Ricky Ambagan: Bookmarks

BY JAY BAUTISTA |
(for Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1927-2014)

Very few Filipino artists figure prominently in as many national art competitions and still produce a distinct body of work as they eventually mature in their foregoing artistic careers. In Here Comes the Sun Ricky Ambagan revisits his past visual triumphs while traversing in new realms of visual dialogues. Thematically tempered by books, these bundled pages in between covers, some pieces personally essay like art journals in coded languages while others become more social in their current pronouncements. Transforming these near-obsolete tomes into stages of conflicts, each layer in the bookshelves serves as a arena of issues, possibilities and realizations.

While growing up Ambagan reminisces being impressed by the presence of encyclopedia volumes as semantics of affluence upon inhabiting the private spaces of his friends’ homes. Books would become his acclaimed prerequisite as one acquires a certain taste in lifestyle reflecting one’s stature in society.

In his famous essay Unpacking My Library critic and intellectual Walter Benjamin sought the dialectical in the function of books. Aside from the pleasure of actively squinting of one’s eyes in between lines, books aid to alleviate in the rudiments of writing creatively or exhibiting the obvious upon viewers its collective decorative interface.

Shadow of Wisdom, 2014

Acquiring of books has become status events as recent auctions prove more collectors purchase books in lots for the sheer aesthetics they project. Shadow of Wisdom is a solitary testimony of the long and short argument of the demise and eventual futility of books being read. As our digital age challenges its impending existence, devoid of emotion this lone advocate remains steadfast as it puts up a last defiant stand against the fading of this old world reminder. An unread book on a shelf is a marker of a better time spent than reading it, of the time your mind wonder that there are greater minds than yours and a book is a tribute to that achievement.

Let It Go, 2014

Although stark in depiction, Let It Go looks forward to the blue horizon of how books will matter to the next generation. Shelf life is the difference between actual books and electronic kind, and this cannot replace the romance of turning its original pulp and be engrossed by it. A reprisal of Ambagan’s winning piece in the GSIS National Painting Competition in 2011, books remind us of what we know and more of what we don’t know, that a people is as progressive as the gathering illumination of knowledge will liberate them. Ambagan’s depiction of light emanating from many sources represented with the flight of lanterns inspires as it enthrals our responsibility to initiate our own spark for the literacy of others.

We Will Rise uplifts the prevalent gloom wrought from last year’s fortuitous disasters, setback in sports and political and spiritual dilemmas. We see an amalgam of contemporary personalities who were in the news from an embattled boxer Manny Pacquiao to an auspicious Pope Benedict to dignified yet still hopeful Yolanda victims. With a pieta scene looming in the centerpiece imbibing compassion, each section of the shelves are like cubicles of status updates of what is happening in our midst. Ambagan’s pieces can be read as alamanac for the year that was. Emphatically composed, his play of images are whimsical as the graphic device involving shelves can be viewed as small worlds in themselves. 

We Will Rise, 2014

Kilometer Zero, 2014

Kilometer Zero exudes sentimentality as Amabagan recalls another favored recognition in a national art competition five years, this time for a government metro train system. He wanted to duplicate this work for himself as it has brought him commercial and critical success. Using distortion as a visual style, Ambagan has captured in astrayed brushtrokes the actuated motion of an MRT train. Ambagan himself is witnessed with his son in the forefront of this frame which is on top of a shelf contextualizing that this is an afterthought, a remake of his devotion to familial love and ode to his initial struggle as an artist. 

Reflective of Ambagan being well-versed in visual communications, Boom! captures the drama of what goes in the divergent minds of advertising people in a normal brainstorming session.  Second to nature they debate regularly on their concepts and progression of ideas. Seems surreal as a plethora of conniving yet contrarian in characters like vintage airplanes, Van Gogh biography, the ever-present Albert Einstein, a gallant Napoleon Bonaparte even the Beatles subliminally float like a multiple of presents. Allegorically driven by performance as seen in the platform diver, it is not necessary a pretty image as this diptych seems to be. Comical bombs contrasts as they immediately tones down all half-baked solutions adding texture to the overall picture.

Boom! 2014

Ambagan’s recent works stare back as they remind you why we are attracted to art in the first place. Here Comes the Sun may also mean temporary respite, as Ambagan continues to experiment from his tried and tested, raw and rough brushstrokes to thinner but more definite layers grounded in earth color palette.  From featuring throngs of people in the metropolis and Baguio City, whether they are in pedicabs or part of the desperate multitude earning their keep, he shifts to more upscale ambience, more ethereal in iconography.  

