Arel Zambarrano: Construction Ongoing

 BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Calm in the Surface, Intense Underneath

A deep abiding faith on one’s creativity often comes in the most abstract of expressions and artists like Arel Zambarrano often turnaround something ordinary (this time from his workplace) even bordering on boredom they only know how—using imagination and available mixed media.

Aside from being an award winning visual artist, Zambarrano has always been a licensed architect. In his 4^th solo exhibition, Flexible Nerves Zambarrano narrates how he found inspiration among construction workers, basic industrial tools, and architecture materials transforming them into framed parables using them to explore important themes such as joys, anger, challenges and inconsistencies through espousing our emotions, acceptances and resolutions in life. Zambarrano firmly establishes his personal concepts and creative philosophies--his relentlessness and inventiveness in the visual arts--in these composed and solitary pieces, as he addresses social realism in our most basic human condition.

The Molting Stage Will Soon Be Over

The contemporaneity of Zambarrano’s visual approach as he essays his art is in the simplest way possible not in complex coded language but in clear semantics of life: because he believes each contemporary artist should tell us about current life and the world we share at the moment.

Calm in the Surface, Intense Underneath represents Zambarrano’s 34 grappling years of existence. Greeting the viewer as one enters the Ilomoca premises, each concrete sculptures was prefabricated from his own legs. This is how intensely personal Zambarrano intimates his art practice—art and life are enmeshed to one another. Using fiber-reinforced concrete, he installed them upside down projecting grace and temperance as an artist amidst many contextual professional pressures. He got the idea upon seeing ducks swimming, tranquil and soft while arduously paddling. They are serenely floating while settling their survival underneath the deep water.

Boy-Boy (1/4)

Zambarrano has always induced the element of wonder. His materiality dictates whatever mood he is in depending on what he perceives be it blades, knives, nails, level bar, used shovels and rubber bands. Zambarrano firmly believes artists were blessed with talents, as they are expected to be responsible human beings first in society than the confines of a gallery. As his daily preoccupation with insurmountable work attending the building of two island resorts, commercial establishments, and even creation of artist studios whiling away his time, Zambarrano has found creativity with his industrial surroundings. This time he favored to prefabricate everything before he even primes his canvases and overlaying them with another image using acrylic glasses. Exposing texture he attaches bullet slags, burning leatherette and even pouring crushed gravel on his site-specific installation. These resources reflect the ordinary, discarded, unused, and broken materials enabling every brushstroke as diverse like the different days where Zambarrano worked on his pieces.

Purya Usog

These pieces appear as visual symbols of unseen realities rendered in pictorial rhetoric through cultural signifiers that only Zambarrano can comprehend their symbolical meanings such as knives in Artificial Hindrance. Knives have always been a constant in Zambarrano’s past exhibits. It represents fear and uncertainty which is a given in reality. He reclaims what is lacking in its aesthetics and mayhem whether he renders realist strokes or veers into abstract transparency of forms and solidity of shapes define the quintessential Zambarrano. One cannot be overwhelmed by his art pieces, often employing rhythm and harmony in composition his dimensions draws a thin line in between softness of acrylic glass and harshness of paint rendition yet they are carefully controlled and vary at certain points from another not because they are nice to look at but because they are painstakingly conceived in rendering. Double meaning ensues as Zambarrano is fond of diversifying perspectives.   

His paintings are also sensuous variations of collective narratives, memories and dreams. The fascination in rough-like surface in his works is evident in time. It is metaphorical in depiction of this world we live in as paralleled by a slowly decaying, human body that is deteriorating and will turn back into nature’s dust--our ashes. Consider Purya Usog which is his ode to his daughter. Not everything is raw and melancholic yet it is fear   conveyed on his positive vibrations on his daughter as trials and challenges that make him more human. He and his wife as parents on acrylic glass purifying the image with bullet slag attached through to be able see its real essence in our already gruesome and violent world.

