Cesare Syjuco News Archive

The Ineffable Lightness of Being Cesare and Jean Marie Syjuco

By Johnathan Libarios Rondina, Philippine Daily Inquirer

06.09.08

MANILA, Philippines - Scrolling through avant-garde artist Cesare A. X. Syjuco’s on-line blog is an exercise in momentary displacement. There is nothing there; not a single line of his famous cryptexts or those raging dialogues between debating punctuation marks.

And just when I am prepared to file this empty page in my head as yet another of Cesare’s conceptual pieces, his wife, painter and performance artist Jean Marie Syjuco, tells me it’s nothing more than a page under construction.

Still, my interpretive faux pas is perfectly excusable. Both Cesare’s and Jean Marie’s works over the last three decades have often been described as, well, indescribable.

After all, he has been known to cast invisible sculptures molded with nothing but poetry and halogen. She, on the other hand, is prone to convulsive fits of symbolic self-mutilation, at one point even giving herself the unkindest of haircuts in a highly acclaimed art performance at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Indeed, theirs is the kind of the art that induces nosebleeds, cerebral puzzles without a single solution, creative meanderings without a specific point or destination.

Milan Kundera’s view on the duality of art expressed through the character of Sabina in the “Unbearable Lightness of Being”—on the surface an intelligible lie, underneath the unintelligible truth”—rings true of the Syjucos’ multi-layered, transmediated textualities.

Speaking of Cesare’s works, filmmaker Don Escudero once said, “They are very evocative. Evocative of what, I don’t know!”

Cesare, a multi-awarded poet and art critic, simply describes himself and Jean Marie thus: “Cesare Syjuco is primarily a poet whose literary experiments take him into the realm of the visual arts. Jean Marie Syjuco is primarily a visual artist whose art experiments take her into the realm of the literary. So this is a perfectly good example of how two very different people can start out in opposite directions and still end up in pretty much the same place—in this case, the art gallery.”

Constantly defying the reductionism of the finite, the Syjuco experiment, through its many permutations in poetry, performance, painting, music, and installation, continue to speak volumes about the postmodern condition, and now promises to engage a new generation of art audiences, challenging them to accept and understand the inherent multiplicity of meaning and experience.

Lifetime of collaboration

Their lifetime of collaboration began almost immediately when the couple met in 1968 as high-school students. He was the energetic captain of De La Salle’s debate team. She was on the forensics team of the School of the Holy Spirit. It was a romance borne of the art of discord.

“Ours was a turbulent romance,” Jean Marie recalls. “It was an on-and-off relationship. We used to argue a lot.”

They married 10 years later in 1978 and collaborated on many projects thereafter. Many art enthusiasts agree that the couple’s best collaboration was the Art Lab on Estrella Street at Edsa which, for much of the early 1990’s, served as the primary venue for Conceptual Art in the country. There, Jean Marie showcased her “Approach to the Minimal” series of Zen-like monochromatic, airbrush-textured paintings. Cesare, painted shadows on walls and wrote poetry on thin air.

In 1995, when the MRT construction started to cast an ominous shadow over the Art Lab, the Syjucos decided to close shop, much to the disappointment of their friends, clients and fellow artists.

Those were difficult times for the Syjucos. Cesare’s father had died the year before and the couple’s children were growing up, demanding more parental direction.

“We decided to strengthen our family life,” Jean Marie explains, “and so we became very private.”

During those private years, the Syjucos also managed the career of their children, who formed the avant-garde rock band Faust! in 1996. Although short-lived on the mainstream music scene, the group received critical acclaim and enjoyed a cult-following.

Shrine to art

Cesare and Jean Marie also spent their time in hiatus building their biggest installation project yet—a multi-level home in Ayala Alabang—where nine-meter streamers scream anti-ruling order slogans in signature Cesare fashion.

Jean Marie proudly welcomes guests to their impressive home as a curator would to a museum. In fact, she has started to open their house to visiting art-club students from nearby schools.

The Syjuco home is a shrine to art and gives visitors an insight into the creative and complimentary dynamics between its two masters. Taking center stage are Cesare’s poems in glass and light boxes, and several neon-light installations, drawings and paintings.

As in all of Cesare’s works, these home pieces cannot be ignored; here, there and everywhere, they assault and confuse, confound and mesmerize.

In contrast, Jean Marie’s works take a strategically subdued position in their domestic realm. A synthetic flower blooms by synthetic sunlight in the dining area. A cat-and-fish installation plays out a tale of catch-me-if-you-can in the toilet. A bird’s nest nestles peacefully on the hallway as the sound of flowing water echoes throughout the space.

