Photography by Ricky Villabona
Enlightened Stormtrooper at Art Informal. Who did this?
Ryan Villamael
Rodel Tapaya!
More Jeona Zoleta
MM Yu
Louie Cordero’s ping-pong tables, in detail
Jaime Roque
Art Fair Philippines 2014 is ongoing till Sunday, 23 February at The Link Carpark across from The Landmark department store in Ayala Center, Makati. Entrance fee: Php150 regular, Php50 for students with valid IDs. Open from 10am to 9pm.
Manuel Ocampo explains his exhibit at the Art Fair thus:
“The bird mascots are the artists; they do the work.”
“The horse with the bird is the collectors.”
“The sausage is the profits from the commercialization of art and the stains on the walls are the territorial pee marks of the gallery owners.”
But you do sell art, no? In your gallery shows in Europe you sell paintings?
Hahahahahaha.
Artwork by Lynyrd Paras
When we arrived at the Art Fair, one of the first things we heard was, “John Lloyd is here.” John Lloyd, if you’ve been walled up in the basement for the last several years, is John Lloyd Cruz, one of the biggest film and TV stars in the country, and now an art collector.
“Fabulous. We’ll check out the paintings, and then we’ll look for the John Lloyd.”
A complete circuit of the venue took two hours. A thorough visit would’ve required another couple of hours, but we decided to segue to celebrity-hunting.
“Where in the Art Fair is the John Lloyd?” we asked ourself. We looked in the open bar. They were serving Moet. There was no sign of John Lloyd.
“Think,” we told Moira. “If we were handsome and rich, where would we be?”
We ran into Fernando Zobel de Ayala.
“Okay, put yourself in art collector mode. Where would you go?”
Naturally we ran into our favorite art collector and neurologist, Dr. Joven Cuanang.
“Think hugely successful, massive star,” we said.
So we ran into Vice Ganda. Vice Ganda is awesome. We chatted briefly. Years ago, someone had given him a copy of Twisted. We told him how his latest movie caused popcorn to shoot out of our nose.
“Great, we’ve met the most successful star in Philippine cinema, but we still haven’t spotted John Lloyd.” Everyone we asked had seen him ten minutes ago.
“There’s a Swatch event at 6pm,” Moira pointed out. “He’ll be there for sure.”
“Yes, but he’s expected there. We want to catch him in an unofficial capacity. Put yourself in the mind of an influential personage.”
We promptly ran into Don Jaime Zobel de Ayala.
“My feet hurt,” Moira declared. Your feet would hurt, too, if you’d been walking around for three hours on four-inch stilettos.
“Didn’t you bring flats?”
“Yes, in my bag,” he said.
“Then change your shoes,” we suggested, stupidly.
“Not in public!” Moira gasped in horror.
We were wearing flats, but our feet hurt so we decided to occupy a couch. That’s when we spotted the John Lloyd.
He looks exactly the way he does in the movies.
“We hate your movies but you’re brilliant,” we said. Thaat’s right, open big mouth, eat entire foot. (We must note that in our universe, that is a compliment.)
“That sounds complex,” he said, politely. We kicked ourself in the head.
The couch turned out to be the best-situated seat in the house because everyone had to pass it en route to the bar. Moira spotted Anne Curtis, who graciously posed for photos. Check out her total Dyesebel hommage skirt. (Yes, she and John Lloyd made beso-beso.)
Our couch was so comfortable, we didn’t even get up to snap pictures— we just shot everyone from below, which is a flattering angle.
Artwork by Poklong Anading
When are you going to the Art Fair? Report your sightings!
We’re not convinced that Stendhal’s Syndrome exists—too melodramatic. More likely it’s a fainting spell caused by exhaustion and hypoglycemia after many hours of trooping through museums. However, if Stendhal’s Syndrome is real, the place where you’re most likely to contract it in Metro Manila this week is Art Fair Philippines.
For the second year, The Link Carpark across from the Landmark Department Store in Ayala Center has been transformed into an exhibition space. This year’s Art Fair is at least twice as large as last year’s—apart from the gallery spaces, an entire floor of the building has been given over to exhibits by chosen artists.
Among them is National Artist BenCab, whose accomplishments probably include the invention of skinny jeans by default.
We made a list of the art we would buy if we had an unlimited budget, or steal if we intended a reenactment of The Thomas Crown Affair.
This painting by one of our favorite young artists, Jeona Zoleta (love her initials). According to our friend Moira Lang, secret illegitimate daughter of Fritz Lang (we’re inventing her history, and Fritz Lang reportedly came to Manila in the 70s), Jeona was born during the feast of the Black Nazarene so her name is a contraction of “Jesus of Nazareth”. Ah, Pinoy names.