Here Comes the Sun has always been a song of redemption as it is relevant now for Ambagan. There’s an anecdote that as the Beatles were finishing Abbey Road, its last album before eventually breaking up, its composer George Harrison was avoiding the other members of his band. And the phrase "here comes the sun" was how he really felt every day when the day's recording session was over. At his prime, Ambagan churned out these pieces were as comforting as Harrison’s but as essential as his subject matter—books. It is also scorching welcome to that intense season of the year and to the many passionate things we associate it with -- summer.

Here Comes the Sun is Ricky V. Ambagan’s 5^th Solo Exhibition. Ongoing until May 6 at the Galerie Anna, 4/F Art Walk, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City.

Ricky Ambagan as Chance Passenger

JAY BAUTISTA |

Amidst a very flourishing Philippine art scene brought about by favorable regional auction results and recent participation in glitzy global art fairs, Ricky Ambagan still paints, mixing oils as it done so traditionally. Eschewing anything scientific, futuristic or mythological, this might sound archaic even medieval to some. His works are void of anything mixed with his favorite medium. No black smear over pastel, etching on mirrors or gold inks with candy-colored patina for this UP Fine Arts graduate.

Alaga ni Ama

With bold dabs of color and dirt, Ambagan continues to paint filth and squalor in Larga, his fourth offing at the Gallery Anna in SM Megamall. Seeing no gap between perception and response in Larga, it is not just “going in haste,” it is leaving on time, with a purpose and one direction. It is about being above the throng in the very context of its contentions, be it in Malabon, Binondo, Baguio City or lately Tagaytay. A behind-the-scenes approach, for Ambagan, who probably belongs to the last generation to play on the streets, Larga is to depart -- prepared to accomplish (or even conquer with abandon) what one has intended to -- with his hand in heart, armed with a paint brush.

Nasa Dyos Ang Awa

As the image of a stoic Christ looms, obviously sensing in his reflexes, one can almost smell humanity in the perspiring driver in focus in Nasa Dyos ang Awa and how Malabon reeks of fish and what have you. Here Ambagan wants viewer participation as close as possible, to the point of being handed the metal maneuver for driving. As the title suggests, Ambagan does not leave everything to himself, as he encourages audience to finish the phrase (Nasa Dyos ang Awa…) and enjoy a vantage point view, as if one is on a special ride from behind the subject like a VIP passenger. 

His eye for beauty maybe naked but it is sharply raw such as he sees a certain kind of aesthetics in the way Filipinos adapt with life. Unique perspectives have always played with many of his pieces like Baka Sakali, which could also be entitled Man on a Bicycle with a Prayer. Ambagan readily employs the viewer as next to the prowling vendor. As if one is a step on the street and not in the cool breeze of an art gallery.  

Kumpuni deserves a long hard second look. Ordinarily one does not want to be caught in “the moment” such as this driver fixing a flat tire. As Filipinos are wont with religiosity in their work, their pedicabs are extensions of their bodies. Thus, it hurts their daily sustenance in both ways. Like the rusty yet sturdy two-wheeled vehicle, so is this guy’s faith in emerging with a few cash to feed a waiting family back home. 

Isang Umagang Kay Saya is another humble tribute to the Philippine pedicab. The pajak as everyone knows it was created out of necessity. Tracing its roots to Tondo, out of poverty, the first pedicabs were made of pvc roofs and celofane front covering in the early ‘80s. It was easier to maintain the pedicab than the tricycle. Though there is no law creating them, they were the transport of choice not only of people but for plying goods, wares, or produce. Pedicabs are honest, environment-friendly, always available 24/7 and are considered “taxis without an attitude.”

And like the pedicab drivers Ambagan depict in many of his canvases, he too works tirelessly the same man-hours, profusely behind his canvases like this slipper-shod collective who punishingly pedals for most of the day. Stopping only when he has to eat or has an immediate errand that can’t wait. Ambagan considers himself among the working class he has chosen to paint and like a daily-wage earner he has no illusion of glamour as an artist not even resting nor taking a break on a holiday except on Sundays. 

