Jenardson Cabilao

SMOKING, GONE Leslie de Chavez's Stirring the Ashes What was Leslie de Chavez up to when he gave out bullet keychains as souvenirs in his latest exhibit? Simply, it's a reminder, something that we surely need in today's society where issues are forgotten as soon as they are made. Stirring the Ashes, de Chavez's latest exhibit, explores the political issues that had come and go, and how there are still questions yet to be answered. Every detail in his installations are intentional, they mean something. "Palingenesis" is a giant scourge, mostly seen during the Holy Week rituals in Pampanga, with the ends of each thong a bust of President Marcos, reflecting our country's self-flagellation through the almost re-election of another Marcos into Malacanang. At the end of the handle is a spear tip pointing to another installation involving the large fiberglass head of Jose Rizal, referencing the campaign to bury Marcos as a hero. "Quicksand" is a picture of our decisions as a country, where each carabao horn gilded on the inside represents the possible paths and our predictions, and we are shown as a lead figure of the three wise monkeys. But the items are placed in what was once a sandbox made for de Chavez's children, relaying to us a sinking feeling that we experience one bad decision after another. More than the aforementioned souvenir, bullets and guns are a partial theme, with the initial-engraved wooden rifles and "Operation Exodus" to the bullet rain aftermath of "Tension-Attention-Retention". The former is a memorial to the 44 SAF soldiers, and the latter a piece of the now common scene in front of our screens, where it's another day, another gunfight. Stirring the Ashes tells the audience to remember, and to not let go of what is true, to paraphrase a piece of text in another installation. Questions are yet to be answered, and although de Chavez cannot give an answer, he knows what matters is to keep asking. Stirring the Ashes is on display until September 17 at the Ateneo Art Gallery, Level 2, Rizal Library Special Collections Building, Ateneo de Manila University, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Gallery hours are from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. For more information, contact the Exhibitions Coordinator, Tricia Raya at--, or visit www.ateneoartgallery.org. THROUGH OBSCURING LENS Kitty Kaburo's Violent Noon The gallery room's black walls help emphasize the artworks contained in Kitty Kaburo's first solo exhibition, with four frames and a projected video as its centerpiece. One side of the room hangs three framed works, "Ghost Citizens," "Rainbow Express," and "Without Incident," each showing a fragment of city life enclosed in a frame much smaller than the whole of the work. The size of these works make them unassuming and disconcerting, no matter how flashy their colors are. Something is bound to happen in these works, and they are captured right before it happens. Opposite the wall is "More Like Everything Else," one long frame containing a canvas painting of trees that is wider than each of the individual paintings on the other side, making it more spacious than it seems. This representative of nature shows more breathing space than any one of the the three city portraits, but its landscape hints of a foreboding disaster. But there is more to these paintings than their size. Paint-filled ice cubes are placed on a platformed above the paintings and are left to slowly melt and settle. While the three small frames become more obscured, the long canvas at the other side gives a more chaotic output, as if nature is ready to retaliate against whatever it has done to her. The ice itself morphs with the artworks, reflecting the changes that happen today. But what defines the exhibit is "Fluid Space and Time," a time-lapse video of a view of nature slowly being covered by a block of ice melting in reverse, interspersed with various other scenes and distortions and backed by a soundtrack of nature that goes louder as time passed. What results is the marriage of nature and technology, of slow change that has creeped into society. In Violent Noon, Kaburo shows us the way nature and urbanization clash each other and create changes that it has left on its wake. With representations of urban life that have lost their flair just like their real life counterparts, to transformations that took place to get where we are now and will continually happen. Even though the works seem like a blur, her message is clear. IF LONG HAND POINTS AT TWELVE, TIME TO EAT Pam Yan-Santos' Filling up the Big Room The room of this gallery might seem sparse, with only a bed and paintings decorating the simple white walls, it feels like walking into someone's bedroom, only much emptier. But the emptiness of this room is more beckoning than alienating, as the works that fill this emptiness ask you not only to interpret them, but to also remember them, with its subject reminiscent of one's childhood, simple yet fragmented. Three tryptych-like paintings show a living room, a dining table, and a bedroom rendered in a collage-like mix of repetitive patterns made to look like a combination of bits and pieces of memories, but without uniformity or consistency. On the floor below is a caption saying "Fill up the empty spaces", a message to relieve the past that had been forgotten, with the paintings' lack of singularity hidden within its loud patterns. "Of What I Can Remember" Is a row of small canvases, each showing an object, or a part of what can be a bigger picture. Some canvases have something obscuring in the foreground, may it be text, splatters, or the size of the canvas itself. These small paintings try to tell something, but ultimately fail in this mission due to the restrictions imposed on them. The inaccessibility of memories are exemplified by a box of exhibition notes that cannot be opened, but it is filled with pieces of paper containing repeating text. By only allowing us a glimpse of these words, this box emulated the constant struggle of remembering, where the only link to an event is nothing more than a faint moment repeated over and over. "Bed Rest" sends one back to when things are much simpler, when escape from problems comes in the form of a mattress, pillows and blankets. It also gives the otherwise plain wood floor a patch of grass, a change of landscape that is small yet noticeable. Pam Yan-Santos' exhibit has shown that it's what isn't there that usually matters, as the title is also a task, to fill the room with the missing memories of childhood without the meddling of nostalgia and find meaning amid its chaotic appearances. Before you know it, the room has overflown. BONES OF CONTENTION Christina Quisumbing Ramilio's Wit of the Staircase Bones and cakes are the two notable things one can see when you enter this exhibit, possibly giving a