Cracked by Joven Mansit, who paints from old photographs and embellishes them with bizarreries.
The Flying Cook, a sculpture by Michael Cacnio. What is that manananggal cooking?
Anything by Jaime de Guzman, a prominent artist of the 70s who is being rediscovered today. A retrospective of his work is on view at the Archivo 1984 gallery.
This is not the CCP Main Theatre, oil and video on canvas by Gerardo Tan. We seriously covet this painting, and took to following Gerry around whining, “Pleassse we wantsss the precioussss.”
Bakunawa, this wondrous dragon sculpture by Joy Mallari at Tin-Aw. In mythology, Bakunawa is the sea-serpent that swallowed six of the seven moons in the sky.
The Chapel of Many Saints and Sinners by Geraldine Javier. Apart from an unlimited budget, we’d have to have the good fortune to be high up on the waitlist of Geraldine’s collectors. (Could you make tiny monks we could wear as earrings?)
This gorgeous painting. We don’t know whose it is, but we’re sure someone will tell us. (Moira: The artist is Sarah Geneblazo.)
We knew from halfway across the room that this is a painting by Elaine Navas. We love her work.
Robert Langenegger’s warped reinterpretations of famous paintings. This one is Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above A Sea of Fog transposed to Makati.
Francine and Donna pose with Robert.
Marina Cruz has been painting children’s clothes, and now she’s sculpting them. We heard that John Lloyd Cruz bought two of her works. More on John Lloyd later.
The fabulous ping-pong tables of Louie Cordero. That’s the artist playing ping-pong. You could hang a table from the ceiling and play ping-pong upside-down.
Art Fair Philippines 2014 opens today, 20 February, and runs until Sunday, 23 February. Concurrent with the Art Fair are exhibitions by Elmer Borlongan and Ai Weiwei at the Ayala Museum.
When you go to the Art Fair, tell us which pieces you covet.
We never heard about Isabelo de los Reyes in school. The first time we encountered the name was in Benedict Anderson’s Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-colonial Imagination, which traced the influence of anarchist thought on the works of Jose Rizal and of his contemporary, De los Reyes. If we’d taken up De los Reyes’s book, El Folk-Lore Filipino, we wouldn’t have spent Social Studies class trying to teleport ourselves out of the room.
Published in 1889, El Folk-Lore Filipino was a two-volume compilation of local knowledge. Historian Resil Mojares (The Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes and the Production of Modern Knowledge) calls it the founding moment of “Philippine studies” by Filipinos. These are the moments that build nations, and Mojares pays homage to De los Reyes by creating an archive of his own.
Isabelo’s Archive is a delightful compendium of essays on a wide range of historical subjects. Erudite but never pedantic, intellectual yet accessible, Mojares’s book is a gateway drug to a long, wild trip through our nation’s history. We meet the sorority of cloistered maidens of Philippine epics, from the Ilianon maiden sealed in a room of gold to the Subanon maiden whose suitor must construct a golden bridge “thin as hair” between their houses so that she may never tread on the ground.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes of men with tails in One Hundred Years of Solitude; European missionaries visiting the Philippines in the 17th century reported that among the tribes of Mindoro were men with tails. Herman Melville mentions “Manillamen”—Filipino sailors—in the crew of the Pequod in Moby Dick; an American geographer concluded that Filipino seamen who escaped from the Spanish galleons in Mexico in the 16th century introduced tuba (coconut brandy) to the Huichol Indians.
Mojares ruminates on our notions of time (We have no word for it), and shame, and brings up half-forgotten figures such as Bartolome Saguinsin, possibly the first Filipino to publish a book of poetry; Rufino Baltazar, author of what may be the first book of arithmetic by a Filipino; and Gabriel Beato Francisco, one of the first Filipino novelists. The first novel in Tagalog may have been Francisco’s Cababalaghan ni P. Bravo (The Amazement of P. Bravo, love the title).
There are pieces on beheadings and headhunters that should please both scholars and tabloid readers. Mojares takes a Borgesian turn in A Poem of All the Names of the Rivers, The Book That Did Not Exist, and Unicorns in the Garden of Reason.
We thought we were going to snack on Philippine history; we ended up having a feast.
Isabelo’s Archive is available at National Bookstores, Php850.
With Emma Thompson and her huuuge collar
With Lupita Nyong’o, stunning in Dior.
Mission: accomplished. Hope she finds the right agent.
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