Bagong Simula

For the impermanent urban dweller, the pedicab is safe, noiseless, and immediate. Much like how one leaves a city for another city, as fleetingly seen in the hopeful piece Bagong Simula. Shown here how one’s life can be summed up in three used balikbayan boxes. Notice how Ambagan puts details such as an omnipresent Jesus in the abused shirt and the number 30, which could mean an eminent death or a perfect figure completing the cycle of the month, thus time to start anew.

Boundary Na perfectly completes the circle with respite and triumph -- that meaningful pause before the second wind to finish the day. Sometimes we alone cannot finish our work and our dreams complete it. Parallel to his struggle as a visual artist is his command to showcase the simplicity of our folk, those who subsist half-cup viands with double servings of rice, or a family that daily subsist on packed noodles with their blood shot eyes. Boundary Na is a subject’s own survival for the day: that extra cash after one’s boundary to buy a kilo of rice and canned goods; that bonus tip to finally replace that rusty roof with a hole that drips every rainy season; that extra trip after the boundary as final payment in owning your own pedicab.  Boundary Na is Filipino concept that whatever gets them through their solitary existence. 

 

Boundary Na

Ambagan’s sources have always been with the bustling multitude in the streets. His strength is this sense of continuity to his subjects – the downtrodden, the dirt-poor pedal-pushing pedicab drivers, the vendors who buy whatever they earn for the day – longing for his art to uplift them and his constancy to their underground economic struggle are evident in these fourteen works that comprise Larga. It is his prayer that when he comes back to these places his subjects will not be there where he first glimpsed them.

Depicting the moment at hand, he displays their angst from shrewd customers -- their boring expressions brought by the impatience of the delayed arrival of the next available passenger. Not that Ambagan is apathetic or apolitical but he neither concerns himself with grand narrative painterly style nor instilling historical or post modernist tendencies. It is the daily living of the tale that fascinates him. Some pedicabs he literally sat and paid his own fares, some he paid off for their “talent fee” as his models. Sometimes his injecting of humor is his ploy for us not to pity their daily grind. Being poor is not a sin but staying one might be.

Taking almost half a year of critical thinking, careful planning and creative executing from the streets to his camera to his canvases on his studio, with this current trove plus the paintings in the three previous exhibitions, Ambagan can now claim a significant body of works. However, Ambagan considers himself just another worker who earns from what he is only capable of doing.

Ricky Ambagan on His Last Hour of Summer

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

To deeply appreciate Isang Ikot is to contextualize what Ricky V. Ambagan did at the last hour of summer. Armed with his trusted digital camera, he took the last bus trip to Baguio in time for him to capture the first impressions of daybreak at Burnham Park. In all its available light and movement, after a succession of images, just when the sun was too harsh, he rode the next bus home.

Only the artist in Ambagan can become emphatically obsessed with the reflections of ephemeral light, as it moves on surfaces with the fluidity of water. The need to capture various moments in ever-changing, mingling of colors drove up to its saturated hues, it had to be at the sunny summer capital. He had to make the trip, to revisit the man-made lake named after Baguio’s master planner.

Hilera

Light Moves in Strange Ways

It was said that when Claude Monet found the perfect radiance in Giverny, the supposed founder of Impressionism never left this village on the right bank of the river Seine. He would eventually built his house and garden to accommodate the radiance around it. Similarly, being immersed in the urban setting, Ambagan had to steal the efflorescence of Baguio and offer it in a formal gallery setting/set-up.

One may not notice though, Ambagan’s distorted style is not mere transient impressions. Even his titles have a pun-intended informality such as Pamamanhikan which frames a boat in front of similar like-minded rafts, like a man proposing commitment to a woman and her older gentry. The fleeting effects of sunlight at different times in Hilera and Paghahanda glow that only the sunlight of Burnham Park can provide.

Paghihintay

Consider Maagang Pagdating and Silong, where the boats and even the trees are incidental, a mere part of what Ambagan attempts to be his full-blown pictorial possibilities. Combining all the split and splat of different colors produces a rich mist. As evidence, this craving was too intense that only he could dabble at such a scene on a temporal time upon returning to his studio to paint them.

Ambagan has painted the purity of sensations as in Paghihintay which plays red and blue in used opaque colors. You can almost jump at the offered seat. A closer study of his paintings will show that colors were often used straight from the tube or mixed on the canvas. He also scumbled colors in Tanaw and Lambingan using thin, broken layers of paint that allows the lower layers of color to shine through.

