12th August 2021.
Tony Godfrey. I wanted to start by asking about your new work for Singapore: six swans, each made from a cut up monobloc chair. Originally you planned to make crows; then minah birds. Why did you end up making swans?
Juan Alcazaren. Yes, I had to change the type of birds because when I cut up the chairs, I saw swans right off. Also, the two other birds were too small to make recognizable.
TG. So, the key was the act of making, not the symbolic resonance of the bird – crows are urban predatory birds in Europe as Minah birds are in Singapore. Both kings of the street! Which swans aren’t – I guess they are more queens of the lakes and rivers.
JA. It was important they were recognizable as coming from plastic monobloc chairs right away.
TG. That was the key thing? That the viewer could spot or deduce that these had been cut from monobloc chairs? What exactly is a monobloc chair? Is it a brand or just type of plastic stackable chair?
JA. Monobloc is a brand name, I think, just like toothpaste is called Colgate here. Yes, those are the stackable plastic chairs used for funerals and such. Been obsessed with those for a few years now. They’re very easy to cut up and stitch together with plastic cable ties or steel bolts.
TG. To add – for non-Asian readers – white, not black, is the colour associated with death and funerals here. Is that important to you? or irrelevant?
JA. That is true for Chinese Filipinos, though that wasn’t on my mind. It was more of the ubiquity of those things here, in food stalls, schools, and now, supermarket social distancing queues and vaccination queues.
TG. Having lived in Hougang, an HDB[1] area of Singapore, I associate white plastic stacking chairs with void deck funerals – the void deck being the open ground floor of HDB blocks. The coffin of the deceased will be displayed for some time. Food is provided and many white plastic chairs for mourners to sit on.
JA. To add, plastic chairs are a great equalizer. Everyone has sat on one of those at one point or another, I think. Didn’t Barrack Obama sit with Bourdain at a Singapore hawker stall some time ago?
TG. I will check it out. Who is Bourdain?
JA. Anthony Bourdain the chef and food critic (now deceased)
TG. Of course! Now, again, touching on symbolism: you are placing the white swans following the solitary black swan. What does this signify?
JA. When I was researching pictures of swans, I noticed this phenomenon of whites following one black in several photos, but I went no deeper than that observation – sorry. Yes, I often imagine what kind of human emotions these inanimate things are witness to in their useful lives.
TG. So, your work is a sort of philosophical Toy Story where everyday objects get to simulate or comment on human behaviour? Or am I speaking pretentiously?
JA. Yes, but I like the way you put that. I do try to give objects a say in things.
TG. When did you start working in this way, cutting everyday things up and re-assembling them to have different identities or meaning?
JA. Probably in the late 90s when I started to use whatever was at hand to avoid spending for new material, but more because made objects already have some kind of form that to me calls for conversion into something else.
TG. I am reminded of some British sculptors – Bill Woodrow, Tony Cragg especially – who in the early 80s started to make sculptures out of plastic detritus or car doors or disused fridges. They were hailed at the time for political savviness, but liked mainly because of the dexterity and ingenuity in how they made things from junk. They were often referred to as “bricoleurs” the French for the odd job man who mends or makes things with what few tools he has. The ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss used the term to explain how people in rival communities construct myths – from whatever is to hand. Did you know about people like Woodrow or the cultural discussion about bricoleurs or bricolage?
JA. I’m familiar with Tony Cragg’s work, not Woodrow, though. I’m happy to be called a bricoleur. I’m more familiar with it in the craft and design sense like Simon Rodia who built the Watts towers in LA out of ceramic pots. I also like how discarded things are given new life as lamps or chairs. Before we leave the subject of plastic chairs, I just have to tell a funny story: my father who was a doctor, always wanted me to become a plastic surgeon, so here I am.
TG. What sort of doctor was your father? The father of the American sculptor Janine Antoni was a plastic surgeon. She said it had an impact on her as a child seeing women coming to see her pa and going away looking more beautiful. I guess plastic surgeons are a sort of bricoleur too!