Somewhere inside this big house, Cesare is working on his new pieces. Jean Marie says he’ll be down in five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, she calls him on the intercom.

Re-emergence

“Come na, now na,” she whispers, with such heartfelt, teenage-sounding affection that reveals her passionate regard for her husband of 30 years.

“We’ve mellowed over the years,” she says. “Now we don’t argue anymore.”

Cesare emerges from his lair another five minutes later. I offer a hand, he offers a hug as though we’ve known each other for years. Notoriously shy, he is known to come to his own show openings late, where he stays only briefly before disappearing again into the night.

He asks me to sit down and we talk about his mundane pleasures which, not surprisingly, include changing the strings on his 54 electric guitars and, quite surprisingly, watching “American Idol” with his kids, and the joy of going to the beach with the whole family for the first time ever.

A short while later, he stands up, gives me another hug, this time as though we’ve known each other forever, and says, “You will come back again, will you?”

“Jean Marie is my wife, my best friend, my anchor,” he e-mailed a few days later, answering my question about his lifetime collaboration with his wife. “She is my moral support, my manager, and my curator. I’m sure I’d be completely lost without her.”

In her new works, now on view at E Gallerie, Jean Marie presents a series of six minimalist paintings in gradating beige hues. It is really a logical sequence, a mathematical formulation where she repeatedly inscribes a basic principle of art—“The painting of a single line is still full of adventure”—until, in the end, painting, line and principle come full circle.

The Syjuco experiment, 30 years in the making, is an adventure slowly inching its way toward that direction.

Mighty Big Flashback

Mighty Big Flashback

His New Literary Hybrids @ Mag:Net Katipunan

Opens with an evening of performed poetry on June 13, 7:00 PM

An Act of Bad Faith

An Act of Bad Faith

An installation of his new Literary Hybrids @ The Penguin,

Remedios Circle, Malate Manila

Live performances on opening night, June 7, 9:00 PM...

Cesare & The Electric Underground Collective: All The Usual Supects

Cesare & The Electric Underground Collective: All The Usual Supects

A Late Evening of Performed Poetry @ Riccio Renzo Gallery,

LRI Business Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia, Makati City - 05.26.2007 8:00 to 10:00 PM...

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Posters from Cesare

Posters from Cesare

ZOETROPE By Juaniyo Arcellana

Publication Date: [Monday, April 16, 2007]

The "axman" cometh sometimes in the mail, courtesy of a series of poster invites to this or that gathering, across town about town, in Mag:net Katips, along the old Reposo in Bel-Air near the Alliance Française, at the CCP, last remnant of an edifice complex by the bay.

The name’s Cesare A.X. Syjuco, and he’s been painting the city red with his art and varied literary hybrids, sundry homonyms in progress, armed with guitar and vodka, lines rhythmic á la Robert Fripp. He’s King Crimson come to life, a dream in red with wife Jean Marie and daughters Maxine and Trix in tow. Since we haven’t found time to go to these gatherings, and having more than a passing acquaintance to Cesare the artist enfant terrible, through the first "Chromatext" exhibits more than 20 years ago in Pinaglabanan Galleries in San Juan to his recent extrapolations on poster and canvas and then some that made us sort of a fan of his, maybe it could serve us in good stead to take a closer look at these invite foldouts that boggle the mind.

"She is parallel to her rectum at all times... unwavering in resolve.," featuring a blond babe arching her back against the backdrop of a sleek car’s opened door is very Cesare, and announces a series of changing small showcase installations at the Poet’s Alcove in Mag:net Katipunan, curated by Jean Marie in a space conceived by Krip Yuson and Rock Drilon. The western symbol of the blond may have references to Dylan ("Blond on Blond"?), but the rectum aspect is, shall we say, universally anal. Rather Freudian and American rock and roll it is too, what with the tipping of the hat to sex and fast cars and pretty women. Only the lonely, as they say, can seek solace in such art.

Next up: "He’s out there somewhere., :If we could find him we could kill him... then there’d be no one to kill us., :If we could find him he wouldn’t be out there.," is part of his "Mighty Big Headstand" of brand new literary hybrids. The poster itself was designed by Maxine, who incidentally was named after a Donald Fagen (late of Steely Dan) song from the album "The Nightfly." A group of four outcasts or possible mutants from the Mickey Mouse club are gathered atop a stone staircase overlooking a bleak brown landscape, resembling more Middlesbrough than Marikina. The mysterious fab four could be refugees of the ersatz avant-garde group Faust, deprived of their instruments, and so also possibly devoid of funk. What abstract philosophies are found on those very steps of stone? Let Jung go hang, hunghang.