Clinched Ethereality

Zambarrano moves freely inside the painting as he probes his inner self and explore contours and variations of colors, paraphrasing the mortal world and beyond in less fanciful embellishment or distortion. His thoughts and feelings as an artist are astounded in each of the four canvases in Boy-Boy and nine canvases in the Magnanimous grip series. They feature the images of common people he has accustomed to--construction workers, pedicab drivers, labourers, farmers, porters, fishermen, etc. He expressively painted each figure allowing them to stand out against obscurity. It is being overlaid with transparent acrylic glass etched with outlines of juxtaposed ants intended to receive numbers of actual bullet slags on informal frame which in turn holds the dysfunctional level bar. With the reflection of Zambarrano, magnanimous grip series portrays courage beyond social injustice.

Ever the grateful, The Molting Stage Will Soon Be Over pays homage to an early influence, Allain Hablo. The celtic pattern overlay on acrylic glass is reminiscent of Hablo's previous masterpiece, I am Who I am. Hablo symbolizes those first and second generation of Ilonggo artists who stayed awake when it was still dark in the Visayan art scene. Hablo holds a stature in Iloilo--how one can be commercially successful without compromising one’s art. Hablo has been their pride in Visayan art as seen in the rawness and integrity of his being an artist at the onset of his career. He chose to stay in Iloilo because this where the “creative war,” without the benefit of convenience or the luxury of appreciating their art--to survive one must tell our own stories from our own experiences. Zambarrano does not want to lose his bearings and keep his feet rooted on the ground. He continues to stay in Iloilo as the conflict surges.

Post Inner Torment (using blades)

One can almost smell his coloration in Clinched Ethereality wherein rubber bands are actually landscapes dwelling intuitively into his subconscious mind. His composition of colors range from cool to earthy hues, these are vivid projections of his dreams and aspirations. Skulls have always figures in Zambarrano’s iconography, they value living like a memento mori despite prevalent poverty all around. This represents the beauty of impermanence.

Given the current art scene’s infatuation with hyperrealism, auction-bound, emo-ridden parlance, Flexible Nerves has an in-your-face realism coming at you. Against the hushed solitude of Ilomoca, Zambarrano’s pieces shout out loud and roughs up bad your composure. They may not be polite and pleasing to the eyes, he then proceeds to rearrange your sense of reality and positions to make you feel what it is to be truly human.

Ricky Ambagan: Connecting the Dots

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Wind of Change

In these trying and often troubled times, when even a body of water or a group of islands is gravely being disputed, Pangaea by Ricky V. Ambagan reiterates what we have been and knew all along—that we are one and universal. As evidenced in geography marked by the broken connections of land masses in coastlines of what used to be a super continent, Pangaea simulates this united treatise through a shared cultural vocabulary through visual arts.

Ambagan’s themes revolve around science, culture, religion and even philosophy. He celebrates man’s greatest sociological and historical issues infusing them into our most personal sentimentalities. If Ambagan honored unknown Italian masters the last time in Omaggio, he concerns himself in present-day realities in Pangaea. Contemporary anxieties like global warming, environment degradation and cultural amnesia seriously occupy his canvases of varying sizes. Using omnipresent children, lamps representing souls, and luminosity as a positive graphic handle as signature in his works, Ambagan is a poet of the palette combining the local and global, the ethnic and cultural, in adventure-filled settings-- mixing naïve and sophisticated testimonials--straining out what limits the imagination. Ambagan has brought back storytelling by painting narratives into what our collective memory is--we are all shared beings. What appeals to us also affects other peoples from the other side of the earth.