JA. Yes, they are! My father was in Physical medicine and Rehabilitation. He fixed up people’s damaged limbs to work again. He also wanted me to emulate Frank Netter jnr. an American painter known for his medical illustrations.
TG. Did you ever try to draw like Frank Netter jnr.?
JA. No. I could not bear to look at them as a kid because they were grotesque, with limbs and bodies cut open in surgery. I wonder if Netter ever took his sketch pad into the operating theatre. My best attempt at that are those ballpoint pen drawings of hands I made on faux leather.
TG. Let’s look at those later. So, you never went to your Dad’s surgery or drew from cadavers as some artists did – and a few still do?
JA. Never did that. I guess that’s quite impossible nowadays.
TG. As we are talking about your father, can we go back to the start. When and where did you grow up? Did your Mum do anything apart from being a mum? When did you start getting interested in art?
JA. My mother and father were Med school classmates in UP[2]. They married in the 50s and had 8 “mistakes” of which I am the 5th. They had a birthing clinic right in our house in Cubao but I was too young to remember that. I do still have some of their instruments with me. My mom went on to teach Physiology at UE while my dad practiced in a few hospitals. We moved to Pasig in the late 60s and I’ve been here since. I got interested in art in early grade school. I went to Don Bosco in Mandaluyong. The Italian priests taught us woodworking, machine shop and electronics. That’s where I got my skills.
Other Don Bosco artists are Mark Justiniani and Gary Pastrana
TG. My youngest son went to a Don Bosco school in London. They were very good with problem or struggling kids. And, of course, it was originally geared to the needs of the poor – hence an emphasis on practical things such as woodworking. Mark and Gary as artist, like you, both like fiddling with things and making! Obviously, there is a secret Don Bosco school of Art! Did they have actual art classes there?
JA. Well, St. John Bosco is credited with the saying “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Art classes there were obviously designed just to meet Department of Education requirements and Imelda Marcos’ beautification programs.
My biggest regret was not playing enough football when I was there.
TG. Do you mean real football as the Italians and English play it or that tedious game the gringos play?
JA. Haha! yes, real football. The priests used to play in their full white cassocks! The boys from Don Bosco Tondo always beat us resoundingly, and they played barefoot.
TG. After that where did you go to college? Who did you study with?
JA. After that I studied Architecture at UP.
TG. Did you take no fine art classes at UP?
JA. I went to Fine Arts after I finished Landscape Architecture. FA was my second course
TG. You did four years of landscape architecture and then four of Fine Art?
JA. Give or take a few semesters. I was quite unfocused. I was also doing film animation in between with my siblings and I practically lived on the Tennis courts even playing professionally a short while, though I never really ranked anywhere.
TG. So how long were you at UP? Did you graduate in the end?
JA. Let us just say I was there for more than 10 years. I finished Landscape Architecture and worked a couple of years in that field as a draughtsman and apprentice designer. I am some credits short of a degree in FA but never finished it because my siblings and I were making a good living doing animated TV commercials. I was just starting to exhibit also. My first solo was at the CCP Small gallery.
TG. And do you still play tennis?
JA. I stopped playing a few years back because of my not so good knees. I taught at UPCFA in the mid 90s as a lecturer. Geraldine Javier, your partner, was my student.
TG. Do your siblings – brothers? – still work in animation? Did none of them become artists like you? And did none of them become doctors or nurses?
JA. Only my oldest brother became a doctor. 4 of us are practicing artists (one of whom is a film director). Another brother an Architect, another one an engineer, and 1 sister a statistician.
TG. Your parents must be wondering where they went wrong!
JA. I guess my parents did everything they could to convince us to follow in their footsteps, but the lure of more creative endeavours won out.
TG. Did you enjoy teaching? Did it help you with your own work – or did it hinder it? At what point did you stop teaching?
JA. I only taught for four semesters. It surely helped me with my confidence, but teaching is not my calling so I decided to focus on my art.
TG. OK. The earliest work you have chosen to talk about is from 1999 – a self-portrait. But it isn’t really because you reworked it in 2011 and again in 2020. Were you a painter back in 1999? Why did you change it in 2011? And why again in 2020? In an earlier email you referred to “my so-called career”. Do you have negative feelings about your early works? If I read your comments about it correctly the last adjustment in 2020 was making a hole in the middle – as if you had shot your own profile – and then pouring paint out through it.
