- "Kinabukasan ng Kahapon" (Future of the Past) - which was analyzed minutely by Emmanuel Torres, had a most heroic impact. His own contribution to the celebration of the Philippine Centennial, the show unveiled for the first time his most heroic work then, "Landas ng Liwanag" (Pathway of Light). It was heroic, not only because of its theme (which is the uncrating of rifles intended for the Filipino revolutionaries), but more so because of its size ( 6 X 15 feet).

Compare to that humongous work, Fernandez's piece for Papelmismo, "Hinubog ng Panahon", would look very humble indeed. But size really doesn't matter here. What the present work lacked in terms of size is amply compensated for by its wit. "Hinubog ng Panahon" is also a composite of Fernandez's old works. Fernandez confessed that the lace-like pattern and perforations at the bottom of the work was the handiwork of termites who did an inadvertent interaction with him.- which would make the piece a true collaborative work indeed.

EMMANUEL GARIBAY is very much active in recent years in the gallery exhibition circuit, holding solo exhibitions left and right. Critic Amanda Watson of the South China Morning Post wrote of Garibay:

"Emmanuel Garibay has combined figurative distortion with the ideology of social action. creating powerful images in his paintings. His works include strong expressions of Filipino spirituality....Garibay rejects colonial religious models which he feels create an identity crisis that prevents his people from assessing their situation from their own perspective."

It is no wonder that Garibay is with the social realists. He shares their ethos and impetus to art making. To them, Philippine history and folk spirituality are rich sources of thematic nuggets that they can ceaselessly mine. "Laong Laan," Garibay's 2009 solo show at the Ayala Museum would provide us with an example. That show revolved mainly around Jose Rizal the man and the mythic truths that have arisen about him. But the significance of this show lies mainly in one painting, "Wow Pilipinas", where Garibay widened the context of his subject. In this painting, we see Rizal leaping over eras and looming over a landscape that is the haunt of both rebels and Manny Pacquiao. Some would dispute this, but it seems that Garibay is saying that a direct line of heroic descent emanates from Rizal, to the rebels, to Manny Pacquiao.

PABLO BAEN SANTOS, founding chairman of Kaisahan, had already won critical recognition as early as the late 1970s. The art critic Larry Francia picked him out as one of Social Realism's more vigorous exponents, while Leo Benesa called him an artist of great promise. Baen Santos showed in his early paintings a penchant for outlining his figures in heavy black lines that would evoke comparison with Roualt's paintings and stained-glass art. The similarity ends there - in those heavy black lines - because Baen Santos, in truth, claimed kinship not with Roualt and stained glass art but with the celebrated Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

The black outlines in Baen Santos recent works are no longer there, and his color scheme of mostly earth tones are now replaced by a palette of loud colors highly reminiscent of pop art. His brushwork had become looser and haphazard, too, in the manner of the expressionists. A rather radical shift had occurred in Baen Santos' art. Although Baen Santos hasn't shed yet his commitment to social change, he had veered towards expressionism and pop art in terms of technique and form.

His latest "mural" dealing with the Martial Law period in Philippine history was commissioned from him by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association and the Araneta Center for their SiningSaysay Project. The fact that he was chosen to paint this particular episode in Philippine history suggests the preeminence and prestige he enjoyed within the movement.

ALLISON WONG-DAVID is married to a Filipino. She studied Fine Arts in London. Previously based in Hong Kong, she has settled in the Philippines where she is relatively active in its art scene. She had a major solo show at the Bulwagang Juan Luna, the Cultural Center of the Philippines' main gallery, where she displayed artworks of different genres, like paintings, sculptures, and several others.

She has an ongoing show, entitled "Ether," at the Vargas Museum of mixed-media dodecahedronic sculptures. which are said to radiate psychic energy. Even though these pieces can be considered as avant-garde, its incorporation of certain facets of Eastern spiritual thought implies a going back, as it were, to an earlier time when men were more in tune not only with the four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water,  but also with the fifth which is ether.

So, there. I suspect that most of the exhibiting artists still harbor in their hearts the sentiments that linked them in the past. Social Realism forever! still seems to be their battle cry. But whether that is so, or not, will only be answered when they unveil their show.

PAPELMISMO opens at 6 pm, on Thursday, December 11, at Galerie Anna. Galerie Anna is at the 4th floor,SM Megamall A,Mandaluyong City. Everyone is invited.