"Let’s talk about the anti-Christ., :It looks like a dog to me., :Don’t let that fool you, stupid.," is the text for the poster of "Homonyms of Recent History," a site-specific installation of Cesare’s newly expanded work at the Ricco-Renzo Gallery, LRI Business Plaza on Nicanor Garcia Street, Makati which opened on March 22 with live poetry performances by the usual suspects. Pictured is a relatively healthy mutt with spots, but not a Dalmatian, more like an askal with a fancy hat on. I guess we could call it the artist’s Lenten exhibit in a dog-eat-dog world, where one man’s meat is another man’s murder, and so on and so forth, bring that Fripp-fropp guitar on again.

Then finally, "Word of Mouth," a series of photographic self-portraits by Maxine that served as an invite to the closing of the "Chromatext Reloaded" exhibit of the Philippine Literary Arts Council last February at CCP, subtitled "Mouth Over Matter" and featuring Maxine with different likenesses of mouths pasted over her mouth, the real, ever omnipresent but alas, unseen one. By the poster alone, one could tell that PLAC turned yet another chapter in its existence and that of the art world with the latest "Chromatext," and only goes to show that all lines and labels blur in the advent of self-expression, in this case, a drawing of a mouth that could as well be reciting poetry. The surreality of it all extends the imagination into what, but an imitation of life.

I saw Cesare last year during the 25th anniversary get-together of PLAC at founding member Jimmy Abad’s hillside home in Antipolo, where the spirits flowed and the Ax artist documented the proceedings with Jean Marie on handy videocam. Cesare was in his element to say the least, chunking out those guitar riffs while the poets recited their verses to the rain and wind and sumptuous food. The words almost sounded superfluous, no offense to the poets, but David Byrne could have been reciting his "Imelda" libretto and the effect would have been the same. Picture Cesare Ax with his toothless grin, swigging vodka and playing his guitar with the same rhymic hammering he did 20 years ago on the walls of Pinaglabanan. And I thought, since this guy whose shyness is criminally vulgar is not in a straitjacket, he must be a genius of intertextual art. Either, or.

Source: The Philippine Star 

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Upstart poets

Upstart poets

KRIPOTKIN By Alfred A. Yuson

Publication Date: [Monday, April 16, 2007]

Heh-heh! Now, don’t take that heading seriously. You know me. I’m here in your planet to spread love, joy, and good cheer. And sometimes a bit of humor, okay?

Why, I even appear on TV trying to do the same, besides drawing all kinds of texted plaudits on how buddy Jimmy Abad and I were so, uhh... (far be it for me to draw comparison with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in that "Cassidy" film; besides betraying vintage class) — but that the Syjuco girls, Trix and Maxine, were decidedly more telegenic, even more eloquent.

For you out in the boondocks this summer, quoting poetic lines to yourselves like "April me with branches," all this is in reference to ANC’s Media in Focus program aired last Thursday and repeatedly replayed owing to insistent public demand... Wait, wait, jocose there, too. Credit regular scheduling.

Anyway, the weekly show hosted by Cheche Lazaro, one of our finest-ever television journalists, may have inexplicably taken a turn for the strange with a special focus on Philippine poetry. And of course its weird practitioners.

So there we were, making sosi with Cheche for a full hour, in live public view all over our cable-channel-strung archipelago and then some, explaining what poetry we wrote, where, when, why and how. (Hey, even fellow poet Wendell Capili who’s still on academic sabbatical in Canberra SMS’d kudos to his former UP mates, right after the show.)

As producer Twink Macaraig (my sis-in-law, by the by; so now you get the konek) and her assistant, Pat Evangelista (former mentee gone wildly on her own; can’t blame her), explained to us guests how Cheche’s show had three "gaps" — which would feature a pair of poets each.

Thankfully, my vast experience in television (as a censor and sometime adept, both) allowed me to explain to my fellow guests that "gap" actually meant "segment" — and that they should just nod brightly and accept the license taken with language, heightened language, and nod brightly again and accede to their placement in Gap One or Two or Three.

Okay? Okey po. That last came from the three young ’uns, as against the three veterans ("pillars," as Cheche kept subtly inferring about our senior citizenship status). So Jim Abad and I took the first gap (as pillars of salt, for always trying to look back at a storied past), while the decidedly electric pair of sisters (progeny of that handsome cum brilliant couple Cesare and Jean Marie Syjuco) filled up the second, and delivering the coup de grace were the balagtasero and premier poet in Filipino, Teo Antonio, and bilingual page-turned-page-trasher poet Angelo Suarez.

