Arturo Sanchez Jr: Apocalypse Now

BY JAY BAUTISTA 

The past is knowledge

The present our mistake

And the future we always leave too late

I wish we’d come to our senses and see there is no truth

In those who promote the confusion for this ever changing mood.

My Ever Changing Moods

Style Council (1984)

One day everything will be gone at one fell swoop--we will no longer be here.

This factual eventuality has provoked artist Arturo Sanchez Jr. in Unearthed to further investigate our own near extinction by experiencing the various possibilities of resin in art. 

It was his cutouts etched in layered shifting narratives on mirrors that first gained attention for Sanchez; how he carefully composed by transferring each image to suit his desired effect on what it intently reflects to the viewer.

Again as objects of contemplation, Sanchez continues his collage of cutouts from many printing sources with the assumption of man’s inexistence on earth. Layered with resin, he compliments these images with ghoulish and macabre hues evoking an eerie mood reminiscent of the apocalypse being implied on us.  

Excavation Site (Panel 3)

Excavation Site was initially inspired from Steve Cutts’Man, a four-minute video on how man came to destroy his surroundings including himself. Sanchez always had the forced habit of collecting clutter and debris around him--how he likes things that slowly deteriorate or observe them as they physically disintegrate. With his collection accumulating, he thought of creating that ultimate “end of the world” scenario. Meticulously done like a fine draftsman that he is, Excavation Site is collage in three parts covered in clear-cut resin. Emanating a beautiful tragedy where everything will just be covered in debris. With grayish strokes resembling an impending melancholy in our midst, Sanchez reveals all of man’s folly and his greediness will be his own culprit and eventual downfall. With this exposition in ruins, all his secrets will self-destruct in the dustbin of history. 

New Found Specimen. Collage in Clear Cast Resin

With depopulating the earth and a breakdown of urban systems emerged New Found Specimen 1-4. Using huge quantity of images from several references making each perspective an emerging narrative, Sanchez’s imagination is limitless: ranging from flowers blooming from a clot of blood; a tree trunk morphs into another fabled being; a torso becomes a shelter inhabited by earthy creatures. Connoting an aesthetic honed from our diverse experiences of the everyday, he pours in resin into customized frames resulting in a realist play in abstraction. Sanchez would like to consider continuing this into other series in his next forays.

Enduring Decay is an unfolding surreal drama which involves a sculpture of a boy and girl morphed into a tight embrace on a mound full of animal bones and carcasses. A romantic interlude amidst this infatuated setting exuding beauty in impermanence. A lone mythical bird reminding us all that love is fleeting with only the memory of one another remains. Notice how Sanchez brutally finishes off his pieces with black splats even deepening his evocation of the affection between these tragic lovers. 

Enduring Decay

More like science projects Future Past shifts the focus to more ethereal and mundane subjects in everyday objects. Imitating the natural process of amber in archeological diggings this series provides a glimpse of how artists like Sanchez can be as ordinary beings live and how their lives evolved.

Sanchez attempts to achieve the pale yellow orange effect of amber as his resin fossilizes whatever brought to its attention. Attracted to the intricacies of the method he makes up for what his pieces represent. For Sanchez it could be a simple shell or as complex as exploding egg shells; they could also be the tools of his artistic trade as an overused paint brush, rubber roller, cutting tool or his daughter’s favorite shoe. They are all extensions of his being expanding notions of time, space, process, or participation how materials obstruct, disrupt and interfere both with his being a struggling artist and a devoted father.

Future Past (Paint Brush)

The given simplicity of materials is complicated with the adverse complexity of his process. Sanchez considers many factors to its mortality such as the thickness of his layers, the volume in pouring his resin which is controlled by its varying temperature. Depending upon how the material behaves with resin is another difficulty. Before the resin dries up he must paint over his pieces to achieve the amber haze finish. Finally Sanchez polishes to smooth to be lighted on a customized pedestal.

 

Future Past (Daughter's Shoe)

Coming from a well-appointed position, Sanchez has revived that bygone debate on what and how conceptual art is. For viewers these pieces could be easier seen than done yet it is that element of surprise that grabs them which shows the wit and candor of Sanchez. How each visual and physical memory by the random selection of material evokes like a time capsule is effective in its own context. 

