Tainted and stained: A Baysulangpu exhibit at Thrive Art Gallery

1 of 6

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

DÁGTÀ, translated to English, may refer to a stain, a blot, or anything that taints. In its verb form, it may be understood as the act of blemishing or painting a certain object or material. Construed through an artistic lens, it evokes the use of paint or any coloring material intended to emphasize, or perhaps, to contrast themes and subjects through variations of color, hue, tint, or shade.

This reference was not lost to the Baysulangpu Art Society’s new exhibit at Thrive Art Gallery. Aptly entitled ‘Dagta-an’, the lean collection of art by young local painters attempts to offer new visual fare to the Ilonggo audience; while their themes may be archetypally familiar, they nonetheless infuse new flavors to their homely subjects albeit in a profusion of chromatic combinations, as befits the title of the exhibit.

Not that this is something new for the artistic group. Baysulangpu – a clever anagram on ‘pula nga subay’ (red ants) – has been around since 2001; their artists have been projecting scenes from the varied spectra of our social strata on their canvases since then. Evoking the sensation of the red ants’ agonizing bite and their communal tendencies, art becomes an instrument to sound the clarion call of advocacy for these artists.

The group’s new generation of artists updates this coming to terms with social realities, even while experimenting with new methods or lenses of art. Featuring the artworks of Arnold Almacen, Dea Mikaela Bañas, Edmar Colmo, Edwin De los Reyes, Johanz Mercurio, June Moreno, Kimpoy Dela Cruz, Onofre Ballescos, Vivien Gardose, and Yanni Ysabel, the exhibit constitutes a young and motley collection, offering a diverse selection where hue and variety seem to be the only central anchor to the visual feast.

Central to the exhibit is the human visage in various distortions or fragmentations. Among others, Colmo’s superimposed faces propose a plurality of personalities even as these are rendered in reticent hues of grays; in stark contrast are Bañas’s astronauts hovering through canvases in brilliant colors, still devoid of identities or temperaments. As if to comment on this duality of the human persona, Moreno’s full-blown portraits splattered with vibrant colors exude the depth and profundity which defines our Being; on the other hand, the complexity of our humanity seems to seep through the haze of Gardose’s impressionist faces.

Complementing the human face is the corporeal figure: for one, Yanni Ysabel seems to have transcended from her demure depictions of human flesh to a full nude, languid and painted in flaming colors. Conversely, the warping and abstraction of both Dela Cruz and Almacen’s nudes, with the flamboyant stabs and daubs of colors, seem to further heighten rather than diminish the humanity of the nameless personas.

On a more religious note, Mercurio’s cubist settings of Christ and the Virgin Mary recall something from either a Picasso or Dali. ‘Derivative’ might be the apt modifier, but there is an honest religiosity embedded in the sinuous geometry and the sharp contrasts employed that fascinatingly melds the minimalist with the representational. Pun intended, there is a mercurial quality to his artwork.

Deviating from this plethora of faces and figures are Ballescos’s abstract appliques: pieces of cloth and sundry material sewn and stitched to create random patterns and configurations, exuding a certain pensive attachment for one who spectates life. The irregularity of shapes, shades, and stitches contributes haphazard and unpredictable nuances – as if the cloth and thread attempt to mend the brokenness of life itself.

* * * * *

If the intention of the exhibit was to present the discerning audience with fresh perspectives with which to view the world through rose-colored glasses, then it was a promising start. Perhaps, the artworks contain more of the personalities of the artists rather than the social realities that Baysulangpu was renowned for, but where does the understanding of the Other begin if not with the Self? ‘Tainted’ with visual assertations that may be construed as too intimate, the canvases nonetheless provoke us with new ways of seeing and thinking.

Then again, is this not the function of Art?

[The writer is the subject area coordinator for Social Studies in one of the private schools in the city. The photos are from Thrive Art Gallery.]