A group exhibition, opening today and will run until Jan. 7 at the ArtistSpace in Ayala Museum, presents time-tested Realism genres imbued with a fresh palette of Filipino contemporaneity.
Realism according to Jonathan Rañola, Joseph Villamar, and Janice Luison-Young of the group show Trilogy, is comfortably situated in a position of being an “eye candy” to lure our sight to awe, and by such allurement lead the onlooker to an affectation of sentimental warmth.
Aspects of form, harmony, and unity were clearly articulated by the artists of Trilogy.
Luison-Young in depicting flowers in full bloom delicately unraveled the peculiar fold, tinge of softness, tone of refracted light, and supple hue of each petal radiating from their center. This lovely series may bring in nuances from Georgia O’Keefe’s series of floral oil paintings.
For Luison-Young, taking the flower theme and using its radial formation as an image to entice the viewer acts as a perception valve to switch one’s focus to a mode of visual contemplation—to simply attend to what is visibly and directly attractive and natural. To O’Keeffe, the delicate blooms stood as some of the most overlooked pieces of naturally occurring beauty objects that the bustling contemporary world ignored.
For Rañola’s variations on the theme of innocent playfulness, what can be perceived right away is a language of visual opulence teeming with life, ostensibly unfolding a lush weaving of nature forms in a manner Art Nouveau interlaces pictorial elements.
Movement, suggested here by the undulating lines and ink stipples, also adds to the dynamics of emotions in relationship to its idyllic fount of inspiration. As an accomplished book illustrator, Rañola patiently tell a familiar story (also taken by Amorsolo) about a child’s wonder and about a devotional cuddle of a mother-babe embrace.
Inventively presented in embellished frames, his works ultimately speak about billows of imagination engulfing the young lost in fantasy represented repeatedly as intertwining foliage, and as windblown hair locks (among other compositional cues). Thus, his picture-making ventures created scenes and portraits that float like thought emblems caught in past memories of childhood glee.
Masterly. Timeless. Perfect. Filipino. Nothing bears the nearness of a description to the works of Villamar than approximating them to these four words.
Masterly because many art enthusiasts may liken Villamar’s rendition of the country lass motif to the manner how Amorsolo created it as his own trademark figure, and his invention of the Filipina archetypal model, i.e., the dalagang bukid of yesteryears. Timeless because any artist who successfully plugged into the genre of the Madonna and Child motif is like charging an iPhone to an electric outlet, and expect it to work efficiently.
Perfect because Villamar applied all the admonitions of a stalwart Realist—that subject, line, color, composition, and interpretation must be set on the observable matrix of the physical world, and the canons of art. And Filipino because the distinct facial expression, complexion, poise, and earth swatch of pigments applied on each painting had appealed to the full regalia of image and sentiment characteristic to iconic Filipino.
No less than the masterful approach of figuration of a Vicente Manansala and of a Burne Hogarth did Villamar, with utter confidence, took the age-old genre in skillful rendition to offer viewers this cherished image of maternal bond.
In his propensity to make countless editions of the mother-child motif, the Batangueño artist continues to raise the counter-argument to the postmodernist’s belief that anything traditional is passé, and stress further that art from the past continues to be cogently traditional and traditionally cogent. In other words, ageless motifs are inexhaustible wells of inspiration.