Good mix, good flow, good show. ’Twas a pleasure to commingle anew with the youthful trio of Gelo, Trix and Maxine — each of whom was allowed to perform as gap openers or closers, heh-heh. And all three were brilliant, as performance poets.

Well, what do you expect? When they learned at the feet of the masters, namely that legendary rock pop Cesare A.X. of De La Salle-Taft, the love diva Ophelia Dimalanta of UST, and the living icon Cirilo Bautista of both Taft and España?

That’s what Jim and I tried to say during our 15 minutes of fame portion (er, gap): that the torch keeps getting passed, that poetry and all other forms of art must necessarily evolve, since they’re trans-generational, blah blah blah. And that that’s why we admit upstart poets, oops, within our radius of salty significance.

Hah!

Why, Trix Syjuco, Maxine Syjuco, and Gelo Suarez, exciting avant-gardists as they have been, should tow in all the other Spoken Word, Open Mike, Hip-hop Rapstyle readers and performers taking a stab at, and drawing a lot of blood from, poetry.

So hooray for evolution!

Take the recent Philippines Free Press awards night at the Mandarin Ballroom last Tuesday the 10th of April — a day that will glow carmine red in the millennial literary calendar as the Changing of the Guards milestone or some such. When important poets like Eric Gamalinda, J. Neil Garcia, Joel Toledo, and a namesake of this chronicler landed on the seat of their pants, after being upended by... why, who are these... upstarts?

Oops. Come to think of it, it’s about time that multi-awarded (that modifier our buddy Butch Dalisay hates and excoriates) poets and writers take a back seat, or bottom seat, to the upcoming, far more than promising, entrants in literary derbies.

And so we must congratulate the judges for the Poetry category, namely Jimmy Abad (him again?), Marj Evasco ("goldened by... tongue"), and RayVi Sunico (who knows "the secret of graphite") for their wizened deliberation that not only opened the trophy doors to fresh poetry but also produced two gorgeous winners, apart of course from finally giving credit to an underrated, oft-absent poet, in the person of Victor Jose "Bimboy" Peñaranda, who’s currently in Macedonia!

For the record, here are the prizewinners of the richest poetry contest in town, The Philippines Free Press 2007 Literary Awards, with a first prize worth P80K, second P50K, and third P30K (and those are for single poems!):

First Prize (one winner): Mookie Katigbak for "As Far As Cho-Fu-Sa";

Second Prize (two winners): Victor Peñaranda for "Josefina Sleeping" and Ana Escalante Neri for "Lightscape";

Third Prize (one winner): Eric Gamalinda for "Qana";

Honorable Mention (four winners): J. Neil Garcia for "Torso"; Alfred A. Yuson for "Concealment"; Joel M. Toledo for "Ascension"; and Joel M. Toledo (again!) for "New Century, With Dragon."

Some honors, of course, come with nary a cash prize but great distinction, so there.

And for the Short Story category, well, alas! No winner for First Prize, but two winners for Second Prize: Rhea Buela Politado for "Southbound" and Anna Felicia C. Sanchez for "Inventories" — and three winners for Third Prize: Timothy R. Montes for "To the Slaughterhouse"; Dean Francis Alfar for "Six From Downtown"; and Douglas Candano for "A Visit to the Exhibition of the International Committee on Children’s Rights."

For the Essay category, again, alas! No winners for First Prize and Second Prize, while there were two winners for Third Prize: Rosario Cruz Lucero for "Singer on the Mango Tree" and Sandra Nicole Roldan for "How to Deal With Dying."

The panel of judges for both the Story and Essay categories was composed of Menchu Aquino, Susan Lara and Luis Katigbak. Hate mail re parsimony may be addressed to... Wait, just kidding.

On this matter, let us reiterate that it often becomes a sore point at literary contests when cash prizes are held back. One school of thought has it that even a race featuring turtles ought to produce a winner, while a contending thought says simply, "But we gotta have standards that can’t be compromised."

Uhh, well, I dunno. Don’t ask me, I’m just a jokester, quipster, chronicler and gossip. And eavesdropper. Was that the great novelist Charlson Ong grumbling (sounded like him) over unnecessary remarks about having to preserve the prestige of a Free Press First Prize in Fiction, since previous winners include such a one as Jose Garcia Villa? Yeah. Who him again? An upstart in his own time, we may presume.

