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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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