Quizon’s Game

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Alter Ego

For the living imagination of visual artist Marvin Quizon, it has always been the struggle between rationality and passion--a bitter war against maneuvering clichés—ever since he started mixing paints on canvas for seven years now. His third solo exhibition, Interception, culminates with finality what has been evenly fought for in his previous two exhibitions dealing deeply on positive realizations of pain and suffering like flowers emanating from a rubble.

With the extended lockdown looming at large, Quizon’s sense of time resulted in a moment of temporal unity for these binary opposing forces. Against a contemporary art scene of restlessness, churning out paintings after paintings in every auction, art fair or biennale that comes along, Quizon offers a pregnant pause of the sublime in these six paintings.

There is something in the midst of Bulacan that transposes a poetic element in Quizon. Even with a short distance from Manila, the allure of the province draws the melancholic and even recluses like him. The vast expanse of the remaining rice fields or sudden change of the season—that misty still unpolluted air while cumulative clouds slowly parade—allows one to find sanctuary and immediately seek contemplation. This lieu seems much more conducive to creative people such as musicians, writers more so hungry young artists.

Interception

Quizon visualizes purposely how the mind and heart interchangeably return to their constant engagement in the self-titled Interception--a work on paper with three-dimensional cut outs. With radical and energetic determination, Quizon has roamed freely from that conventional into an internal existence of wonder and fantasy. Using tentacles to symbolize the enticing even teasing flirtations of the consciousness, Quizon philosophically quizzes the viewer how man can surrender to himself, give in to temptation, and ultimately succumb to overthinking in a single arrested development.

We are oftentimes hapless victim of our own faulting that we create our own tentacles that continue to rob us blind leaving us in misery. We are trapped by our own making or even our hands become the very tentacles that wallow us. There are times Quizon gets utterly torn as to what his mind says from what his heart feels although deep within he has already made up his heart. Shown in The Antagonist as it tips the scale for once with the brain overwhelmed by his tempting limbs. The figurative brain forms the subliminal octopus which has the ability to protect, defend, overarching itself to cling on something it focuses itself into.

Discordant Comfort Zone

Although everything exists in the brain our deepest desire, and ultimate longing is what our heart wants. The brain is physical while the heart is your soul. The fictitious tentacles envelope the man even becoming the man himself in Alter Ego making it the closest portrait Quizon can depict the blatant personified quagmire he becomes.

In Discordant Comfort Zone Quizon configures idleness as a solitary enemy. Lounging is a feeling of repose, a vacated sofa lingers comfortably while his creativity is held hostage. Done in raw sepia-finish, one is seemingly invited to jump in the comforting pillow-like palm of a giant.

Everyday reality has been distorted, exaggerated, brought to excess, dressed up and supplanted. Time Intercepted is evident to the mechanical call to order by a clock. In his profound solitude Quizon produces exemplary parallelism in counting an infinity of the little hours while painting in lockdown, he reduces the brain to logical rationality and the heart to its purely visual function. It is necessary to purge thought of all that is not in relation to ideas, ridding it of all the myths with which the senses overlay the truth.

Quizon interprets the uncanny in surrealist brushstrokes as Nature of Mind and Soul is a masterpiece rendered in a dream-like manner. In what he interprets as an experiment in psychological layering, found at the dead aim center is a man caught in flames signifying he is in a peril state of saturation. The confusion overwhelms him on whether to be rational or hear the pulsating beat of his heart. The resolution remains evident by the where flowers in bloom.

Time Intercepted

Quizon favors ongoing dialogues of strange objects into a new visual language. These explorations of incongruousness in existence are often highlighted by intricate details and unusual perspectives. Notice the brain and how it is highlighted to represent knowledge. It is inherent that we think what is right for us through where the light leads us. Often he distorts his space using hyperrealism marked by rustic finish and in raw and limited monotone palette often depicting his mood. Quizon is fond of depicting symbols, allegories and odd juxtaposes of objects. The heart is in a dim part but it still glows as it grows. Proof that the heart wants what it wants, it is the soul that benefits. Quizon has even left ample space in the foreground for the viewers to interlude as Quizon opens up the invitation to look intently on the canvas. There is an open clamor as the viewer could even get burned by his fatal indecision.

Compared to his contemporaries, Quizon prefers his slow creative process to be long and arduous. Quizon paints everyday leaving only a day to regain his momentum. He usually does rough sketches and writes his thoughts. He continues with unfinished studies as he conceptualizes further on canvas. Quizon is organic in approach that he usually ends up adding from what his initial studies were. He accepts this as his visual style—a way of surrendering into his subconscious. Sometimes Quizon ends up with a different yet more improved version of his initial studies.