Hidden Gem

His figures are often stuck in a moment—pausing an action—bravely appropriating with abandon popular and critical iconographies from diverse milieus. An interesting dialogue emerges among his subjects. Witness two kids in Hidden Gem, as they are in wonder while in search of something. Both are beside Bansky’s Girl with Balloon with the Easter Island statues and the Stonehenge looming in the background. Ambagan has taken risks in depicting his images and confidently attempting at playfulness. Consider Fix You which has the elements in a traditional Chinese luck signifiers; in Chosen One where our hero favors an imperial soldier in the afterlife; and Happy Thoughts which reminisces on lightness and impermanence of our being, as exuded by Japanese carp kites representing courage and persistence. They become dragons once they hurdle the current--all these adventure relate to Ambagan’s oriental take on civilization, as it happened through cornucopia of classic archeological findings and popular icons.

Chosen One

Mortality and the future of existence affects Ambagan’s consciousness as witnessed in Sleep Tight wherein the presence of a panda is a cause for alarm as flying lanterns provide a semblance of dismal hope in the prevailing darkness; the man in a unicycle has always been a recurring Ambagan creation in his previous shows. It denotes temporal suspension of belief while awaiting for a reversal of fortune of bigger things to come. It makes an appearance in Wind of Change in what appears to be a broken clock signifying twist of fate. As one is facing uncertainty in life’s constant events, one just has to move in order to be still. Cool Change speaks of post-apocalyptic scenarios that may scare the viewer but mind you these are not Ambagan’s intentions. More of a constant reminder as observed in Deep Peace ushering a grim reminder that the world is much darker and deeper than what a jellyfish experiences in the ocean—that we should practice contentment and live within our means to be at peace.

New Beginning

Dramatic interpretation of birth and constant re-birth are depicted in New Beginning and Against the Flow. New Beginning revisits a more cryptic Noah’s Ark as evident in the fossilized animals representing ancient times which blended well in the famous Biblical wrecked ship submerged in water. Against the Flow follows the circle of life as a boy freely floats like a baby featuring that there are more intelligent people born--despite the critical mortality caused by hunger and poverty--while at a young age they are faced with monsters of age-old curses. Puff ushers in sentimentality as that 70s song by Peter, Paul and Mary beckons eschewing nostalgia taking us back to bygone days filled with nostalgia. Finally, I Surrender finishes off Ambagan’s longing for equanimity and transience as it summarizes his faith for humanity. It overwhelms as it grabs your attention showing the scale of man as a mere speck compared to the towering cross. It is as spiritual as Ambagan can get without favoring any religion.

 Against the Flow

Ambagan’s long and arduous process of art making starts off with words as he reflects upon them while listening to audiobooks or watching documentaries on inspiring men such as Machiavelli, Alexander the Great and Gengis Khan. Early in the morning, as soon as he wakes up, he inspires himself with he calls as his “quiet time.” Upon recharging his thoughts he then gears up as he recreates his words into images sometimes translating them in 3D fashion even sculpting them on paper. Upon careful scrutiny on his pieces, Ambagan finds the appropriate colors and emotions rendering them in textured brushstrokes. His palette may use bright or subdued colors as deemed necessary. Ambagan wants subjects shouting their tempered brilliance in silence. His commitment is to his craft and his pursuit for emancipation runs deep within his subjects’ character.

Ambagan is versed in carefully composed stories on his masterpieces. He has no regular pattern and prefers to deconstruct images from various sources. Lately he assumes the role of a cinematographer in the way he presents his artistic scenes. His prowess lies in his moments of delight-- being theatrical on canvas is his aesthetics.

Pangaea is a hopscotch where you can customize how you would like to connect Ambagan’s framed pictures to comprise your one big bespoke exhibition. It disturbs your peace as you do your rounds in this year’s Manila Art. It is interventionist against convention done in Ambagan’s in-your-face realism—a kind of counter culture being introduced into the mainstream. It is an adventure with challenges wherein the hero wins in the end. Like a chess game, viewers can either take the lead as king or queen or be a pawn rooting in the sidelines. No matter what we shall overcome—as we are all in this together.