JA. I was starting to experiment with painting then. I’ve painted over a few canvasses because I was not happy with the outcome, and because I was saving on materials. Works that remain in my studio are in constant danger of getting reworked or reused, mostly for practical reasons. I am not really sure why I feel no attachment to old works or ideas. Perhaps that’s why I put a hole in my old self’s head.
TG. Perhaps like most engineers you are a problem solver and you don’t see your oeuvre or career as something organic and coherent. Some artists love their work as if they were their children. They are so proud of it that they have to stand in front of it at private views – as Barnett Newman used to. You are obviously the opposite! You recycle your “children”! Anyway in 1999 you were experimenting with painting? What had your work been focussed on before that? and why did you not persist with painting?
JA. Haha! I am creating a race of super-children! Before 99 I was working more with steel, wood and found material. I still use all these things and I still paint. There are times when I don’t know what I am doing, there are times when I am completely sure but the results for me will always be flawed.
However, the swans I really like!
TG. It is a shame you can’t go to Singapore and stand by them as if you were Barnett Newman!
JA. Really? Is Singapore closed to travellers or just to Filipinos?
TG. Well, I think it is currently three weeks quarantine for you and I if we go to Singapore! and then ten days here coming back.
JA. Three weeks and ten days? Too much! I am definitely not going!
TG. In 2007 you made Erithina Objectalis. (3) I can see that this connects with your non-painterly work. Objects are presented as if they part of a plastic construction kit – waiting to be snapped off and fitted together as a plane or ship. Also, the background is like a blurry electric circuit diagram. Did you carry on making paintings in this style or did you get bored?
JA. Yes, we could describe this also as a kind of bricolage in painting with random imagery from my memory. I have done some paintings like those as recently as 2019 for Finale. Those looked like work-shed tool hanger walls except all the tools are gone and just the silhouettes of tools remain.
TG. How interesting that you say work-shed, not studio! What sort of space do you work in?
JA. My work space is literally a shed I constructed on our roof-deck to keep my kids from bothering me, but of course they pop out there all the time.
TG. Is it large? Do you have loads off stuff in it. I imagine it as more like a hardware store or an industrial junkyard than an elegant painter’s studio.
JA. I’ll send you a photo! My wife calls the roof-deck “Ground Zero.” When I paint, I work in a rented “studio” down the street. My siblings and I got that to shoot animation and videos in – and other less dirty work. I’m working on a large painting there now. I’ll send you a photo of that too.
TG. Got it! I am looking at the picture of your shed you just sent. (4) How big is it?
JA. The shed is four by four metres. The yellow wall part is the staircase leading downstairs. It is crammed inside – but in an organized way. I know where to find things.
TG. Do you still do a lot of advertising work? I assume you can’t survive by selling works?
JA. Advertising has changed much in recent times and the projects we used to get as our bread and butter now get done by youngsters in half the time and for peanuts. So now I rely completely on selling work. So far so good, could be better.
TG. The next work you included was also a painting – or what you call it a drawing: ball point on faux leather. This and related works must be based on some sort of medical image. Was it not part of a collaboration with Bernard Pacquing? Are you a natural collaborator?
JA. That is a drawing. Yes. I’ve had three shows with Bernie. I’m not a natural collaborator, but Bernie and Nilo Ilarde are friends so it’s good fun to work with them.
TG. So, you see art as about amity, not challenge and struggle?
JA. It’s all of the above.
TG. Do these drawings still exist or are they, like much else, destroyed?
JA. Those still exist, rolled up, but the ink bled on most of the surface so it doesn’t look good.
TG. The imagery suggests you still have an interest in your medical background – or you parent’s background.
JA. Yes, they influence me profoundly even if they couldn’t get me to go to med school.
TG. And was the next work See Evil to do with your Catholic upbringing?
JA. For sure it is about that!
TG. BTW did you make several versions of this? Geraldine owns one but the word “Evil “is coloured green.