In any case, the FP contest is certainly something for our young writers to look forward to, especially since next year, on the magazine’s centennial, greater cash awards were announced by no less than Rep. Teddy Locsin: P100K for First!

Wow! Repeat: that’s for a single poem, or story. FP literary editor Sarge Lacuesta did mention that the Essay category might have to give way for either Children’s Story or Young Adult Fiction. Or maybe I wasn’t eavesdropping well enough.

Suffice it to say that the contest produced two youthful winners in Ana Escalante Neri and Doug Candano, both barely a year away from their stint as writing fellows in the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete. They were part of that illustrious batch of May 2006 — the rest of whom will surely make their mark as well in our literature.

That’s what we mean by the torch being passed. But must it be passed so fast? Should Mookie Katigbak, a student of mine at the Ateneo only some years ago, show up her, uhh, dementors so precipitately? Indeed she has every right to do so. For her edgy yet delicate poetry grants her the privilege. Just as the young Syjucos and Suarez, Candano and Neri, Sanchez and Roldan are starting up and taking hold of that torch so early.

Bravo the precocious bravura!

Source: The Philippine Star 

Homonyms of Recent History @ Ricco-Renzo Galleries

Homonyms of Recent History @ Ricco-Renzo Galleries

"Homonyms of Recent History"

Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Ricco-Renzo Galleries (LRI Business Plaza)

March 22, 2007 to April 30, 2007

Arts Iconoclast Cesare A.X. Syjuco recently opened his latest exhibition. Curated by Jean Marie Syjuco, with late-evening poetry performances.

Cesare A.X. Syjuco, a recipient of the TOYM, has won praises for his new experimental hybrid works which fuse literature and the visual arts. Alfred Yuson has called him the Radical Renaissance Man.

In a recent review, Angelo V. Suarez noted that Cesare A.X. Syjuco accomplishes this difficult juggling of disciplines. Viewers cannot escape the ensuing delectation. They are struck between the eyes, as it were. And this is a characteristic of Cesare's avant-gardism. He disposes with your neutrality, luring you to make a stand where otherwise you would be just an observer. Cesare A.X. Syjuco's picture-words are meant to disarm you, to jar you into the realization that there is much more than the usual literalness that resides in them.

Cesare A.X. Syjuco's "Homonyms of Recent History" is currently on view at the Ricco-Renzo Galleries (LRI Business Plaza).

For more details on "Homonyms of Recent History" by Cesare A.X. Syjuco at the

Ricco-Renzo Galleries, please call 898-2542.

Ricco-Renzo Galleries is located at LRI Business Plaza Ground Level, 210 Nicanor Garcia Street (Reposo), Bel-Air II, Makati City.

"Homonyms of Recent History" runs from March 22, 2007 to April 30, 2007.

Source: philippineartscene.blogspot.com 

WORD OF MOUTH

WORD OF MOUTH

PLAC + Friends LIVE! @ CCP

An evening of performed poetry with The Philippine Literary Arts Council on February 27, Tuesday, 6:30PM.

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html  for more information...

Cesare A.X. Syjuco and the New Formalism

Cesare A.X. Syjuco and the New Formalism

By Angelo V. Suárez

Inquirer

Last updated 05:09am (Mla time) 02/19/2007

WITH THE STENCH OF THE GREAT New Critical corpse still hanging in the literary air, it has become almost an insult to brand anyone a formalist these days, what with the old formalism’s emphasis on the so-called closed nature of the literary “work” (in opposition to Roland Barthes’ open literary “texts”) and debilitating delusions of organic unity—poetry’s arrogance of apparent completeness unto itself, denying any contextual relations to cultural and historical materiality.

But with the fresh air provided by “Mighty Big Headstand,” the first of a series of small-scale exhibits cum large installations of “visual and literary hybrids,” Cesare A.X. Syjuco doesn’t seem to give a damn what he’s branded anymore.

And maturely so, for to extend his metaphor it isn’t merely the brave artist’s head at risk here: The verbo-visual headstand straddling different traditions at once is done also by the body-language of its viewers/readers, unwitting participants who themselves become personae in these 3D poetic texts, quite literally exploring a book bound by walls rather than paper or carton, themselves read as part of the show by more and more passersby.

