TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 170
2nd August
Dear friends and colleagues
On “reading” exhibitions
How curious it is that after two and more years of pandemic to be getting back in the groove – visiting Manila once or twice a month and seeing the exhibitions. Getting re-connected. But, actually, it doesn’t feel curious at all. It doesn’t feel strange. This is my normality returning. What else have I been doing for 45 years but regularly going to exhibitions of contemporary art and writing about some of them?
Of course, all this time I have been doing it virtually, via the internet, but that leaves you – or certainly leaves myself – feeling a greater sense of disconnection, or alienation or estrangement if you like – Marx’s entfremdung. Carl Andre would say it isn’t really art we are seeing here, but a pornography of art only – a lie. And, of course, Trumpism and the profusion of fake news have tainted the whole internet as somehow corrupted.
Having worked for Sotheby’s once I also look at the big contemporary sales there and at Christies. It seems increasingly unreal. The prices! Who are these artists I have never heard of who well for seven figures and upwards?
No artist from our region reaches that stratosphere of multi-million dollar prices. Does that mean we are a region of global bargains?
Elaine Navas. Drawings
Elaine Roberto Navas who we know from the interview with her on arttalksea.com was showing at Silverlens. At the time of that interview she had been making large drawings of trees. Some of these were shown here, but the other three walls of the gallery were given over to larger paintings of trees. It was a logical development – she has always been known as a painter – one with a feel for paint. But, even more than the drawings per se they look like anatomical drawings of veins and arteries. The drawing – the black lines – is still predominant. Indeed, they look much like drawings with a coloured wash on top.
Elaine Navas. Paintings
Elaine Navas. Painting
Elaine Navas. Painting. Detail
We see the same tree from different angles. In others branches expand out onto and across extra, added canvases – as if their life force demands more space. I like them and I am sure they will sell better than the drawings (works on paper are hard to sell in the Tropics). But I prefer the drawings – not so easy on the eye but so very focused.
As you may know I am a purist. I like to go to exhibitions, look at the work without reading any text unless it is included as an integral part of the show eg in large print on the wall. As always here there is a text (by Cocoy Lumbao) about the work available by scanning with your mobile or at the gallery website (https://www.silverlensgalleries.com/exhibitions/2022-06-30/what-did-the-tree-learn-from-the-earth-to-be-able-to-talk-with-the-sky). Always I read the text later – if I am interested or challenged by the work.
I presume many more people now visit exhibitions by internet than by foot. How many read the text? How many just glance at the pics? Has anyone done a survey? Do more people read the text than in the days of printed catalogues? What has changed?
At Art Informal in one of the smaller upstairs rooms Stephanie Frondoso is showing small paper works. She is best known as a writer. I always think writers on art who show their visual work are brave: FT artists tend to not take them seriously.
Stephanie Frondoso. Installation with plant being watered
Clearly these are made by laying leaves and flowers on photographic paper and exposing them to light. Inevitably they suffer by comparison with the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins. The simpler they are the better. I didn’t see the point of having an overgrown plant in the room either.
Of course, she wrote her own text. I found it on my gallery email announcement – it is not on the gallery website which is a year out of date. Why? Does no one read websites anymore? Do we have to look for everything on Facebook? She writes of how she used Gumamela flowers – which die soon after being picked. Of how growing plants on her roof garden was a key action for her through the pandemic. They were Lumen prints or photograms made by placing flowers and leaves on darkroom paper and exposing them to light. Spattering the with assorted stuff- vinegar, wine, spices, etc. What I had failed to see was that the overgrown plant grew out of a doll’s house – something I had failed to spot.
The text made it sound interesting. I am sure the experimenting was fun. However, for me, the actual results were not as coherent as the concept was.
Downstairs Dr Karayom (or Dr Needle in English) was showing. When he worked as a street artist he had to use a pseudonym – and it has stuck. His “real” name is Racel Trinidad. His drawings, installations and sculptures – often large – are almost always in red – like blood. His work is very direct, he has verve, he draws well. His work is more subtle than it initially seems.
Dr. Karayom
He too wrote his own text. The gallery announcement gave it in Tagalog only. Which is unusual – the art world here normally talks in English. There was however an English translation on Facebook:
POEM FOR ADULTS
Pissed from the waist to the knee high
Spit on a plant full of thorns and fruits
Picked the flower just to decorate
Ran through the woods just around noon
Strike the grass to grow
Broke an egg of the frogs
Cut stem is the one that was measured
In the land that the guard laid
Fever, had dinner
A muscle is shaking
Cold and sweaty
The body is so hot
Smells like an adult
Anger is the word
To the child who only knows what to do
Oh, be happy…
It may not be Double-U-Bee Yeats but it adds something, or suggests something, to the exhibition. I wish it had been written up on the wall so it was part of my exhibition experience, rather than something I saw a day later.
Dr. Karayom
Detail
Next door at Drawing Room was an exhibition by Maria Jeona Zelota. Nine years ago in an interview I made for an exhibition by her in Singapore I asked her “Do you think most young women want to be nine years old again?” And she replied, “Yes! But I don’t just want to be nine: I think I really am. I often don’t know what I am doing, but I carry on doing it.” In strait-laced Singapore the willfullness of her installation, its OTT cacophony of kitsch, smut and brio was seen as a breath of fresh air.
I own a cabinet piece by Cyan Dayrit. He told me that one of the bottles in it is filled with Jeona’s urine. It is the sort of outrageous gesture – “puerile” in the strict sense of the word – childish – she often made. Like waving a dildo at a prize-gIving (Ateneo Art Awards 2014). But she has always been one of the most individual and talented artists going. Nine years on there is little sign of her having recently become a mother. She is still herself; she is still nine years old.
Maria Jeona Zelota. Entrance to exhibition
Maria Jeona Zelota
Maria Jeona Zelota. First day at School
But putting up so much work up, and treated in such a cavalier fashion, unstretched, placed on floor as part of the installation cannot endear her to collectors. One thinks of artists like Colin Self who were equally prolific and who likewise showed work en masse – and were always underestimated. Were I a collector I would collect the small sketches and paste them into a book – just like old-time collectors of drawings or prints used to do. That is one way to catch the vitality without filling rooms, and one way to spot the recurrent obsessions. What is with this girl surrounded by teeth? A baby or herself waiting to come out the womb?
Maria Jeona Zelota. Drawing
If there is a text I couldn’t find it. Drawing Room does not keep its website updated either.
On to Luis Santos at Mo Space where the text[1] is always shown printed and fixed to the wall. That can be a problem when the idea is too interesting. The text talked about how his grandfather’s mind disintegrated through a hereditary condition. The paintings tried to simulate this breakdown.
Luis Santos
The two works on glass were more fetching, that featured alone in the smaller of two rooms looked especially good… except that like everything shown in that room it had to fight with the intrusive presence of the AC unit.
How, I wonder, would the minimalist Scott Burton have dealt with it? Perhaps made a simpler more aesthetic, non-working AC unit as a sculpture.
But I am wandering from the point, which is, “Because of the internet and texts you can scan into your cell phone is the relationship of words or writing to the visual or experiential aspect of an artwork changing?”
Have a good August
Speak again in September
Tony
- By his sister Carina Santos – also an artist. ↑