Arel Zambarrano: The Need for Needles

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

After a decade of art practice, ushering into a new chapter in his life Arel Zambarrano consistently continues from where he left off. For his third exhibition this 32-year old Ilonggo hones deeper into his craft and parlays his imaginative prowess by focusing on himself and in being most personal this time. The kind of act cleanses himself further as in his own words: “to overcome his inner demons.” 

Juggling many responsibilities Zambarrano does not have the luxury of time as he had before, as a new father, he now owes to his family their food and shelter and to his community being an architect yet he perceives belonging to a bigger society in humanity as an artist. For him art is not a way to make a living, rather it is a very human way of making life more bearable.

In Unlimited Optimism he renews this commitment and redefines himself more--what artistic path to take, his strengths and inner courage, dwelling more on self-discovery. His greatest ally has been his belief in himself that no one can help you except to be self-reliant to function more effectively and being true to your artistic philosophy.

At an early age when other kids were collectively playing along the seaside of Banate, one would find him drawing on the sand along the shores using a broom stick. The ethereal experience of his visual images being washed away by the waves excited him. At this early, though the living was rough and uncertain then, he wanted to create great structures of imagination and realized to be an artist someday.

Depicting needles on canvas has come a long way since 2007 when these represented all his hard-earned years as a self-supporting student of architecture in college. Needles will eventually connote his struggles, as well as triumphs in life. Being dirt poor didn’t hinder him, it is his belief that we all have needles in our lives, in many forms some too irritating to handle-be it hurdles, thorns, even in being too sensitive. Yet this too shall pass, hope remains for pain is the evidence of life.  

How Zambarrano unassailably survived from the pits is like an artistic pilgrimage to him. Allowing his gut and following his footsteps, his art has been autobiographical evoking himself in every painting with resemblance of himself in allegories by constant juxtaposing and careful composition he has constantly mastered. Zambarrano visually records his milestones and journeys through these protracted often surreal images.

Flexible Nerves series are ongoing witnesses to these revelations that occurred in his short and oftentimes topsy-turvy existence. His dragonflies are often constricted by red strings is a metaphor for change as they represent energy and enthusiasm eschewing pessimism and resentment. A venus fly trap is a reminder that everything comes at a particular time and space. Everything in life is enriching and rewarding. The eventuality of the pieces is an almost disruptive, caught-in-the-moment, uneasy depiction to bear. There is an alliterated meaning justifying every happening to his life. Beneath the thick oil paint in the back ground are his inner reflections. The shaft of the needle is a sturdy and blunted straight line encouraging the viewer to be brave under any circumstance. Done in pure oil paint, with no aid of sketch, like a versed prescient storyteller all these pieces have been painted like riddles in his mind before he set out to feature them on canvas. Every Zambarrano piece is rich in allegory as it is often laden with moral values and positive vibes. He has trained us to take long and hard to look and imbibe them.

In the Black Garden with Unlimited Optimism is a fitting centerpiece for its immensity and sheer attention to details. We are overwhelmed by the volume of needles each painted with a special thought in mind. Here art is more of a process. It is more of the evolving ephemerality that ignited him to accomplish this. One can unravel the long and arduous contemplation that underwent while physically rendering it on canvas.   

A committed spiritual man, Zambarrano may not be religious yet he was quite affected by the parable of the needle: it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. A bleeding heart evoked at the dead center with its tentacle-like veins being entangled. Somewhat abstract in its portrayal while painting it he felt his aspirations for mankind unfolding. A brutally beautiful scene emerges for us to behold.

Those long slender tips in needles may be subversive for the fear of being pricked, or an unlikely site used in acupuncture for healing or even surgery, yet needles remind him also not to focus on earthly possessions but rather in basic human goodness. As an artist practicing in Iloilo, Zambarrano’s need for needles transcends him, making him cope with the earthbound burdens while at the same time displaying faith, joy and wholeness soaring into the end of his own quagmire. The brilliance of Zambarrano however embodies positivity as he prepares for bigger things to come his way. For him, artists are still highly valuable and constructive individuals in nation-building. Art is a revolting way of coping from life’s constant beatings and persecution. He feels obligated to foster art as his vocation in future.