Textuality, texturality

By the gallery’s entrance, one is greeted by the declaration “You have resurrected here,” as if by coming to the show s/he has entered a new life, a new textual beginning—followed by the instructions “Please excuse the inconvenience/ Please don’t struggle/ Please do exactly as you’re told,” forewarning the audience of more instructions and consequent participation, urging them into performance, penetrating the cold defenses of and disturbing armchair readership accustomed to being spoon-fed with bland and passive insight.

And certainly there is no passivity here. The show, after all, entails engagement, for to read Syjuco’s texts is to also view them, juxtaposing the abstraction of discursive language against the concrete experience of the image—a showcase of the creative potency of typeface when taken for more than mere tasteful design: typography at the service of signification, the medium becoming McLuhan’s message.

The use of transparent glass not only allows both sides of the page to be read and viewed at once, but allows the other pages—the walls behind the glass—easeful visibility from any single standpoint: Imagine being able to read page 14 of a standard book while you’re still on page 8.

One may also view one text then proceed to another, without any given order save for those formulated by chance or by the viewer.

A form of reading, a reading of form

Tension between the verbal and the visual, the two-way penetrability of glass, death and shadows and resurrection—the motif of duality and reflection is made most palpable by twin wide and lighted panes depicting planes occupying two walls at a 90-degree angle within the gallery.

Each airplane is faced with its doppelganger, both parked over their own reflections, printed in what seem to be Benday dots like those famously employed exaggeratedly in Lichtenstein’s popular comix-style art.

But these dots aren’t so much culled from old comix as the cover boxes of more recent hobby toys, of plastic tanks and model planes waiting to be assembled by the enthusiastic hobbyist.

But the implications go beyond the banal surfaces of hobby. Above the left plane, the text goes, “You are leaving here,” and below, “Please notice the Air.” Above the right plane the text goes in counterpoint, “You are arriving here,” and below, “Please notice the Air.”

What is most interesting here isn’t the juxtaposition of arrival and departure as mirror-images of each other (made literal by the actual surface reflections of each other as effected by glass and light), but the two planes’ juxtaposition against a third wall, on which hangs a glass pane depicting the image of the Madonna and Child.

Where the classical meets the contemporary, the pane which is the Holy Infant’s makeshift 2D stable becomes the olden reflection of the plane’s pane, which in turn is its makeshift 2D hangar.

And while one plane is the other’s doppelganger just as arrival is departure’s mirror-image, could this possibly be making the implication that the Son is the Mother’s reverse double, consequently connoting the secularization of the once-divine and the sacred quality huge manufactured objects (especially military objects) like planes have come to acquire?

The discourse jumpstarted by Syjuco is not simplistic but materially nuanced, denying any easy one-to-one correspondence among reflections: A shadow isn’t merely as dark as its shadow, after all, and holes don’t automatically translate into mountains.

And yet even in isolation, the third pane is already in itself a complex marvel: Backed by light whose five long bulbs seem like a hand giving both icon and audience the finger, the image’s classical roots in painting is complicated by its postmodern reproduction as printout.

The pinkish luminescence of the middle finger almost begs the viewer to pay attention to detail, to stoop in close examination of the imperfect inkjet quality of printing, lengthwise jags all over. This prompts the audience to reexamine the other imagistic texts, their occasionally unsmooth placement of acetate sheets over glass, emphasizing the seams over what seems plain and natural.

For, like in his use of Benday dots in the planes, it is this confession of artificiality that constitutes Syjuco’s formalism, that all artistic products are merely products of their process: Disillusioned by organic unity, one ceases to view any form as natural but rather as arbitrary constructs, shaped by the artist and further shaped by his audience.

Far beyond mere utilization and manipulation of form, “Mighty Big Headstand” is a mighty big critique of form—and Syjuco accomplishes this like a true master, at once playful and with effortless grace.

The show is ongoing at Mag:net Gallery, Paseo Center, G/F, Paseo de Roxas, Makati.

Copyright 2007 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer 

Mighty Big Headstand

Mighty Big Headstand

Cesare's "Brand New Literary Hybrids" @ Mag:net Paseo

Mag:net / Paseo de Roxas / Makati City. On view thru February 17, 2007.

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Cesare @ The Poets' Alcove Mag:net Katipunan

Cesare @ The Poets' Alcove Mag:net Katipunan

A changing series of small showcase installations featuring his radical Literary Hybrids will be on view in Mag:net Katipunan thru February + March 2007.

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Cesare’s “Brand New Literary Hybrids” @ Mag:net

Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Mighty Big Headstand

2-17 February 2007

Mag:net Gallery Paseo

With words, text and poetry appearing more and more often in our art galleries today, Cesare A.X. Syjuco is now, more then ever, considered to be “an undisputed master of visual / literary hybrids” – acknowledging his groundbreaking experimental works since the ‘70s and ‘80s that fused art and literature into an indivisible whole.