Inspired by the natural desire for the uncharted lies the artistic prowess of Sanchez in capturing what we have been missing out and looking forward to. While 
he makes us conscious of the things we do not see, he transports us to our current actuation and opportunities. With his experiments, we need to step back and marvel at his art’s exuberance for he has captured our evolving mortal transience. In an appropriated time our short lives can be told through Facebook, Instagram, You Tube, but only in Sanchez’s boxes of curiosity and wonder can life be resurrected and celebrated.

Unearthed is ongoing at the West Gallery, West Ave. Quezon City

Reflections on a Room Full of Mirrors

BY JAY BAUTISTA

We, the spectators are an additional factor. Though greeted by that gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was there before we were: the model itself.

“Las Meninas”
The Order of Things by Michel Foucault

Using layered shifting narratives on one-way mirrors as thematic device, it seems obvious and even compulsory for an architecture graduate like Art Sanchez to explore the boundaries of this decorative medium for his first solo exhibition at blanc art space.

One cannot wonder too long the extent of his intention to instill biographical vignettes, critique on mass media and cultural myths as seen with these recent works. Meticulously transferring random surreal-like images as collages taken form various printed sources. Etching further on an already established mirror cut out on canvas which serves as base of familiar or familial representation. Creating simultaneous contrast among the aesthetics of objects, metaphors, irony with the given didactic nature of the superimposed image, Sanchez displaces or literally putting everything out of place. At this point, with the viewer’s obvious reflection on the mirrors, Sanchez extends an invitation to exist with interchanging personas and value laden symbols inherent in them. His thoughts could be your thoughts even more is what makes up Afterthoughts.

In Floating Mood Swings, the reverse mirror cut out of a Rodin-inspired The Thinker presents as a dark background of what remains inside man’s emotion as he struggle for memory and pursuit for his own volition as human. They say beauty is the sum of its faults however the objectives in making mental picture based on available references will imply degrees of meaning on varied presentations.

This multi-sharing of similar but varied points of view to someone from behind is commonly known as the Venus effect (from the earliest painting of Venus looking at her resemblance while angels hold a mirror while others keep looking on her). The audience is more involved in this context as one whose every reflection is captured in this creative study of imaginative perception. As one observes beauty in a narcissist kind of way, one reflects and learns more of the experience for his or herself.

Indeed objects in the mirrors appear closer than they appear. As mirror gathers light rays around the curved surface and reflect them at varying angles, signs are said to be more compressed and provide for an illusion of space as it amplifies the apparent size of any room. This is perceived in the emphatic piece Tests Subjects which features an illustration of how light is captured by the camera by the very man who pioneered photography. Sanchez does with Walter Johnson in art what Johnson contributed to science.

Saturation Point is a running commentary of the critical nature of media particularly television. The reverberation of all things good and bad as glaringly represented by floating people with thought bubbles shaped like mushroom clouds jutting out in explosion or emptiness of the idea as presented on the tube. Here Sanchez becomes a cynic or romantic depending on which side you are but his depiction of this most used appliance rises to being an innovative critique to the point in being graphically screaming. Proving he is not all against the idiot box, his main concern remains how people have become too complacent as not to be scared with 99 channel-overload of information. After all, consumer culture fetishes the dumb, refined, and modern individuals, as with television the playing field has been leveled of depending on your immediate appropriate necessity.

Sanchez remembers the only mirror in the house he grew up where photos highlighting significant events and fun times as a family are inserted on the side like a makeshift do-it-yourself photo album. As the mirror eventually faded with the passing of time, so are the irreplaceable photos tucked in. Taking on this experience, Sanchez believes one grows every time we face the mirror. Viewing his works, metaphorically speaking, one gets the idea that art is itself a mirror -- reflection of society with all its customs, beliefs, folklore, superstitions, religion, even of the artist himself.

Coming from a family of tinsmith, mirror reflections are nothing new to Sanchez as he invites the viewer even to come nearer and eventually become a part of it. In Between Raindrops and Sun Showers series, the struggle of memory against forgetting, Sanchez wanted to relive the myths and his play with the “demons” of his childhood. Such as when it rains while sun is up, there’s a tikbalang getting married. As varied and many faceted as this mirror, the artist has found a comfortable material in expressing surreal phenomena in various dark metaphors with layers of paint into haunting collages.

