|
I GREW
up in Davao City in the 1970s at the height of timber
trade. Wood was, therefore, a familiar sight. Houses,
electric posts, bridges, bleachers, ports and many other
public structures were mostly made of wood then. Well,
now...not anymore. I was, therefore, struck with a
strong sense of nostalgia when I viewed Standing Sticks,
featuring the works of Tony Twigg, now on exhibit at
Galleria Duemila.
Twigg’s
fascination for the object and the medium of wood is
clearly (de)constructed and (re)celebrated in his past
and present works. For instance, in 2005, in Malaysia,
he impressed many art critics with vertical
constructions—and “construction” is the term he uses for
his artworks, utilizing fish boxes installed as wall
sculptures. The lattice-like effect of his “stacking” of
fish-box materials created an object of art that is all
at once traditional and contemporary. His compositions
show careful attention to creating “spaces” in relation
to creating material structures. In fact, much of his
work seems to essay the relationship of space within
structure and of structure within space.
Expanded Disc (Se gme nts),
enamel
paint on timber construction, 57.13"x76.83", 2008, Tony
Twigg
Space
appears to be an increasingly scarce aesthetic
consideration in Metropolitan Manila. Gone are the days
when public structures are built with the idea of
spaciousness, or with the idea of privileging the
silhouettes of space that they create. Such grandness in
the treatment of space can be seen in the much-maligned
Cultural Center of the Philippines, where the approach
to the building, the outside space, is as pleasing as
being hosted by its interiors of voluptuous curves and
angles of textured concrete. To this very day, this work
of the late National Artist Leandro Locsin never ceases
to amaze me. His cantilevered boxes trick the eye into
thinking that these massive structures are made of
wicker, instead of steel and cement. This mastery of
lines, curves, space, mass and, yes, even the detail in
coloration and texturing is most definitely possessed by
Twigg and most expertly presented in his latest exhibit
in the Philippines.
5
Standing Sticks properly introduces exhibitgoers to
Twigg’s romance with wood and space. This piece reminds
me of Arturo Luz’s delicate drawings, or Pierre
Mondrian’s works revolving around rectangles and
squares. Unlike Luz’s drawings or Mondrian paintings,
however, this piece is three-dimensional and made of
solid-wood constructions almost totemic in its scale of
more than seven feet in height. From afar, the piece
appears to be unpainted or untreated. Up close,
however, Twigg’s totemic construction, one that reminds
me of truncated ladders leading to the sky, reveals very
thin application of enamel paint. This spare use of
paint allows for the subtleties in the texture of wood
to appear in the surface of the “skin” of the work. In
some parts, the grain of the wood can actually be
noticed. This artistic and technical decision on the
part of the artist translates to me as a willingness or
an intent to work with nature, and to evoke its ultimate
creative power and never to overwhelm it. As Twigg also
works with “found objects,” his pieces also collaborate
with the “original” creators of the components of his
works. This openness in borrowing and attribution
results in art objects, or, yes, “constructions,” that
are vividly imaginative yet grounded and embedded in the
natural and social spaces of their material origins.
In this
exhibit, Twigg explores the sculptural possibilities of
the circle. In Expanded Disc (Segments), Twigg lays
down 11 bars of wood forming a picket fence-like
arrangement. An oval shape is cut out of the very center
of this “fence” that he rejoins with fragile-looking
smaller segments. The oval is offset from the grayish
beige fence-like bars by an application of a thin layer
of pale-blue enamel paint. The effect is rather
enchanting, something like viewing a lake through a
latticed oval window of a Japanese chaya (tea house), or
seeing the moon through strands of reed. In this case,
a truncated arrangement of mass contains within itself
an oval shape of released space.
In
Expanded Disc (Strawberry), Twigg throws away the picket
fence-like bars and directly works with a cut-out wooden
circular construction that he reconfigures and expands
outward with lateral projection and upward with a
joining of segments. The deep mahogany brown shapes with
reddish overtones contrast sharply with the stark white
background on which they are laid. The rounded sides of
the far right and left segments define the lateral
limits of the oval, while curvilinear tops and bottoms
of the segments in between define its vertical limits.
This time the traced edges of the truncated mass itself
conjure the oval shape. This arrangement of enameled
wood reconfigured over a two-dimensional plane reminds
me of the painted cutout paper compositions of Matisse,
albeit in a less floral and more constructivist
rendering in wood. Oddly, the reddish overtones on dark
mahogany and the uneven rectangular shapes within the
larger oval shape do evoke a strawberry.
In
Expanded Disc (Night), Twigg reprises the oval expansion
of the circular mass. However, perhaps in mild
deconstruction, he inverts the inner segments of the
composition. This time, the absence of curvilinear
edges no longer as clearly suggests the expanding oval.
The upper and lower edges of the inner segments now
become dots that suggest a curve. These dots relate to
the leftmost and the rightmost rounded slivers that
anchor the oval composition and temper the
deconstruction of the inverted panels. This time the
graduated scale of the truncated mass suggests the oval.
In my mind, this piece is most interesting because of
its parallel gradation in color consisting of a flow of
dark mahogany from the sides to deep purple and indigo
toward the center. The gradation suggests to me the
nighttime journey of the moon. As it moves across sky,
it creates illusions that distort our usual hold on
shapes and colors, indeed magical in creating a
different world which, in my opinion, is a similar magic
in the opening of spaces released by Twigg’s
explorations in the expanding disc.
Twigg
makes it a point to stress that he works “from both
Sydney and the Philippines.” Could one place be the
source of inspiration for the orderly disc and the other
the truncated bars?
***Standing Sticks is on view at Galleria Duemila until
May 31. For inquiries: (632) 831-9990 or 833-9815,
duemila@mydestiny.net, www.galleriaduemila.com. |