Cesare’s mammoth-scale exhibition “Flashes of Genius” at the CCP Main Gallery in 2004-05 -- his first Manila appearance after an absence of nearly 12 years -- was unanimously hailed by both art and literary critics as “a stunning comeback… a major achievement for the arts as a whole”. And the 53-year-old renegade painter and poet, a TOYM awardee well known for his temperamental and reclusive nature, hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down since then.

His latest one-man-show, aptly titled “Mighty Big Headstand”, opens at Mag:net in Paseo de Roxas, Makati, on February 2, Friday, at 6 P.M. And far from renouncing his trademark texts, Cesare is turning on the heat and upping the ante with even more words and less paint than ever before.

“Mag:net is a lovely little gallery with intelligently planned spaces,” says Cesare of his intention to show his very latest transparent acrylic panels and lighted neons. “I thought it would be nice, for a change, to avoid the usual and to use the gallery like a kind of ‘book’ with clean new pages. I do miss that from showing too often in bigger, older spaces like CCP… and I’m looking forward here to a tighter, more aggressive show full of interesting twists and turns.”

The exhibit will be on view until February 17 only. For particulars, call Mag:net at 8177895 or email magnetplus@gmail.com or visit www.magnet.com.ph.

Source: http://www.magnet.com.ph 

Chromatext Reloaded at the CCP

Chromatext Reloaded at the CCP

INQUIRER.net

Last updated 02:16pm (Mla time) 01/17/2007

Chromatext Reloaded - a grand verse-cum-visual exhibit – will be mounted by the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) & Friends at the Main Gallery of the Cultural Center of the Philippines at 6pm on January 25, lasting till February 28. Two previous Chromatext exhibits by PLAC were held Pinaglabanan Galleries in San Juan in the1980s.

Some sixty Filipino poets and writers representing several generations from here and abroad get together for a rare visual cum textual art exhibit. The show turns a page from previous Chromatext I & II series.

This time curated by Sid Gomez Hildawa, Jean-Marie Syjuco and Krip Yuson, Chromatext Reloaded celebrates the 25th anniversary of PLAC, with its surviving founders Jimmy Abad, Cirilo Bautista, Ricky de Ungria and Krip Yuson leading the poet-exhibitors.

Their works — from holographs to photographs, illustrations with poems to oil paintings, sculptural installations to video — will be joined by those of other distinguished writers, among them National Artist Edith L. Tiempo, Gilda Cordero Fernando, Raul Ingles, Tita Lacambra-Ayala, Sylvia Mendez-Ventura, the late Lilia Amansec, Ophelia Dimalanta, Merlie Alunan, Marjorie Evasco, Butch Dalisay, Pete Lacaba, Cesare A.X. Syjuco, Jun Cruz Reyes, Juaniyo Arcellana, RayVi Sunico, Danton Remoto, Frank Rivera, Margot Marfori, and Sid Gomez Hildawa.

From abroad, PLAC members and friends have sent in their contributions - David Cortes Medalla in London and Eric Gamalinda, Nick Carbo, Luisa Igloria, Eileen Tabios, Zack Linmark, and Melissa Kristoffel-Nolledo in the U.S.A.

From Baguio City, participating poet-artists include Butch Macansantos, Babeth Lolarga. and Frank Cimatu. Special guest artists who happen to be close friends to writers, if not writers themselves, include National Artist Benedicto Cabrera (Bencab), Danny Dalena, Pandy Aviado, Fil Dela Cruz, Manny Baldemor, Rock Drilon, Jean-Marie Syjuco, Judy Sibayan, Heber Bartolome, Raul Funilla, Beaulah Taguiwalo, Erlinda Panlilio, Bheng Dalisay, Lorena Javier, Boy Yuchengco, Erlinda Panlilio, Marivic Rufino, Gerry Cornejo, Pancho Villanueva and Igan D'Bayan.

Among the younger generation of poets and writers joining the exhibit are Jovi Miroy, Vim Nadera, Fran Ng, Lourd de Veyra, Jessica Zafra, Sarge Lacuesta, Joel Toledo, Ana Escalante Neri, Ginny Mata, Carlomar Daoana, Mookie Katigbak, and Angelo Suarez.