After two solo shows that depict the useless deluge of the maddening crowd of the city, Ambagan has opted to this eerie-like solitude, and as he says this time he lusted the hour before congestion seeps in, which is coincidentally that magic hour that photographers marvel about. As much as he wanted to embrace life’s harsh and raw realities last time around, he let’s go now, or more like a pause, a sort of crossroad to the decisions and creative directions he is about to embark.

Follower of the Sun

In this third solo exhibition, literally Ambagan continuous to seek his own light. In a totally new fashion, in an approach that isn’t highly polished nor graphic, and their subjects were neither classical nor historical, he has completely rejected the absolute value in a realist painterly style commonly associated with a Southern province. Like a true maverick, his is even a more dramatic departure from representational convention and even the painters from the alma mater that has bred and influenced him.

Ambagan has always favored momentary action regardless of people and tension, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of the people. However as he belies absolute truths he defies himself, these 11 pieces are more relaxed compositions, where the boundary between subject and background often resembling a point-and-shoot snapshot with a soft-box light, are gracefully flashed by chance and spontaneity.

Maagang Pagdating

Looking at them side-by-side one has seen the Burnham Park of yore literally full circle. Although the images showed signs of strain and weariness having been there for more than half a century already, for Ambagan, the sheer confidence of his brushstrokes shows how familiar is he with this place and having gone here many times, however his familiarity is not one that breeds contempt. We suspect he is not yet done with Baguio altogether. This time around there are no browns or earth colors, not even local tone nor shadows even in his canvas. Only the blueness of the sky mirrors of the surface or the green of nature on water giving it a sense of freshness and abundance.

Tanaw

One might ask, what’s an old master heart clinging in his young adult body? It could be his need for freedom and meaning moves him too quickly. And now that the rains have arrived, one wonders what he will do or where he would go next.

Distorting Some More in a Cooler Place

By Jay Bautista

As it is now, as it was evident then, the 1906 plan of American architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham (who also did the plan for Manila after designing Washington DC in 1902 before San Francisco in 1907 and Chicago in 1909) for Baguio did not fully materialize because there was just too many people increasingly occupying the city. For whatever their reasons may be, personal or economic, historical figures would show that from having 489 residents in 1903, it ballooned to 30,000 in 1948. To date, Baguio’s population is easy 300,000.

More than just the statistics, unmindful of the city’s centennial year, Ricky V. Ambagan’s creative task was to spend an early summer there and capture the images of the city for his second solo exhibition, Mga Langgam Sa Baguio. A collective body of 27 works of various sizes with the biggest at 3 x 8 ft and mostly 3 x 4 ft resulted from this endeavor.

Tanaw 2, 3x4ft

Continuing his signature style of distorting realism as an imaginative manner of justifying a particular approach to life for a multitude of assemblies, for Ambagan, it is the place and not the throng that dictates such phenomena like Quiapo, Monumento, Kapasigan, and this time Baguio (named after the indigenous plant bigiw).

“More than the numbers” as he would put it, “by physically rubbing elbows and sweating it out with them, I could feel their pulse which is very significant if you are serious with the context of your craft.” Quite close to his heart, Ambagan has always been fascinated with Baguio and its Cordillera culture: “I have always gone back and painted Baguio and its nearby communities like Sagada and Mayuyao on my mind. It is the nearest place you could go and be in touch with our pre-colonial soul. It keeps me grounded.”

Baguio’s Oil

Typical of an artist bred by his milieu, the influence is obvious. All his life Ambagan has been living in crowded places -- he grew up in a compound with an extended family of relatives; he has lived in Pasig -- one of the most densely populated cities in the metropolis; he has studied at the largest high school in the world. Even this show is exhibited at the heart of one of the most crowded public places you could find.

Like an obsessed chronicler of his time, Ambagan frequents to wherever a huge amount of people gather. He has gone to various places sometimes aboard the Metro Railway Transit (MRT) for a different perspective. Meticulously documenting the amassing of our populace, he follows where they are and why or how they are there. He wanted to grasp the “interplay” of the real and symbolic in their desperate yet dignified lives.

Silong, 3x4 ft

For Ambagan, there is more tension in Baguio than most of the sites down here. Giving more texture in the pieces paving them with a more rustic finish, Ambagan does not want you to be a passive viewer. In Higante 2, from where you are standing in the gallery, the painting unsettles you, as the strong current of paints perturbs the jeep just by the mere viewing of it.