The Antagonist

He then proceeds to photograph his references even edits them in his computer as he is well-versed to be. He proceeds to layer his oil paints how the way masters like his influence Rembrandt of the 17^th century Dutch Golden Age does it. He finishes off by color glazing much like the way his fellow artists from Bulacan do theirs as well.

Upon careful reflection on his pieces, Quizon subdues his colors to suit his intended emotions. Quizon is an old soul at barely 26 years old, his commitment to his craft and his pursuit for artistic emancipation reflects within his soft-spoken character. In the end, he believes we can love completely without even complete understanding.

Nature of Mind and Soul

Interception by Marvin Quizon is an ongoing virtual exhibition at the Art Cube Gallery. It can be viewed through Art Steps. Log on to artsteps.com/download the Artsteps App.

Jaime Gubaton: Home is Where the Art Is

BY JAY BAUTISTA 

I See Them Bloom, 2017

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 “Employing the air-brush technique in watercolor, he paints in a highly realistic, almost photographic style but situates it within a geometric scheme using multiple points of view.”

Art critic Alice Guillermo describing Rhythm of Cloth Production, Jaime Gubaton’s winning piece in ArtPetron National Student Art Competition in 2002.

If his first grand prize win in a national student art competition were to be his milestone, 36 year-old Jaime Gubaton has had a remarkable artistic journey for almost half of his life now.

It is quite appropriate for his third solo exhibition to be aptly titled Home as Gubaton waxes sentimental and dabbles into nostalgia by revisiting his past imaginative drives and employing these previous visual styles by painting them in a grand manner resulting in these recent works.  

Field of Dreams

For Gubaton, every painting undergoes a long and arduous process; every line, hue and a gesture on canvas applies with it time well-spent perfecting that approach. Style-wise, Gubaton considers himself a realist by tradition despite the prevalent expressionist tendencies of his contemporaries. Yet it still is his being a bygone romantic that they cannot imbibe. With his subdued colors reminiscent of earth tones in art nouveau strokes, Gubaton is an old soul dwelling in a city. As a quaint artist, he fondly surveys his surroundings and directly responds to his observations by his affection and distinct dabs of paint.

A literal going back to one’s sources, Home incorporates his gears, flowers and birds—be it pigeons, lovebirds, or maya-maya--in organic, endemic and substantial circumstances. Separately they seem iconic yet belonging together they morph into a new pictorial vocabulary by recombining them.

Gubaton depicts the images as realistic as possible--working at his bare graphical mode as an illustrator: a radiant face of a loved one be it his lovely wife or children surrounded emanating with beauty such as birds, flowers and butterflies, they are his constant testimonials to a life still worth existing.

Journey, 2017

Indulging in his iconography, ever the positive his gears slowly long for progress, as he counters the urban decay we have been slowly grinding into. His pigeons remind him when they used to live with his father-in-law who breeds them on the building rooftop. Balancing nature and technology, a striking image of these winged beauties perched on electric posts would win for Gubaton a place in the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE) in the Painting category; that nature maybe in peril but there is inherent goodness in all of us. Manila may still be noble and ever loyal despite its grim uncertainty abounded with shanties.

Gubaton’s color schemes mingle well with his Magrittean compositions. Depending on his theme, it is either predominantly gray or sepia in mood. He subdues his colors with preference to mixing complimentary colors in sync with his shy demeanor. Not straight from the tube, he is too familiar with the behavior of his paints. Sometimes he favors acrylic that is hard to do with oil and vice versa.  

I Say Hello, 2017

When the main subject has been rendered and dried up, he then adds the geometrical patterns, and fine linear renderings, although by definition he engages in them reminiscent of Arturo Luz.  A master in composition, his houses may even be inverted in topsy-turvy delight yet Gubaton is meticulous in locating their firm balance, even placing grids to situate them as he has always been highly conceptual and controlled in his metaphors.

Layers have been Gubaton’s trademark evident in his winning in ArtPetron and the DPC DPC Visual Arts Competition. They have always been there, it has been his one foot in the contemporary art scene, Enhancing his foreground by using shadows in his background he has heavily favored optical illusions like repeated refrains in a song.  