Lured by its beauty or in our quest for self-knowledge, we look at mirrors more often than we expect, in every chance we get. Before it became known as mirrors, it was referred to as “looking glass.” Event Horizon is about how we look and are being looked at by mirrors in a context of a gallery setting. As we are greeted upon gaze after gaze coming from the different reflections from the pieces themselves in the exhibit, as viewers we all become part of ever artwork – the mirror on canvas, the subjects, the objects and the viewers reversing roles becoming as models. The entire cast as the collective act of anachronism becomes pure form. The installation of blind spots absorbs the viewers with a closer look, as a caution one need not to get lost in them. Are people imbibed and further tricked by this nature of being seen by mirrors? As the Artspace has been converted into room full of mirrors, converting illusion into memory of lasting persistence is a reward in itself.

Like everything resemblances on the mirrors, Afterthoughts does not have to explain the images you see, the artworks adjust themselves to it. Art is more of an interpretation than reflection. In the end, one learns that Afterthoughts is not one such.

Angono Double Hi-way: How Arturo Sanchez and Michael De Guzman Went Home Via Floodway

BY JAY BAUTISTA | Of late, most of today’s young contemporary artists have focused themselves inward in terms of their creative outputs. As an observer this startles me and somehow question as to how much grasp do today’s artists have on the context they are into. Personal is sociological, politics is biographical. Indeed an “empire of memory” a novel of Eric Gamalinda once aptly titled it.

With recurring memory as the anchoring theme the recent two-man show “Attachment and Loss” held recently at the White Box in Cubao of Angono-based artists, Arturo Sanchez and Michael de Guzman however attempts to delve deeper into the pits of their sordid lives. The struggle not to forget yet overcome ones’ fears, ghost-like frustrations, and learned experiences, the true test of a great work of art is when one sees light from the grip of darkness to move on.

Revolving around fond remembrances, old loves and the excruciating pain of loss that persist on them until today, both artists used combined images of old personal photographs and used as reference images were borrowed from old and existing photographs then manipulated, crop-out or blurred as to represent a new set of meanings. So as not to ostracize their viewers they have devised certain materials like the “mirror” in an attempt to involve the viewers that their story is yours as well.



Arturo Sanchez is the perfect son any parent would have. To please his mother, he had to set aside his love for painting to take up the more formal course college. Now that he has a degree in Architecture, Arturo can now revisit his old love and maybe pick up where he left off.

Described as “gesticulation of figures,” Arturo Sanchez’s imagery is forceful to the point of being elongated and distorted. His imagery is his strength. In the series “The Absence of Beauty” shows you eight collage pieces with individual mirrors reflecting new representations from various alterations of the same photos usually deforming/obscuring what could be recognized images. The new signification and reflection of viewer both can be viewed when hanged. What enticed the onlookers more was the presence of a canvas painted as a mirror on the wall which captures everything and anything.

Artist-friend Erick Sausa, who wrote the artists’ statement, pointed out “along the course of his self-discovery of painting style through participation in various shows and scrutinizing art magazines sharpened Arturo’s technical perception of dealing with the aesthetics. And as his new works will be best described as paradigm to memories and amnesia” which can be only depicted on the large-scale canvas using oil paint and mixed media.

Meanwhile Michael de Guzman is said to be “pursuing his works to the limit of surreal-like and abstract images of woods and also digressional in photorealism that seems to be part of double tracking that most of the struggling artist can conceive of in order to penetrate the demanding art scene. The works he presents was mostly done in oil on canvas.” A son of a former PSG (Presidential Security Group) during the time of Presidents Macapagal and Marcos, Sausa noted that “the devise of grids he often used was also a conundrum of how the photo references can be interpret as the individual attachment of things being gone but to others are just a mere image.” The car shown here was a gift from President Macapagal and later recalled as their dreams were fulfilled with it, the De Guzman family tried to restore or even revived it to bring back what it was or what it meant to them.

Sausa, who himself is an artist of equal caliber, added, “Attachment is being viewed in relation to the existing object, portrait and places that the context of the metaphors is narrated in surreal or rather dreamlike representation. Loss is an extension of memoirs that set fixed in our subconscious and sense of individuality as long as we exist.

These two artists had grappled the physical and emotional upheavals for years of nurturing their expertise and with this exhibit they look forward to conquer both of their own personal apprehension and reassuring themselves to break new grounds.”

Not far from Angono, in the nearby town of Paete, Laguna, there is a dish they commonly called “sinarubot” where all the leftover food from the fiesta the day after (such as the menudos, adobos, and afritadas) are mixed and turned into a new concoction. Arturo and Michael’s memories elicit such kind of new found expression so as not to put their experiences to waste. A follow-up show could be in the offing, their next two-man show could even be the last perfect thing for them.