Performance art, musical works and readings will highlight the exhibit opening at 6pm on Thursday, January 25 and the closing ceremonies at 7pm on February 27. The public is invited. Copies of the revived poetry journal Caracoa and special commemorative editions of CD albums featuring the recorded readings of PLAC poets will also be on sale for the duration of the exhibit. Gallery hours are from 10am to 6pm daily, except Mondays and holidays. Admission is free. For particulars, call 8323702.

- Krip Yuson

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer 

A Blast From the Arts

A Blast From the Arts

By Constantino Tejero

Inquirer

Last updated 02:56am (Mla time) 01/01/2007

Published on page C1 of the January 1, 2007 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

PHILIPPINE POLITICS may be a mess, the economy is on the brink, and the poor will always be poor, but the one thing still alive and kicking in the country all year round is the arts. A salute to the Filipino artist then for always deserving of our thumbs up, way, way up.

Elderly but still potent

Some senior artists don’t seem to dry up of creative juices, as they never fail to mount exhibits of their most recent works with undiminished potency. Just when you think they’ve long been rolling in their laurels, you stumble on new works by the likes of Arturo Luz, Juvenal Sansó, Roberto Chabet, Malang Santos. Even the nonagenarian Anita Magsaysay-Ho startles the art world now and then with a brilliant piece or two.

Young but very, very strong

Upcoming artists and relative unknowns often come up with strong art that can hold a candle to works by veterans. In June, Jesus Genotiva held his first solo show of expressionist portraits so potent one couldn’t look at them with equilibrium. One Marlon Magbanua impresses with abstraction of such fineness it should shame the clumsy brushwork of a few overhyped abstractionists.

Still on the frontline

Artists we haven’t heard from for some time have returned to the scene. Cesare and Jean Marie Syjuco came back from abroad and continued their series of avant-gardist installations and performances. Some we thought have stopped production, such as Red Mansueto and Alan Rivera, reappeared in group exhibits with interesting innovations on their respective art.

Hearts of gold

Artists can always be relied on to raise funds for charity. Early this year, Kulay Marikina exhibited nearly 100 artworks whose proceeds went to indigent cancer-stricken patients of the Philippine Children’s Medical Center. This month, Impy Pilapil and Ann Pamintuan are exhibiting their sculptural pieces for the cause of Make-a-Wish and Kythe Foundation. This only underscores the fact that artists are really humanitarians at heart.

Excitement of awards

The Thirteen Artists Award, now given by the Cultural Center of the Philippines every three years, proves to be as exciting as ever. Many of the awardees this year are precisely the same people the development of whose respective art we have been watching for some years now: Jeho Bitancor, Jayson Oliveria, Lyra Abueg Garcellano, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Luisito Cordero, Ma. Cristina Valdezco, Jevijoe Vitug, Mariano Ching, Daniel Coquilla, Lena Cobangbang, Ronald Anading, Eugene Jarque and Yasmin Sison-Ching. This award can be more exciting than the National Artists Award as its choices hold an element of surprise while the latter’s are often a foregone conclusion.

Source:  Philippine Daily Inquirer 

HOMAGE TO THE PAVEMENT

HOMAGE TO THE PAVEMENT

Cesare & the Electric Underground Collective

Blue Room Gallery, 24 NOVEMBER | FRIDAY | FROM 8PM

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

THE BEST OF Cesare & the Electric Underground Collective

THE BEST OF Cesare & the Electric Underground Collective

Riccio Renzo Gallery, 27 OCTOBER | FRIDAY | FROM 9PM

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Surviving Friendly Fire

Surviving Friendly Fire

[The Raw Video Rushes!]

The Penguin, 04 AUGUST | FRIDAY | FROM 9PM

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

A Tree Grows Underground

A Tree Grows Underground

Live! @ Angono, Rizal

Atelier Orville Tiamson, 08 JULY | FROM 6PM

Right click on the image above to download the poster / invite.

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Cesare & The Electric Underground Collective

Cesare & The Electric Underground Collective

Live! @ Mag:net Katipunan

16 June | Friday | 8:30 PM

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Attacked From Underground

Attacked From Underground

Cesare Syjuco

Live @ Lumiere!

June 2, Friday, 9:30 PM

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

Home is the Underground

Home is the Underground

Cesare Syjuco

Live @ the Penguin!

May 9, Tuesday, 8:00 PM

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html for more information...

A Noise From Underground

A Noise From Underground

Cesare Syjuco

Live! @ Conspiracy Garden Cafe

One Night Only!

April 25, Tuesday, 7 - 9 PM

See http://www.cesaresyjuco.com/Posters/Index.html  for more information...