Charming titles reflect the timeless elegies Gubaton has crafted: For Your Eyes Only, Hello Sunshine and You Say Goodbye. He is ever pious not brash or harsh as viewed in his pieces. They evoke a domesticated feeling or a visual flow having a unified aesthetic presence integrated from its simple coherence of his oeuvre understood by the interplay of his experienced painting principles. Often mistaken as print because of its smoothness, he counters his brush technique textured (impasto) in acrylic yet he finishes in oil.

You Say Goodbye, 2017

Home is beyond stoic structures and spick and span surroundings, it is an amalgam resonating a semblance of family, security, and intimacy. It is induces comfort, belonging and harmony looking long and hard. It is Gubaton at his prowess as a painter; it is soft and sheer painting to the hilt. In Home, Gubaton has come full circle it is as if he never left.

 

MADE Proudly: The Ballad of Teves, Bunag and Tan

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Consider it like a socio-civic duty, one should not miss the annual painting exhibition of the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE) every September. Not out of curiosity but with a dedication that comes with responsible citizenship. With sign of the times as its anchor theme, MADE serves as a crash course not only of the emerging styles of Philippine contemporary art but of the current affairs of our country or after viewing the recent winning paintings, rather my sad republic.

True to its commitment of recognizing the best among artists 35 years and below MADE has kept this promise in acknowledging the relevant art of the young for more than 30 years now. Inviting myself on every occasion in the last five offing I noticed more students winning the coveted prizes than amateur artists who do not have a solo show, as its rules apply. Some winners are even in their late teens while they are still in college. And gauging from the winning paintings of recent years the more the Philippine situation gets worse the more beautiful art is being churned out. Is it that bad for our own good?

In the Land of Forsaken Promises by Don Bryan Bunag

In the water-based category Don Bryan Bunag is all of 22 years but already has the sensibilities of an old battered soul. Every thing one would want in a pretty picture is perfectly present in Bunag’s wining piece Into the Land of Forsaken Promises, only its gloomier bordering on starkness. For Bunag, hope is a young girl freely playing in the expanse of a field. However prettiness may yet be the last long look this winning piece evokes. With moving white clouds, the melancholic child whose hair is being blown away does not even look at you in the eyes. Is it shyness from the truth? Is it surrendering from desolation? Her constant replication annoys us even more. Bunag has brought a fresh perspective of our tired longing for change. 

Yet Bunag does not end there. He goes further by splicing up the canvas. What he has painstakingly done so so many days he distorts it in minutes. Talk about masochist tendencies. What seems to be like grass are actually fine thin slits coming from his slashing of blades. Sometimes the more concealed or decoded one’s images are the more its message implicitly impresses upon what the artist explicitly intended to the viewer. 

What may be sordidly fantasy to Bunag is blatant realism to Bryan Teves. In fact it is of the hyper-kind that his main image almost emerges out of the canvas.

 
The distance from where he is based in Sta. Catalina in Ilocos Sur provides Teves with a clearer perspective of composing an image worthy of emulation. Simplicity over-laden with values won for this one. How Teves warmly wraps that blanket of emotion around a dual image of a reversal of role is astoundingly executed. The blanket properly enveloped all the emotions that come with being happy at birth and being desperate in desolation in reverse.

Sakbibi ng Galak at Tagumpay by Bryan Teves

In Sakbibi ng Galak at Tagumpay, Teves portrays in an Asian way of composing things, a yin-and-yang approach to living. In previous works he likes to double his subjects or in this case, in reverse as seamless as can be. Against a freshly-green background Teves does well by this exacting love of family and the cycle of life we unavoidably exposed to.

Once in a while abstraction finds its sordid place in the representational laden art competition like MADE. “I” by Andrew Tan is replete with characters one is familiar with in the metropolis. Breathing the carbon air of the city one gets numbed like Tan while surviving in the daily urban mosh pit we are constantly rolling into. In taking the Clement Greenberg challenge as mentioned the catalogue essay by Cid Reyes, at a glance I see a lot of flesh undertones of the bigger overview. Much like a whole being is consumed by the cosmopolitan disease we have been informally and contagiously exposed to.

I by Andrew tan

Given its relevance to the art community, MADE still is the rites of passage for most of artists practicing in the Philippines. The names of its products alone could double the word count of this blog entry. Without even words, its roster of winning artworks can tell the true story of our people. It is hope that one day all these will be displayed in a proper venue for everyone to marvel at and be appreciated. What many lack in material things we make up in talent in fine bold artistry. For it is only through imagination that we can envision and build a country. MADE was made for that as we collectively continue our stories of survival one day at a time.