Unlimited Optimism innately explores the intersection of Zambarrano’s life and his inventive interpretation morphed into relevant art. He is fulfilling himself so that others may be encouraged in attaining their new goals through his paintings. It is a genius solution to an ever bugging problem. Used to this existential routine, he just needs to embody optimism for himself firstly before others--to pay forward kindness and espousing hard-earned repurposed lessons over the years for everyone to get on his side.

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.

 

Tarlac Artists Collaboration: Contemporary Philippine Art via McArthur Hi-way

BY JAY BAUTISTA


To remain contemporary when much of one’s environment reflects the rural and idyllic; to become authentic despite everything has become coy, commercial and crass; to be original and rogue while besotted with folklore, myths, and traditional views of art. 

Aptly situated inside a commuter bus the creative predicament of being based in Tarlac confronts these twenty young visual artists today. As the centerpiece of this exhibition Maniam Pukaque is their collective stance on these themes, issues and concerns that entailed their individual responses through oil, acrylic, ink, and water-based media; an imaginative collaboration as a way of introducing each artist featured in this exhibition with the same title; bearing their own biases and perspectives, each anecdote is interactive and flowing while characters abound each revolving around various local produce related to their beloved home province.  

With fertile grass on his mouth, a water buffalo is at the helm of this magical mystery tour. Though prime agricultural land continues to diminish every day due to commercialization and in demand real estate, much of Tarlac is still being farmed using this hard working partner of the Filipino farmer. It could also represent the Laughing Carabao symbolizing the locally crafted beer favored by the working class Tarlaquenos.
 

"MANIAM PUKAQUE" (overflowing)
Tarlac Artists collaborative Painting
243.84 X 365.76 cm
Museo ng Probinsya ng Tarlac

Other representations veer on products only found in these parts of Tarlac. Such is the Capas smoked fish as an endearing passenger; allegorically placed is the iniruban rice cake made with burned young sticky rice coconut milk and sweetener; the bignay rice wine coming from bignay berries; at the far back is a prepared ambula, formed from rice soaked in viand sauce saving much for the hungry with value for his tight budget; an ethereal vendor with an abaca fan calls out for tupig, grilled sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves over charcoal. The burnt scent in gazing smoke evidently lingers in the midst.
 
At the front seat, an absent-minded fine arts student stares blankly at the abyss with her multi-tasking tentacles dealing with various odd jobs she has to accomplish in time to finish her studies and eventually move on with her creative life. A stoic girl with eggs for eyes and a crowning nest for hair signify how Tarlac is by forced circumstance a nesting ground for the would-be artists in them. 

Behind her apathy runs deeps to a man reminiscent of an oblation-like gesture looking at the heavens while a mischievous gyrating millennial twirls, tumbles and turns in between seats. A ghostly image is portrayed at the back referring to the scary tales that haunt the tall grasses in Matatalaib. Seated in a row before him, another scary apparition mount as a ghoulish man appears wasted or without consciousness while a baby is in deep slumber, unmindful of the ongoing episode around her. The circus has just started. Others performers will follow suit. One wonders where the band is?
 
A downtrodden farmer stands in solitude reserving his yantok on the last row, a barangay in Mayantok where it came from. In the middle aisle is an allegorical post which morphs a green sugar cane into a cold steel post. This negates how Tarlac has eventually become industrial from once an agricultural lieu. 

Showcasing Tarlac’s natural treasures is a man bathing from one of the available pristine waterfalls while a rowdy black cat distracts, a Frog jumps and a Geron bird (for Gerona) gleefully cheers in the window seat. A solitary bat swarms, as if on cued performance, from above. Dead aim at the center is a masquerade masked girl in a grotesque garb staring directly as if enlightening the viewer--this is who we are and what to expect from us--at a glance.  

