ARTICULATION

Articulation: A Diversity of Artistic Temperaments

                                             By Cid Reyes

Articulation is the act of giving utterance or expression through words but in this group exhibition, the utterance of emotion or statement is made vividly visual. Artists, as a rule, are not a verbally expressive lot, though a few can certainly brim with words. Their language of articulation comes alive with painted images, wrought in form and color and evident in the superlative manipulation of pigment and surface. Sculpture, being a three-dimensional medium, comes into existence through the mediation of stone, wood, metal; in fact, any physical object that will not resist the command of its creator.

Both painting and sculpture are in active articulation mode in this show titled, appropriately enough, Articulations. The predominant idiom is abstraction, though figuration makes its assertive presence palpably felt.

Fresh from a recent successful succession of shows, Edwin Wilwayco presents a pair of his abstractions, distinguished by a lavish use of texture and pigment, alluding to forces of nature.

Still engaged in the quiet refinement of his art, Rico Lascano claims the element of water as his vehicle of evocation, but here alluding to a Freudian stream of consciousness.

From a vast oeuvre of abstraction, Benjie Cabangis’ quartet of works, titled Billboard Skies, is inflected with spartan and severe geometry.

Jemina Reyes’ splashily ebullient canvases, with equally joyous titles (Cheerfully, Faithfully, Strokes of Gladness) are a proposal to painterly delight and happiness.

Driven by energy and propulsion, the briskly animated abstractions of Risa Recio are permeated by a hyper New York-ese gestural dynamisn.

Nubbin Beldia scrapes his canvases with thick, rough, and rugged slashes of pigments, summoning a darkness of spirit in his Lurid Dreams, Stygian Night, and Delft Anticipation.

Richie Yee subjects his wooden surface to a multiplicity of techniques, ranging from scraping to dripping, down to the nailing of rivets, revealing the strata of laborious art-making.

The sole piece of Pablo Biglang-Awa merges stark abstraction with a purist approach to a suggestive figurative image.

Julien Tan’s trio of works are stringently reduced to his signature graffiti scribblings and restrained but luxuriant form-language.

Nico Kasman forays into shapes that signal realistic forms, as though frozen in a flashback of memory.

Jonathan Olazo’s Paloma Vessel scours the surface with a gritty, sandy texture and a swiftly gliding elision of form.

Taking a breather from his hectic art reviewing is critic-artist Cid Reyes, recharging his spirit with visions of repose, titled Celestial Mists.

Revelling in the innovative use of an unexpected medium, unhusked rice grains (palay), Hermi Santos ingeniously parlays this nourishing substance sprung from native earth into severely elegant, geometric forms, so richly assembled by a frisky imagination.

A tableaux of sculptures are dramatically staged by Pete Jimenez and Jinggoy Buensuceso. Jimenez is a masterly manipulator of found objects, whose works are suffused with humor and mirth, sending a delightful shock to the viewer. Buensuceso delivers a raw, brutal, and riveting sight of a molten heart, as though mercilessly wrenched, pinioned within the grid of a rusty scaffolding.

Portraiture is Joey Ibayas forte, obsessed with a punctilious focus on the sitter’s psychological  state, an emotional equivalent of  a stunned deer staring at the headlights.

            A commercial director by profession, but an artist by passion, Rico Jorolan pulls out all stops in his impressively conceived and superbly rendered figurative works appealing to contemporary sensibilities attuned to a pop vision of the world.



Kulay-Diwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art is a privately owned venue for artistic expression. It is strategically located within a cluster of progressive communities South of Manila. It has an independent exhibition area able to accommodate large-scale works, and a spacious garden ideal for outdoor programs, performances and sculpture installations.

Goals of Kulay-Diwa

To discover and promote the works of talented, young and deserving Filipino Artist;

To serve as a cultural outpost and make the arts more accessible to the fast-growing communities South of Manila; and

To foster cultural interaction and exchanges with the local regions, Southeast Asia and other countries.

Kulay (Color)

Diwa (Spirit, Thought)





INQUIRE

HOME