JA. yes, I think I did six of these in different colours, because evil is attractive.
TG. Now you have got your old teachers at Don Bosco worried! Resist! Resist!
JA. Hahaha! Struggle!
TG. Is it normal for you to work in series?
JA. Yes, I normally do. If I only get to finish one work, for sure, in my head, I imagine a series of them.
TG. Shall we take a break? We could finish talking tomorrow morning if that suits you – or any other time Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Because of the lockdown my diary is very empty!
JA. OK. Saturday morning’s good for me. Till then, thanks!
14th August.
JA. Good morning Tony, I’m good to go.
TG. And me too – just settling down with coffee and some toast.
JA. BTW Google told me there was an earthquake last night near your area. Did you feel it?
TG. Yes, the bed wobbled for about twenty seconds just before I fell asleep. I am getting used to these earthquakes! OK, your piece One and twenty-one chairs.
As you told me this is a reference to Joseph Kosuth. A lot of your work – for example the very large word-based commission you have made for Ateneo Art Gallery – builds on issues and strategies associated with conceptual art. Did you get interested in Conceptual art when you were in UP where Roberto Chabet taught? You must have known him. Did he teach you at all or did you teach alongside him?
JA. I sat in his classes when I was teaching but I was never an official student. Yes, the conceptual aspect of my work came from him and from hanging out with the likes of Nilo Ilarde and Gerry Tan at openings.
TG. You remained an independent and didn’t become a Chabetee.[3] Did you get on with him?
JA. Perhaps, I became a Chabetee by osmosis. I did find it all a bit over my head at times but Chabet was very supportive of how I did things and knew how to draw things out of us.
TG. It is interesting that you reference chatting with Nilo and Gerry as your source not reading Lucy Lippard’s book on Conceptual Art or scanning Art Forum. Were you a big reader of art magazines and books?
JA. My earlier influence was Abueva who taught me steel welding and wood carving. I do not read as much as I should but I did read your book on Conceptual art. I think Nilo gave me a copy in the early 2000s. You signed it for me a couple of years ago.
TG. Like any Filipino of your generation you lived through difficult times: Marcos, Martial law, the EDSA protests. Was your work ever political directly or indirectly? Of course, whether conceptual art is implicitly politically or ideologically radical is a vexed question.
JA. My work was never overtly political like that of the “Salingpusa” group who were my classmates, like Manny Garibay, Mark Justiniani or Joy Mallari. I felt the oppression like everyone else but I guess I was too self-absorbed to care enough to put it in my work.
TG. So, could we say that your work is a dialogue with material culture – manufactured objects – not politics or social issues. Though of course material culture is always entangled with social and ideological issues.
JA. Yes, we can say that.
TG. I sense you are wary of a theoretical analysis here. Did you and your generation read, for example, Roland Barthes on ideology and how objects and images construct meaning? As someone who worked in advertising you must be very aware of how imagery can affect or manipulate us!
JA. Haha, yes I am wary of that. I’m sure I did most of the required reading in school but hardly on my own. I preferred to infer the ideology while being entertained by fictional writing. Yes, advertising imagery is powerful because it is appealing (like evil). I would like to say my work is more supernatural or spiritual, but I’m afraid I will not be able to defend that well enough.
I just read this morning (though not fictional) some scripture about the prophet Joshua who propped a large stone up against an oak tree and declared that inanimate object as witness to the covenant between God and his chosen people. This resonates with me.
TG. How interesting! The monks at Don Bosco will be glad to hear you are still reading your bible! Do you still attend mass regularly. Do you have statues of the Virgin Mary or Santo Nino[4] in your house? And I recall you are working on a religious building.
JA. I read the bible (on-line) and attend mass (now on-line) daily. I have a statue of the Virgin and the Archangel Rafael in my shed upstairs (my second name is Rafael). I’m still part of the fundraising shows with Mike Munoz to raise funds to restore the old San Sebastian Bassilica in Recto. It’s made of steel and is rusting from the inside. We were asked to incorporate some of the removed rust into our works for that show.
TG. How is the restoration going?