A remarkable plethora of divergent styles co-exist side by side in one fell swoop, debunking any associated art historical classifications. Abound in sheer magnitude this is firsthand looking at the ongoing Tarlac art scene while celebrating the rich and evolving culture these artists belong to. A visual playground flexing the every artistic muscle, this one-way trip is at the height of its vision of capturing present-day Tarlac exuding brighter hope for their separate artistic journeys for the long haul.

Jeff Salon: Truth Well Painted

BY JAY BAUTISTA |

Battle Realms

For an artist the simplest yet hardest role is not to look away--to speak the truth in his evolving context. And for Jeff Salon the only time he deserves the truth is when he paints it. 

For his fourth solo exhibition, Broken Boundaries at the SM Art Center, Salon continues this commitment to reflect his settings and pursuit for the truth in our current social reality. Compared to his previous exhibitions, fiercer and more tormented pieces emerge this time--Salon is fuming, wrathful even.

The slow demise of nature has been a recurring theme that has haunted Salon’s canvases for the longest time. Alarmed at the rate we are tearing Mother Nature apart it obsesses him to no end. His most potent work is seen in Thy Kingdom Come. A swirling chase in existence involving endangered animals lorded it over only to be reminded of their distant mortal cycle. Salon’s valiantly captures the big picture show done in exquisite strokes with gusto and bravado; how a thing of beauty can be led to its wrath and decay in one fell swoop.

It is now considered a privilege to still view these threatened creatures in the wild and not captive in public and private zoos. The Guardian pays homage, as well as a glorious pitch for the Philippine eagle to critically survive. Discovered two centuries ago, this majestic bird, which is the biggest winged animal in the country, are the only 150-500 pairs left out there. Salon’s depiction of his lonesome self, perched on a branch against a graying background of negligence leaves an eerie feeling of guilt.

A complimentary pair to The Guardian is Cultural Survivor, which proves that there is nothing that differentiates animals from us. A lone indigenous Filipino caught in an act of defiance for their survival, he is a bygone reminder of quest for national identity. There is an urgent need to document their traditional and oral traditions in our fight against their perishing and modern day relevance.

Salon brings us to closer to various situations in depicting his take on our daily occurrences. They are often grounded on his personal experience and specific longing in behalf of children. Basked in golden brown with tinge of silver, somewhat like an impending explosion greets the viewers of his pieces. In Battle Realms against the scrutinizing eyes of His benefactor Salon wages war on many fronts—our oppressors, against clichés and what-have-yous in Philippine art. A hint of orange encroaching from behind to hint danger. Even in this very exhibition he has constantly honed while maturing in his artistic boundaries as well.

Thy Kingdom Come

Beautiful Mosaic provides a gentle pause yet turning the tides against colonialism. The colors or tempered of them are his signature hues are observed in the Filipina. Accented by a few reds in highlighting his message, our ongoing emancipation is defined by Spanish galleons, Japanese Tora Tora planes, and the American soldier. It may be evoking nostalgia but Salon’s art is anything but cuteness.

Recent issues have made news how foreign presence in guarding our shores. More than the old maps that documented our territoriality in our 7,106 islands, our sovereignty resides from our people. Our strength in safeguarding must be firmly in place. The allegory of nature evident in women’s bodies abounds in Shaping the World. How our islands are often exploited for their attractions mirrored in the curves of three women representing Luzviminda.

Salon’s realism follows a very abstract process in making art. Starting off by texturing his images with knife palette he then more difficultly illustrates on top of them. Everything is moving in a Salon composition, in a zen-like manner--no beginning or end. Depending on his mood he sometimes finishes of by splatting the already smooth surfaces. His confidence is key of his amount of pressure.

Specificity is another way to describe how each person is different and how we have our own peculiarities, belief, and are part of particular or imagined communities. Some features we can see, some you cannot. In A Piece of Peace may be as basic as a two-fingered universal symbol of peace but notice how rough and coarse his brushstrokes are. One can meditate on these experimentation this painted sign for harmony and equanimity.

