LAYERS AND LAKESIDE IMAGES

In his most recent one-man exhibition, Aaron Bautista explores the gradual transition of his beloved hometown Angono, through a series of different layers and the slow merging of images from both the representational and non-representational plane of images.

Angono, being the hometown of two national artists, namely Lucio San Pedro for music and Carlos "Botong" Franscisco for the arts, has been regarded as an arts town of the Philippines. This, maybe due to its rich cultural heritage and remote isolation from the modern emerging community. It basically remains pure from the deceiving clutches of political industrialization However, as the municipality slowly gears toward modernization; it may also be a big possibility that the town might lose its old world feel, in turn affecting its influence towards its homegrown inhabitants.

This concept inspires Bautista to materialize this show, because for him, his hometown Angono is a very integral part of his maturization both as a person and as a visual artist. It's a personal journey--his take on his town's progressive evolution towards change. This change, either leaning over the positive or negative trajectory, remains to be an unanswered mystery, which makes Bautista's show interesting to both Angono residents and everyone else who isn't.

This show is a very experimental take for Bautista as an artist, because this is the first time, after his long transient period of delving purely over abstracts, that he once again plays with the possibilities of figurative art. Beneath his paintings lie a layer of printed images, toned a dark, burnished hue of sepia for its old world feel. This provides good contrast to the paintings, since Aaron's abstracts had always been known to be composed of strong, vibrant colors. In the artist's attempt to produce an illusion of a visible reality, he mixes the two opposing layers visually, creating a soft, dream-like feeling of chaos resulting from the spontaneous mixture of images. The pictures beneath vary from an old portrait of an anonymous couple to a scene taken from Angono's famed Higantes Festival or Feast of San Clemente. Everything taken from the town, and by the town itself.

Viewed from another perspective, the artist's incorporation of picture prints could mean two contradicting reactions: either the destruction of a beautiful picture as it embraces the confines of abstraction, or the rebirth of a new image through the embodiment of the artist's usual colorized layers of red, yellow, blue, and green.

This decision he leaves to his audience.

Images: Aaron Bautista

Texts: Dave Lock

UNTITLED STROKES

Have you ever been in an art exhibit and read the title of an artwork simply labeled “untitled”? You see the concept; you get what the artwork means, what the artwork says. You recognize the artist’s inspiration. You recognize the artist’s influence and message. Sometimes if one is art inclined or gifted it’s even easy to put a “title” on an “untitled” artwork. But instead you still wonder why the artist chose not to label it with one.

Have you ever been in an art exhibit and almost felt the strokes of the artist/s? That even when you saw the painting in a picture beforehand, you realize seeing it with your own two eyes face to face with the artwork, it seems different because of the artist’s strokes? You get to feel the weight of their brush, how expressive they have performed the stroke, how gentle they controlled their emotions and let it play on the canvas. Other artists even surprise you, because sometimes when you see the artist, you look at them and you see them looking like a drummer in a heavy metal band. Which would often lead to a person looking like he has big broad arms, body piercing, tattoos and whatnot. But the surprise part comes when you see their artworks, see and analyze their strokes and feel their strokes to be gentle as cotton’s kiss, gentle as the morning Christmas air. And you wonder again, how is it possible. And then you realize that these strokes tell more about the artist and tell more about how he sees and how to approach his artwork in his eyes.

UNTITLED STROKES features the artworks of artists that in having first glances at their work not only show a very promising group but also tells you a story that they wish to portray even before you get to see the show. Their exhibit title is again, Untitled Strokes, it is as if their saying that titles means so little, that you’d have to see their artworks up front, close and personal. They wouldn’t label their strokes for us, what style or technique they are aiming for. They want us to feel their strokes, not label them.

Everyone has a name, everything is called something, but not every painting should have a title, not every painting should have an identifying class of which style or genre or feel it belongs to. The artist is the only one who can determine that. They have freedom to identify their strokes or style simply be unidentified, unlabelled.

There is an interior design Zen saying, “More is Less” painters also have something similar, “Nothing is Everything”. Have you ever played the word game Scrabble? It’s the game where you outwit your opponent with the words you can construct with the limited letters you possess. You are given a number of letters in a half an inch plastic square, letter per letter. One letter per half an inch of plastic square, yet also in the game gives you a blank square, a half an inch plastic square which give the player the power to proclaim whatever letter he desires to get an advantage in the game.

Nothing is Everything. A blank canvas possess endless of possibilities, what more paintings with Untitled Storkes? It possesses a meaning of endless of meanings, not to be tamed in words but to be unleashed in mystery and more on the emotion and connection with the artist to the audience. Titles on their paintings yes, but their strokes remain silent, the strokes remain untitled.

Image: Julmard Vicente

Texts: Marius Black