“Distortion really depends on how I see the image I chose. Minsan sa pagpinta na doon ko na dinedesisyunan. Kaya may degrees ang distortion, Nakabatay sa eksena.” This premise is evident in the works Humahangos 2, Kalaro, and Hikayat.

Conscious of how he paints, Ambagan wants his pieces thick, dirty and rough as seen in Wen Manang, May Pag-asa, and Suke 2 where his sense of perspective pervades. At close range one can observe only extreme layers of paints on top of each other however as the viewer steps back, one sees “the forest from the trees,” a better and grander view greets you. Ambagan feels that his canvas is not finished unless he fills it up with texture, so a simple bicycle scene on a Sunday morning could be embedded with hostility as well.

All is not dark and grim with Ambagan who may have been affected by the cool climate of Baguio this time. In fact in this show he introduces one light source in most of the pieces as a way of paying homage to Philippine old masters like Fernando Amorsolo and Fabian dela Rosa. In Suke, Pagbabalik, Pila, and Dagsa ever the sentimentalist that he is, he rediscovers the Philippine sun. Our painting must be created outside the as western mold for us to claim it as our own and it was Amorsolo who set the rules in his/our own terms.

Except for one late afternoon scene, you have to note that all the works have the same time of day, as Ambagan captured them somewhere in between 8 to 10 in the morning. With the side by side layering of black and blue, notice how the shadows in Humahangos, Silong, and Tanaw had become violet when reflected as shades from their varied tints. For this he had the impressionists in mind particularly Claude Monet who made a dent in his artistry.

Higante, 4x6 ft

True to his purpose, Ambagan’s work uplifts and documents the secret lives of our common folk: the vegetable vendors in the sidewalks, whom you can’t even get a discount if you do not speak the international language of Ilocano; the guys who rent out bicycles for P100 per hour so you could roam around Burnham park. They all come vividly alive in Ambagan’s canvases.

As in his first show, an obvious favorite and consistent representation in Ambagan’s pieces are jeepneys. In Baguio, they are bigger and more functional – the wheels, the passenger seats and even the special ladder that makes you climb and enjoy the double-decker seat, dust-free. Although in Baguio they are even more stoic in color and very accommodating with the minimum sitting capacity of 20 passengers. There are also four checkpoints (of course there is a fee for every pass) to contend with that they have to hurdle on their way to that destined bagsakan in Manila. If they get delayed further, they miss the weekend rush of the people to the market. There goes everything – puhunan and tubo. In this lovely city of pines known for its ukay-ukay or cheap bargain finds, are their dreams included in that as well?

Ambagan may have depicted simple themes, very familiar subject matters in the local genre but not in a typical, commercial kind of way. An in-your-face realist, Ambagan’s sense of proportion is clockwork training marked by years of mural making and painting walls that adorn resorts and interior walls of restaurants. He has an eye for what makes a well-balanced significant feature.

Back to his patriotism, Ambagan likes to paint his inspirational idols on t-shirt making it a canvas within a bigger canvas. A statement within a statement we see Jesus Christ and Jose Rizal in Buena Mano, May-Pagasa, and Harinawa.

Buena Mano, 4x6 ft

Session Road to Distortion

Ambagan’s loosely and broadly-handled color palette creates a sense of immediacy which reflects the contemporariness and active stance of his subjects. Looking at the pieces, Ambagan seems like a badly-behaved poet, one who knows all the right corners and when to make that left turn. Knowing all the thugs, the goons and the whores of the city, he is well-versed with the saints and sinners in the streets.

The actual painting proper is a three layered procedure -- base strokes, lightness, pattern or the distortion part. Different layers require different brushstrokes. I have seen him use at least ten different brushes in one of his sessions. Showing his meticulous self, only Ambagan knows when the artwork is appropriately done or if it he still needs ample time to add more details or finishing touches to them.

Starting from a white primed canvas fabric with grounds like gesso and chalk. The absorption of the colors is dependent on how much the canvas is primed on its materiality. Second layer uses the grays and other subsequent colors for the eventual wet-on-wet or wet-on-dry technique (alla prima technique). Marked by Ambagan’s unconventional process, by this time, coats of the colors become indistinguishable. Opting for a natural mat finish, Ambagan has to unlearn academic rules saying he should varnish but Ambagan constantly rebels.