JA. Good! A lot of scientists involved in that project. But a long way to go. At least nothing has fallen on any mass-goer’s head so far, but we all can guess what will be said about that if it happens, haha.
TG. You have never made a religious icon though? or been commissioned to make one?
JA. I’ve done some crucifixes out of steel for individual’s homes but nothing for a church so far.
TG. Let’s hope a commission comes soon! I would love to see what you would make! Going back to One and twenty-one chairs what I found fascinating is that each of the twenty-one tiny chairs still looks modernist. It is as if modernism is in the plastic’s DNA or is a disease that has spread through the chair.
JA. Haha, that’s right! It could also be my age. Mid-century design aesthetic is a disease that has spread completely into my psyche.
TG. Haha! Has your father diagnosed you as suffering from Alvar Aalto?
JA. Or Eero Saarinenitis, haha.
TG. Is that why in the next work – Cronenberg Lamps – you have tried to make the chairs look Gothick? to escape modernism, or to heal yourself?
JA. That wasn’t a real intention, they just turned out that way like a failed teleportation experiment
TG. Was it a response just to that one film, not to Cronenberg’s wider body of work
JA. Yes, The Fly.
TG. While we are talking about movies, what sort do you enjoy? And also, you mentioned reading novels rather than art criticism. What novels are your favourites?
JA. Mostly sci-fi films. I read a bit of Flatland after you recommended it but didn’t finish yet. Though not sci-fi, I liked Michel Tournier’s Friday, a retelling of the Robinson Crusoe story. I sometimes imagine myself as stranded in a place where I need to build things and make do with what’s available.
Recently watched TENET by Chris Nolan but couldn’t understand it. Need to watch it again
TG. You like books and movies about other worlds – and imagine yourself as a bricoleur there!
JA. Right!
TG. How about music? When you are in the work-shed or the painting studio do you have music on – if so, what do you prefer? Or do you work in monastic silence?
JA. It is never silent up there, I hear the street. My work is also quite noisy at times so I can’t hear the music. I try sometimes but get distracted and also need to hear if tiny footsteps are approaching so I can shut down the grinder or welder
TG. SBWF – what does this title mean? I believe you made this work for a show celebrating your sixtieth birthday.
JA. Ah yes, it means Seasoned Beginner, Finders Weepers. I think of myself as starting over from scratch every time I work on a show, probably to mirror my struggle of daily conversion as a spiritual person. I’ve gotten good at beginning, but the trick is to endure to the end. Finders weepers is a play on finders keepers. Weeping is the reaction to finding the end.
The painting Snakes and ladders was supposed to be in that show but didn’t make it. The game is about falling and getting up again. Are you familiar with that game in England?
TG. Yes, we are to the point that snakes and ladders is used as a metaphor for life, and its unpredictability. They are very big snakes you have painted!
JA. I guess that says it all. The painting is supposed to be an oversized version of the board. I will show it in Finale next year at the Tall gallery along with some oversized chairs and maybe rulers
TG. I look forward to that! I am aware that there are many things we have not talked about: your word pieces and your continuing love affair with iron, steel and rust, but to conclude can I ask how the pandemic has affected you. Has it been a good or bad time to work? Has it made you stand back and think about what you do – and why?
JA. It might be insensitive so say the pandemic has done me good, but somehow it has. I am more focused on tasks at hand and more importantly attentive to my interior and family life. Strangely enough, I’ve had more sales during the pandemic than a whole pandemic free year. Perhaps it’s the “revenge spending” of the collectors. I am a consummate beginner of things with a pronounced fear of finishing. Lockdowns have made me more conscious of that and more committed to actually finishing things.
TG. I think that is a nice spot to stop on. Thanks for your patience, Johnny.
JA. Thanks Tony, I enjoyed this. Thank you too and my regards to Geraldine!
TG. Will do! Have a good day!
Housing Development Board – residential tower blocks constructed by the state for the ordinary people. ↑
University of the Philippines – a large state-run university ↑
The many ex-students of Roberto Chabet who remain devoted to him are often referred to as “Chabetees.” ↑
Santo Nino is the name of the Christ child, but treated here as an independent saint. ↑