TUESDAY IN THE TROPICS 184
24th October 2023
Dear friends and colleagues
As I said two weeks ago there were three outstanding exhibitions I had seen recently that I wanted to report on.
As if to tease collectors of his work Buen Calubayan in his exhibition, (at Blanc Gallery, closed September 14) entitled Eye Level Viewpoint, hung his paintings on the storage racks in the mezzanine stock room and devoted the “official” gallery spaces on the floor above to his alternately complex and minimal installations. In the Philippines, as elsewhere it is almost invariably the case that collectors are comfortable with paintings, but wary of installations – as in, “Sorry, but I haven’t got the space for that – and I don’t understand it anyway.”
On the three large plate glass windows of the gallery Calubayan had printed three diagrams: one of a Ifugao genealogical chart, one derived from Rudolf Steiner on education, thirdly, Descartes’ Diagram of Oracular Refraction. References perhaps to history, learning and seeing.
Also in the gallery was his Bird Deterrent System: Rice Field, a grid of string stretched across the two gallery spaces. Would this work? I doubt it. The work for me had more interesting connotations to me of minimalism and land measurement (miniature hectares which are squares rather than acres which are elongated ploughing strips). Like an Agnes Martin painting it was at once geometric and surprisingly sensual, white on white.
I doubt it sold, but I gather all nine paintings downstairs did. Even down in the stock room he sought to create a theoretical superstructure. On a table were laid out a selection of books and texts: Jacques Ranciere, The Time of Landscape; Marco D’Eramo, The World in a Selfie; Nicholas Mirzoaff, How to see the world; Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer; Vinod Goel, Sketches of Thought. There was a handwritten list of painting titles: 1. On Dynamic Unity, 2. Satellite, 3. eye level viewpoint, 4. fever as symptom of evolution, 5. tree diagram, 6. atmospheric, archipelagic, speculative, 7. Towards entropy, 8. 9.[1]
Given so much theory might expect his paintings to be a bit dry, anaemic or academic but, on the contrary, they were heartily full blooded. He is a natural, instinctive painter. There were nine large paintings, but apart from the one on the front rack you could only see one at a time by pulling the storage rack it was on out. This did emphasise the uniqueness of each work. There was also a fun participatory element too! Seeing each painting one by one became an unusually personal event.
As I saw it, these were much like previous paintings of his: tonal abstracted landscapes. But over them had swept, like leaves blowing in the wind, or cascades of notes in a piano cadenza, or small waves rippling on a lake’s surface, myriad small rhythmic marks. I attach a detail of the painting entitled tree diagram so you get a better idea. They remind me a little bit of early Lee Krasner paintings.
However, did these paintings and the theoretical superstructure work together?
Buen likes collecting books, reading and thinking. One of his ambitions is to build a library of art and art theory books that other artists can access. That is a facility much lacking in Manila. Existing on nothing but scraps from the internet is rarely sufficient.
I’m sorry but there is no way I could have read all five books when visiting the exhibition let alone getting on Amazon to order up copies of Descartes’ Principia Philosophiae and his Essais philosophiques. Or making some sort of a synthesis of them all. It is off-putting to be given such a big reading list. And, I must admit the last Dokumenta with its all too frequent archives (e.g. piles of books and print outs on tables) has increased my aversion to such presentations.
It is hard not to wish that instead of this display he made some sort of parallel text of his own such as “Monuments of Passaic” by Robert Smithson or the writings on geology by Per Kirkeby. Something less didactic and, like the paintings, more poetic.
Costantino Zicarelli’s exhibition at Art Informal (closed 28th September) was also very complex, albeit in a different way. Indeed, one could call it hermetic. The Tagalog title of the exhibition Malay tuwa noong a mang iha, I-Diyos awra y Sir! repenta ‘la matino? was translated into several languages including Italian and English: I’m so happy no matter what, God bless you sir! Do you regret the morning? And followed up with another cryptic line: I was asked once if my Filipino grandmother ate dinosaurs and snakes in the morning. Beyond getting the drift that this melded myth with a personal narrative I was baffled but as I looked at the individual works increasingly impressed. He has always been an exceptional draughtsman and these graphite drawings, partly copied from photographs were impeccably made. Such technical verve was highlighted by copying and expanding his very young daughters first scrawls on the wall behind.
I wish I could I see the show again, preferably with some sort of commentary to help me get some access to the intended meanings. I could see there was a strong connection between the mythical/historical/racial/cultural elements in the sequence of drawings and the play on representation – one accentuated in a sculpture enclosed in glass box that was itself written and drawn on.
Allan Balisi’ show, entitled among the good wishes, at Silverlens (closed 23rd September) did not have the same complexity or opacity as the two other shows. These were paintings based on photographs with something of the same ironic/elegiac orchestration that Luc Tuymans puts into his paintings. They were rather silent works, laconic. Moments stopped in time. All extraneous details edited out. Enigmatic. Subtly painted with a gentle and discreet touch.
Let’s speak again in two week’s time,
Tony
- The two paintings by Buen unnamed on this list are Distinction of clouds amongst clouds and On Inner Landscape. You can find a full visual documentation of the exhibition but no texts on https://www.facebook.com/blancgallery/ ↑