Mga Langgam Sa Baguio, 4x6ft

His art is fleeting in this lively fluid and sketchy technique. You might find him conservative in this aspect as Ambagan’s method somewhat like the style of the impressionists, but it is slow and laborious. Each layer had to be dried before he touches them again. Even more confident this time around, the signature distortion is there but his brushstrokes are thicker. This will give you an idea how long it took him to prepare for this show.

“Distortion is about change in approach in art in my desire to something positive. However distortion is more than technique, the more gravity, the deeper the meaning there will be. Also I don’t like repeating a painting I have already done. Distortion gives me the freedom to say something again in another manner,” explains Ambagan.

Ambagan has celebrated Baguio in a way that he knows -- with traffic, wires, filth and all. It may not be ideal to some but it the Baguio nonetheless that he saw at a particular point in time. An aesthetically assertive painter, for Ambagan art is about dialogue. Being one of and with them, the proximity of his imagery on canvas is as if you are next to the crowd he paints. There is a merging of the spectator as we (viewers in the gallery) are part of the spill of people from the artworks. Distinct lines have been blurred, as the characters are all one with the audience as Ambagan is part of the stories he wants to tell.

Mga Langgam Sa Baguio opens on June 11, 6pm at the Galerie Anna, 4/f SM Megamall A, Mandaluyong City.

Ricky V. Ambagan: Distorting As If Life Depended On It

By Jay Bautista

“The whole point of Social Realism (SR) is to get away from orthodoxy. To us (artists) that has always been the challenge. It’s been a constant reinvention. It is SR in the Age of SM.”

Jose Tence Ruiz
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

November 8, 2009


You have to admit there are some pockets in the city where the concentration of the people is just too unbearable -- Quiapo, Monumento, and Kapasigan to name a few. Either for deep religiosity, sheer commerce or mere plain wandering (and wondering) around its streets, it is here that you come across some of the most anarchic and unaccommodating people as subjects. These are spaces your mother constantly nags you not to traverse. In fact, for the most sensitive in us, these may be altars of your darkest fears. Filth, theft, or badly designed billboards on neglected historical landmarks, all abound on them. Like a short kindergarten field trip, all that you need -- and not need to know -- in our country are all here. Like the MMDA-inspired aqua and fuchsia signage that served as invites for this show, one is alerted not to trespass or as translated to nakamamatay.

It was while walking in these same sordid streets, among the nameless throng, that Ricky V. Ambagan deeply reflected on his own individuality as to his directions as an artist. Collectively entitled, Mga Langgam Sa Syudad, these fresh fifteen oil on burlap paintings are the result of that walk and intension for Ambagan’s first solo exhibition. In a country where the arts get little attention outside the art gallery system, discriminating collectors and in the midst of artists who only understand themselves, Ambagan wanted to “capture a moment or freeze an instance” in the lives of this multitude whom he believes will not ever to see his artworks. If they don’t see the show then they will be his show. In honoring them he is the one being honored.

The allegory in which our desperate people in the city to being compared to a mass of ants first come about in the piece entitled Unahan. Here all is not positive with ants as Ambagan is referring to them as people have their own kind of “sweetness” to thrive upon – money, fame, lust – and Manila is one big sugar-coated mecca that they all troop to. Despite their hardworking and patient nature, however once you disturb these ants with their preoccupation with sweetness, they immediately bite back even if it will be like suicide.

The Filipino dream is plain and simple -- to go to Manila to work in order to buy a land in their hometown to retire to. In Luwas, where the ant-like virtues in many of us are attracted in the “sweetness” that is Manila. Notice how people in this painting may band together but are alienated from one another. Everybody seems to be too preoccupied on where to find a more decent job or get the next meal. Or simply how to survive the day. Despite being overcrowded, Ambagan paints you hope as evident in the vast clear clouds in between vendors and buyers.

Unang Paglalakbay 2

You are Watching Me Watching Them Watching You

What excites Ambagan is his penchant for impermanence in these mass-based sites he frequents to. More than 99 channels in a cable television, the streets scenes changes from the last time he was there. The streets resist order, closure and even still moments.

To further feel this urge to document the raging pulse of these city dwellers, with an open mind and a digital camera in tow, Ambagan, felt it natural to photograph these locations which always had heavy concentration of scoundrels, thugs, rogues, and urban denizens generations after generations. His mission was to document the sign of the times not only “with warts and all” but to detail “even the warts and all.” Whether he violated his subjects who don’t know they are being photographed, with the prevalent art practice using in hyper realist mode, its use for painting from photographs has been a long and ongoing debate. Although nobody told him, it wasn’t an easy time every time, as he would be scolded, laughed at lampooned, however a few were delighted.