F*ck Up Island

Charged with political acumen Salon abhors greed and hypocrites. There are more to be engaged at in F*Up Island. How semantics has ruled our lives and how power and understanding emanates for one’s anatomy to express. And they are even the hardest to demonstrate--the ok sign, clenched fist, number one, TV commercial sign, even the-holier-than-thou religious hand.

Now You See Everything

There is beauty in composed chaos that Salon depicts his pieces to convey his messages. It has always been about children and how Salon confines his purpose for their future. A child looks back to how adults behave worse than them. Now You See Everything proves we can learn more from the younger generation for our own realization. Depending how you much time the viewer has one can marvel at the Salon’s layered scenes.

Unlimited Being revisits his old style using his fondness for faces as inner canvases. Depending on the emotion on how his piece will be composed it is this foreground that immediately grabs the viewer. Representing freedom in flight, his star on forehead reminiscent of bright hope for tomorrow.

One may be familiar with His image but only an artist can interpret it on his own. In gratitude to His blessings Salon paints an enigmatic Christ in Resurrection. Notice how blood and sweat oozes from His thorn-crusted head. With Him in the middle of the exhibition space, He balances everything.

Amidst the crass commercialism of the venue, there is a certain solitude one attains after viewing the exhibition. An ironic inner peace is depicted in Salon’s artistic quagmire. Unusually the deeper conflict happens inside. Like a well thought of consciousness, Salon’s brilliance lies how issues are politically charged yet he paints a more serene scraping as a result. One may witness the goriness of the episodes yet Salon opts for a more resolute but unrefined way of enlightening his viewers.

Ricky Ambagan: Pulling the String to a Full Stop

JAY BAUTISTA|

I'm Coming Home

The increasing pressure to phase out our beloved jeepneys from the main thoroughfares of Manila (and Baguio) where they once ruled is surmounting by the day. The government says they don’t even physically fit any more—an unpleasant sight--a stumbling block to progress; that their sheer volume has become a liability even as commuters cramp them up every early morning filling up their maximum sitting capacity.

This is where visual artist Ricky Ambagan pulls the string to a full stop. Paying homage to the Patok, a parlance for the last of the rogue jeepneys, Ambagan has kept the faith for these most enduring Pinoy icons. Patok is a sub-species of jeepneys plying from Montalban or Cogeo via Marcos Hi-way. Bigger than the usual 16-seater capacity, they have been built for one sole reason for being--speed; most are candy-colored and heavily decorated using airbrush. 

Basang Basa sa Ulan

With young and restless drivers at the helm, Patok travels you in hasty, topsy-turvy-style, often arriving at your destination in record time. They take you to Montalban—like in a drag race--in the shortest time possible–even that claim is an understatement. They too are notoriously loud for their music.

Patok:Ang Pagbabalik ng Langgam is an ode--a narration of the travesties and intricacies of the last days of the jeepney. A roving telenovela--as Ambagan likes to call it--because we are a reflection of the kind of transportation we get into.

Other jeepneys today are barer for its practicality but the Patok are praised both for their functionality and aesthetics. What was once a war surplus and replacement for jitneys (thus the name) became a rolling showcase of our folk artistry. The jeepney became an extension of a driver’s humble abode: how he extends an altar in his dashboard complete with vigil bulbs; how he adorns its ceiling with copied paintings from masters, alongside names of his loved ones; how he uses curtains to ward of dust and keep ventilation for a smooth and safe trip.

Ambagan does not capture all their dirt and grime but seats in front as a hopeless sentimentalist, tempering that in-your-face rap music with jingly-jangly chords, even acoustics of the heart. In I’m Coming Home he sets the mood how the ever-dependable jeepney will always be there by remaining available 24/7. No matter how late —the graveyard shifters, the overworking employees, clandestine lovers unaware of their stolen moments, the sordid drunk coming from revelry—all depend on the jeepney to get safely home. Composing the picture Ambagan shows how lonely the crusade and uphill battle they now face. Yet the stars are out in full support for their cause.    

