WHAT was supposed to be a high-brow art exhibit was seemingly eclipsed by the heavy turnout of guests and buyers, becoming more a gathering of friends and Manila’s warmest bodies as Manifesto Gallery opened its latest show, Obsession and Fetishes, on a recent hot Saturday evening at the penthouse of the Clipp Center in Bonifacio Global City North.
Little did the party realize that something under their noses was brimming steadily, humming like dynamos in wait for discovery, as the artifacts were successful as works of art.
In Carlo Calma’s latest project, the viewer is caught in a barrage of sculptural forms seeking liberation from centuries of tradition.
Calma juxtaposes various abstractions to people his universe with often obscure, yet deep, meanings. He finds new ways to blend disciplines and surmount limitations with new modes of being and technology.
Aside from pottery, the artist-architect Calma has begun to experiment with new technology, which he infuses into his pieces. One artwork incorporates neon lights and electronic sensors that detect the slightest human movement. Another artwork combines moving video and backlit photographs for a montage that eerily recalls and satirizes the art of filmmaking itself.
Meanwhile, wunderkind Leeroy New hums the steady rhythm that has made his recognizable artworks appeal to vast audiences using a curious number of found and exotic materials. In a particular sculpture, New creates a grotto made of painted fiberglass that recalls a human orifice. By using monsters, aliens and various body parts as his models, New challenges normative standards and embraces the vulnerabilities of systems in art.
While his work questions our aesthetic standards, nearby a work in oil by another artist celebrates power itself. A medium-sized canvas by Manuel Ocampo features esoteric and enigmatic symbols sitting on a Star of David. The internationally renowned artist continues his plumbing of the depths of his own personal iconography that rebels against the stagnation of the world at large.
Because the work is very Jewish in my estimation, I consider the piece a must-have for any important art collection.
And, talk about importance, Anton del Castillo provides what may be the first-ever glimpse (before its Ateneo Art Gallery debut) of his newest series on metal jackstones.
The metal jackstones are the product of the artist’s deep musings on parenthood and lost childhood, also a “reminiscing effort to linger in the past and portray to the society how simple life was yesterday, how happy and carefree things were and how evident that it is no longer found at present times.”
This sort of reminiscing for lost worlds is re-echoed by Olivia D’Aboville’s lighting installation, which deeply conjures the artist’s love of the sea and underwater life, restating notions that art can be utilitarian, beautiful and pacific at the same time.
A group-art exhibit of this kind would not be complete without perennial favorite RM de Leon, who, again, captivates with his parodies of dislocations of figures on large-scale acrylics. De Leon uses cartoons as his starting point, but the endpoint—what some may call the deconstruction—is more compelling, mysterious, funny and open-ended.
And the fun doesn’t stop there. Jia Estrella overturns the idea of preciousness of ancient Chinese blue-and-white ceramics by playfully transcribing their archaic painted forms on a white water closet, therefore overturning tradition for the more immediate now—an about-face on modernity’s reverence for the traditional and the antique, while making a side glance at the latrine of Marcel Duchamp.
In Obsession and Fetishes, there are more than your average bits of deconstructions and assemblages. There is even a toilet bowl bought by a Russian collector, an explosive testament about the revolutionary power of art.
Obsession and Fetishes runs untill December 20 at the Clipp Center, 39th Street and 11th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City in Taguig City.