With the help of modern technology, he unloads the images at home, which he will use as reference in painting and eventually distorting. Like the digital camera, the computer is another tool as to how he would want the image to look like. With a few tweaking and conscious manipulation using the mouse, the image serves as his guide for the actual painting to commence. Whether the spontaneous process is legal, he rises above the controversy in the quality of his execution. Like the paint brush, the camera his palette knife are all part of the multi-media act.

From photographing to the imaging in the computer down to the choice of material for painting, Ambagan is painstakingly meticulous. Even the choice of burlap (peanut sack) more than canvas is commendable as he desires to achieve the texture and the rawness of his subjects. How he adores roughness by his thick smears of paint in disjointed vivacity is very much evident on the pieces. He likes the images to move in a grace-like manner while he busily sketches them futher. He also wants to follow the lines and curves wherever it leads him adding more lines and colors could be a possibility.

Ambagan considers distortion as just another dimension of a painting. At this point, he wants the piece to talk back to him on how it will be finished. The interaction is decisive since the images may opt to be dirty as he found them in the streets or satirically purely clean like what they hope for. How the essential brushstrokes are thickly done will be gut feel by the time he is at work on it. When Ambagan paints it is not frivolity rather a story should be well told, a discourse to be analyzed, or it could simply be a play of technique or illusion to one’s eye. Ambagan is very hefty on the respect between the artist-viewer relationship which makes him even more brilliant. The painter views the subject who one day will view the work of the painter.

Luwas

When Distortion is Actually Straightening Out

A fine arts graduate of the University of the Philippines and member of the art group Manchados, Ambagan is well-versed with the various styles and approaches to paintings. “If you will just stay in your comfort zone and copy whatever is the trend and sellable, then why is it you paint?” he points out. Call him degenerate, he only wants to elevate the discipline of the art, to raise it on a higher plane.

To paraphrase writer and critic, VS Pritchett, “artists are the most boring people in the world because half the time you are talking to them, they are thinking or even painting already in their mind.” Ambagan confessed there was never a time did not paint, even while watching TV or taking a shower, he is obsessed with “mixing two coats of paint taming a monster of an idea on the canvas.”

It was probably on the Light Railway Transit (LRT) that he first chance upon his initial “hazy but distinct” approach to contemporary visual art. In fact Unang Lakbay 2 won for him one of five juror’s choice at the LRT Art Competition 2009 last June. He likes to think while everything is moving in a wave-like manner, and images are in a trance or being danced away into a different oblivion. Looking at the scenes passing on a speeding train has its benefits for him, it is as if he is being treated with a futurist canvas of abstraction. He then becomes more focused and most creative when there are other activities simultaneously happening and as the train arrives at his destination.

Mga Langgam Sa Syudad

Not only are the pieces in this show well-thought of, even heavenly blessed with having survived Ondoy and Pepeng and the sins that they imparted to us but because only Ambagan could sincerely and purposely come up with such. The culmination is in his biggest work and eventual title of the exhibition, Mga Langgam sa Syudad is a 5ft by 5 ft showcase of living energy of a people waiting the arrival of relief goods to be given to them from a big imposing truck at the same time take them to back to their homes again. What Ambagan lacked in conflict he makes up for his use of proportion. His subject are may seem out of focus but the reference may be the constricted space they share as poverty looms the framed existence of these paintings.

Not to downgrade his sense of nationalism but it was the European masters Edward Munch and Edgar Degas that Ambagan was heavily influenced and inspired him. Munch’s Scream is Ambagan’s Siksikan, Degas’ ballet dancers could be Ambagan’s pedicab and vendors. To view what he calls “the sweetness of my pieces” is how it speaks of the times and how he chronicles their city which is his too.

When Ambagan won ArtPetron on its first offing he bested among the best some of them are now making name in the art scene. Seeing his works now, tension runs in your spine. At a glance one may consider dizziness like that of a hungry and desperate man but after looking hard the works pull you into a suction-like desolation. His titles may seem autobiographical as claims his 11th hour is near. But that’s the beauty of Ambagan’s art, he aims for the unexpected. This alone makes you appreciate him more.