Basang basa sa Ulan implies in you an uncomfortable situation and captures another practicality of the Patok--how it is to survive without being drenched in the rain. Ambagan’s brilliance gears up when he juxtaposes his subjects along with the title of the most popular Aegis song. He resembles it how it is being soaked—both in our bodies and feelings—from the July showers evokes discomfort yet nostalgia; how art and music blend well in a painting. Ambagan has been there, done that.

Come Together

Come Together reprises that inviting Beatles song with the pedestrian as trigger word linking the famous fab four crossing through Abbey Road. Notice Ambagan suits his images with whatever his idea he had in mind. No photos as reference but imagination and how emotions play when that song was first played. Reminds one of the good times, as we flash back reminding the soundtrack of our lives.

The Jeep of Medusa

They may not be as comfortable as it was then but a Patok experience is on the extreme in riding dangerously, so to speak. Ambagan observes how these accents and accessorizes daily living. Each Patok jeepney is a wandering statement, its character emits from the graffiti’s they espouse, as well as the sentimentality of the music it pipes in. Ambagan laments that the day would come they will just end up in glass cases enclosed in a cold museum for viewing purposes only.

The Jeep of Medusa is an astoundingly haunting sepia, pencil, and charcoal on canvas. Against the colorful palette is this centerpiece discussing the plight of the jeepney. Opposed to the desperate survivors of the shipwreck as Louis Andre Theodore Gericault depicted his masterpiece, Ambagan took off with liberation and breaking free from human frailty and futility.

Folk religiosity has been a recurring subject for Amabagan. Lord Patawad remains a subliminal in its message. He has committed to his creative passion but more faithful to his God. Finding Pepe reflects Ambagan’s nationalist fervor. Here he situates Jose Rizal as a lowly passenger among the throng, busily absorbed in reading today’s news. Affected by the goings on with our current state of affairs. Ambagan hints we may be giving up our values for less mundane and superficial things.    

Finding Pepe

The subtitle Ang Pagbabalik ng Langgam reminisces Ambagan’s previous exhibitions which featured multiple of people en mass be it in Manila, downtown Baguio or flooded Malabon. His style of distortion, marked up by raw and coarse brushstrokes, endeared in humor and memory are the hallmark of his visual style. How he angles his canvases, twisting and twirling his subjects convoluting the kind of complex quagmire they are into. Not veering desperation rather he counters perspectives that would find meaning to whatever longing that may come along their way. His colors burst with bravura often engaging even provoking the viewer as a call to action and not passively observe.

Filipino artist worth his salt had a take on the jeepney. Vicente Manansala focused on its aesthetics as a folk art; Cesar Legaspi probed on its definite lines and earth-toned hues; Mauro Malang’s jeepneys appealed like general postcards to the tourists; Manny Garibay focused on their interior jeepneys being a socialist stage, the happenings inside while in transit. Ambagan is anecdotal highlighting the stories behind his paintings that make you stare long and hard, whether you empathize, amused or baffled at the drama behind it. How scenes elicit a smirk is what inspired him to feature this. Ambagan nonchalantly contributes to the contending dynamics of our culture and a deeper encouragement that the Pinoy will survive whatever that comes his way. 

Lord Patawad

With the clock ticking, though jeepneys may still be the preferred informal mode of transportation of the general publics, however like terminally-ill cancer patients, they are now living on borrowed time.

In Patok Ambagan honors the jeepney one last time while it is still breathing, fighting for its life. He parallels the existence of the jeep with the timeline of our country—too crowded, rowdy--with every passenger has a preferred direction to take. Everything that is happening in us—be it political, entertaining or poverty reflected--revolves around the goings-on of the jeepney, as one takes a collective ride. In the end, Ambagan is just an artist who commutes.