sense of unease to the viewer. Prevalent in this exhibit are the combination of these two things, in the form of sets of dental cakes that do not attempt to look tempting. These cakes show the theme of human imperfection when faced with time. Where, just like the cakes, the fine things slowly turn to dust and we can no longer do anything about it. Four works contain wishbones, believed in some cultures to grant wishes when broken. One displays rows upon rows on wishbones arranged neatly, pointing to one direction, and some showing broken ones. These wishbones become a collection of what if's, if only's, and other wishes that can never be granted, as they have already happened, the broken bones being a display of man's effort to continue hoping amid regrets. Included in the exhibit are two contrasting works, one shows a fishing weight closed in a case, and a blanket held by wires above the gallery floor, swaying with the wind blowing through the door of the gallery. These two opposites represent the human as being free to roam yet are prisoners of regret. Fitting for the exhibit's title is a model staircase representing the staircase wit, the moment when you could have done something is by the time you are on its bottom steps. Christina Quisumbing Ramilio chronicles the moments when we hoped we did something else, when the right time comes and we were too late to react. This exhibit shows the imperfection of our ability to react to events, and never failed to skip a beat while doing so. A TRIP TO MARS Mars Ravelo Reinterpreted Darna, Captain Barbell, Lastikman, Bondying. These words have become part of our pop culture, all thanks to one man, Mars Ravelo. 2016 marks the centennary of this influential writer and artist, so it is fitting that it be celebrated with a visual tribute, letting the new reiterate the old. Prefacing the gallery is a display of Ravelo's history, from the typewriter he used to the stories he wrote and drew. It's a rather interesting that a medium that is now all but disregarded was once a staple of pop culture, now TV and Internet does that job, and the doors have been opened to all. That was the Mars Ravelo part, the Reinterpreted part takes up the halls, with different artists giving their take on some of Ravelo's comics. Each reinterpretation takes on the change of medium and message, from the simple representation of a character, such as Fabo's "Lastikman" to the exposition on a work's meaning, like the collage-like mural of Kris Abrigo's "History of the Halimaw", which places the story of sci-fi comic Gog in what looks like flashes of memory. Favorites such as Darna, Facifica Falayfay and Bondying become a character study, respectively given an angle of empowerment (Ernest Concepcion's "D is for Divinity"), identity (Mariano Ching's "Untitled") and image (Masha Dela Cruz's "Mirror Mirror"). And who could miss Ang Gerilya mural that emblazones the wall of the third floor hallway, where Captain Barbell is both the victim and victor to Philippine society's problems? Piece after piece gives the audience a view of the story that is both familiar and unusual, thus mimicking Ravelo writing a story to sell at the stands by making it unique and comprehensible. His comics tell stories that are fantastic yet doesn't stray from the Filipino's story of struggle and victory. All ages and all classes can relate to his characters and their tales page after page. More than a cartoonist, Mars Ravelo is an artist, and in his 100th year, the artists took the hint. BE WARY OF PEOPLE BEHIND YOUR BACK Gino Javier & Czar Kristoff's Incognito Field A McDonald's drive-thru attendant, a butcher slaughtering a whole pig, a guard on night duty, a naked homeless man on a busy sidewalk, someone roasting a pig. These things may seem to be disconnected and random, but some of these things are the ones you simply pass by without a thought when you go outside. Javier and Kristoff's photographs in this exhibit will make you stop and think of subjects that would otherwise be a mere blur in the corner of your eye. Javier's photographs are taken with an unaltered film camera, what one would call disposable, creating the effect that the photo is taken all of a sudden from a long time ago. Each series of photos are then lined in frames, with little to no theme connecting each of them, making us find the meaning of such fleeting moments as they are shown frozen in time. Kristoff then adds to the emphasis of the unassuming with his photographs of scenes from construction sites, throwing in a few pieces of construction material to add to the idea. His contributions are less compared to Javier's, but their showcase adorns the walls and not much else, so it's no loss if you missed something while perusing, the works adding only a bit to the otherwise bleak exhibit space exemplifies the idea. It's this simplicity that brings us to why the exhibit is called Incognito Field. Incognito in today's terminology is connected more to Google Chrome, where the pages you visit are not saved in the browser's histor, but it also related to the notion of surveillance, that of being able to oversee everything without them knowing it. Javier and Kristoff shot, developed, printed and framed things you wouldn't bother looking at for more than a few seconds, and turned them into objects of interest, but this is not about photography, it's about a wider-angled lens, where the majority of its scope shows things that are similar in this exhibit, and the people are ready to watch them. Any flat image becomes interesting when you pin it to the wall or flash it on the screen. Incognito Field lets us be voyeurs, even just for a while. MENAGE A TREATS Peije, Cheryl Owen, and Raine Sarmiento's Diversity Three artists, each with their unique topics, team together with a mix of ideas that meet together just as watercolor meets paper in Diversity. Personality, nature and possibilities gather together in this exhibit. Owen's drawings harmonize women and nature, with portraits of women interacting with nature's various elements. One could think that they're pictures of goddesses of each of nature's seemingly sentient forces. Peije, meanwhile, takes on a person's personality and visualizes them through faces and the additional details that surround them, telling a story that hides behind the straight faces, with the title adding a starting sentence to this tale. Sarmiento asks questions that tickle the imagination and make us wonder. These 'what ifs' ask of eating without consequences, longer nights and breathing underwater among other questions. The answers lies within a portait and the writings on the wall, the most that we could speculate. Each artists' contribution is unique in themselves, but Diversity unifies them, creating an exhibit that tells three ideas, but reads like a seamless story. With such artistic output, three is a crowd.