Like a moveable feast, whatever fire that stir him to paint them and hang on the white walls of an art gallery in a commercial Ambagan’s pieces are too much for one viewing, you have to come back as the elements move constantly and you can be enticed by the images and the depth of the works. Like in a pedicab, he has given his viewers a front seat as if being next to the subject, as if you are there with them in Avenida or they are with you in Galerie Anna. The choice is yours.

Ambagan could have painted a series of mother and childs or coy fishes for his first show and it will be immediately sold out. But he mentions this would not enrich himself. Like an old master at 28 years old, Ambagan the challenge for him now is how to continue working up the streets until the images “become beautiful” on canvas and not to be interesting in real life any more.

There’s a saying “around the next corner, a piece of art is going to change your life,” Ambagan literally painted many corners for this show as he has many more streets to chart. He has only just begun the walk.

Mga Langgam sa Syudad is ongoing at the Galerie Anna, The Artwalk, 4/f SM Megamall A, Mandaluyong City.

Ricky Ambagan and the Mummies of Kabayan

BY JAY BAUTISTA | Ricky Ambagan is walking wounded these days. Not just because his meticulously-crafted and detailed mixed media work "Kabayan Showcase" failed to earn top marks at a recent art competition, this University of the Philippines Fine Arts graduate is at a loss on how to go about donating this artwork to the town of Kabayan, Benguet without appearing to have ulterior motives.

Ambagan just wants to give this art piece to the town that inspired him to create it. But he needs help on how to do it.

Kabayan is in the province of Benguet, where the Ibalois are indigenous. Their mummies are found at the sacred caves of Timbak, Bangao, Tenangcol, Naapay and Opdas, all in a farming district called Kabayan.

Although most Filipinos now prefer the common Christian rite of burying the dead, there are still old folks who prefer to be buried in the traditional way. Ambagan’s artwork pays respect to the Ibaloi tradition of mummification.

“Bumili ako ng mga laruang manyika. Hinubaran ko lahat sila at tinanggalan ng buhok. Sumunod ay pinunasan ko sila ng tubig, pinaupo ko sila sa pamamagitan ng pag-init ng kanilang tuhod at siko sa nagbabagang kandila.

Nang sila ay nakaupo na aking nilapirot ang kanilang katawan sa pamamagitan ng nagbabagang longnose at nang makuha ko na ang tamang hubog akin muli silang tinapat sa kandila hanggang maging payat.

Sa simpleng prosesong ito isinasabuhay ko ang proseso ng pagprepreserba ng mga taga-Kabayan. Nilagyan ko ng konting laman sa pamamagitan ng pagmamasilya sa ilang parte nito upang mas lalong makita ang mga kalamnang hindi nabulok."

The Ibaloi practice of mummifying the dead suffered a blow when the Christian colonizers came to the Philippines. Since then, many mummies are said to have been stolen, vandalized, or worse, sold for cash.

"Gumawa ako ng kabaong hubog sa kanilang disenyo. Nilagyan ko ng ilang disenyo ang ilang takip ng ataol (buwaya). Nilapatan ko din ng tattoo ang ilan at gumawa din ako ng palayok at ilang kasangkapan na ginamit ng namayapa.

Ipininta ko din ang mga doctor o albolaryo, pari na karaniwang nasa tabi ng isang taong malapit ng mamatay. Kapansin-pansin din ang mga bakanteng kabaong, bakanteng kweba, nawawalang kasangkapan, nawawalang takip ng kabaong at higit sa lahat nawawalang mummies."

Philippine mixed media has come a long way since David Medalla made his “Bubble Machines” in the late 1950s. Among the great mixed-media artists was the late Santiago Bose who painstakingly used a variety of indigenous materials like animal bones, caked mud, bamboo shoots, volcanic ash, and even human hair. In a similar vein, Ambagan once grew vegetation from the cracks of his paintings.

Bose blended conventional paintings with sculptural devices and tribal motifs to come up with a multi-level narrative. He once said, “In the Philippines we cannot have the luxury of frivolity, but as artists we have to make art that expresses our concerns, needs, and aspirations. Otherwise, part of our deepest self will be irretrievably lost and art itself will become empty of meaning.”

As shown in “Kabayan Showcase,” Philippine mixed media has always been keen on iconography and provides an alternative of take on colonial rule, or even a rejection of classical western images and aesthetics.

As of this writing, the artwork remains at the Ambagan house in Pasig City, gathering dust and attracting insects. He is asking for help on how to donate “Kabayan Showcase” to Kabayan, Benguet.