ART CRITICISM
by Cesare A.X. Syjuco

SELECTED WORKS
[1985 - 1991]

The following articles were originally published in The Times Journal (1985-86), The Manila Times (1986-1989), The Philippine Daily Globe (1990-91) and The Philippine Graphic Magazine.

On exhibit at the CCP: Reality according to artists
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times | July 29, 1987


Art and reality are paradoxically linked. On the one hand, all art springs from the reality of human experience. And on the other hand, both quantities are at once irreconcilable.

Consider that if reality is truth, then its reproduction in graphic terms can only be a lie – being, at best, a counterfeit reality. And consequently, the more “realistic” the art, the greater its deception.

How do our artists perceive or relate to reality? The 18-man invitational exhibit organized by the CCP – and aptly entitled “Reality According to Artists: Drawings” – is some indication.

To many artists, reality resides precisely in the real world of people, places and events. Fernando Sena’s “Tondo Scene” is a watercolor barong-barong whose departure from the model is at best stylistic. Brenda Fajardo juxtaposes her patented, re-styled tarot cards with hand-drawn images of social unrest, suggesting the role played by fate in the determination of the final outcome. Jose Tence Ruiz presents a pen-and-ink drawing of a maimed countryside warrior with automatic rifles for crutches, ironically entitled “Footnote to a Ceasefire”. (See photo) Rhoda Recto exhibits an idyllic pencil-sketch of common folk waiting for a bus by the roadside, reminiscent of grammar book (“Pepe & Pilar”) illustrations. Evely Collantes isolates symbolic elements from life –broken clothes-hangers, heavy orthopedic shoes and leg braces – to convey her concern for the plight of disabled children. And Mario Parial’s 1987 mixed-media painting “Kaysarap ng Maging Malaya” is a quizzical throw-back to the celebrational mood of the February Revolution, replete with muse, doves in flight, and vintage press clippings.

To others, a distinctly separate reality resides in the pursuit of personal mythologies. Romulo Olazo is represented by an untitled abstract with emerging curvilinear forms. Santiago Bose exhibits exotic, reworked hieroglyphics of Hollywood-on-the-Nile extraction, done on singed handmade paper. Virgilio Alviado has drawn bug-headed humanoids in an alchemist’s shop presiding over a hysterical clutter of severed anatomical spare parts. Fernando Modesto reaffirms his role as moral pollutant-at-large with a flying squadron of ding-a-lings hovering over an enormous pair of puckered lips that are poised to strike. Arnel Agawin’s subliminal erotica endears itself with precious insight, as two lovers with spiked faces kiss in a bittersweet exchange of pleasure and pain. And Nestor Vinluan’s careless scribble of a dissected head looks almost obscene when viewed in this company.

The mind in art can be either delightful or infuriating, and all the more so when engaged in the investigation of reality. Benjie Cabangis exposes the rear supports of a reversed translucent artwork on glass and tracing paper. Aca Versoza exhibits an immaculate white surface on which a tiny triangle has been drawn. Roberto Feleo has annotated pencil-study of a work in progress, asserting the reality of creativity before the fact. Roberto Chabet’s “Tailor Tatlin Goes to a Communist party” is the superimposition of a satin-black image on a larger expanse of black vinyl. Heber Bartolome similarly toys with poetics, objectified in a cramped corner installation. And one shameless participant, best unnamed, attempts to pass off the work of Delacroix and Manet as his very own.

In fact, while it is undoubtedly worth a few laughs, very little is actually resolved in this exhibit regarding the perception and representation of reality by virtual artists. And this failure may be due, at least in part, to the general evasiveness of its participants. Apparently, the existing norm for our “thinking” artists is never so much to address themselves to curatorial queries as to find ways of circumventing them.

But there are some encouraging results, and that is more than enough reason to justify the expansion of this series into a more comprehensive study of the theme in focus. That many of the artists featured in this show resort to harebrained double-think is in itself a healthy sign. It proves that an increasing number of our visual toilers – at least when faced with a thematic challenge such as this – can and actually do use their heads. The quality of their logic is beside the point. It is important to remember that the facility with semantics and common sense has never been crucial to the success of the visual arts, despite what Duchamp and the devil might have to say. In art, as in so much of life, ignorance is often bliss. And the ultimate reality is in the doing.

East vs West: Philippine art in search of identity
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times | July 4, 1987

That would-be Lord Jim of the local art trade, Pinaglabanan Galleries’ portly proprietor Michael Adams, spewed hot lava for months on end when Dr. Rodolfo Paras-Perez sought to underscore the importance of local “indigenous” artworks by organizing a separate category for paintings of that persuasion in the landmark exhibit “Three Faces of Philippine Art” – shown in Munich and Bonn in the summer of 1985.

The very outspoken Adams, a British national who has long been critical of the local art world’s alleged “parochial mentality”, spared no effort in exposing what he felt was a tragic lapse in Dr. Perez’s curatorial judgment. Adams questioned the deliberate emphasis placed by the Harvard-educated Perez on what some people had justifiably called “Neo-Ethnic Art” – in favor of paintings and prints more clearly situated in the immediate context of the contemporary international mainstream.

The exhibit in question eventually went on to elicit an outpouring of enthusiastic praise from the Germans, who showed enormous interest in the very category that had provoked Adams’ outcry. Perez later wrote in a published article that “Filipino artists need not play patintero” with the major art capitals of the world just to gain their share of recognition. The indefatigable Adams, on the other hand, stepped up his own efforts by coaxing a sympathetic sector of the artistic community into a mold he thought to be infinitely more delectable to western audiences, and is even now in the process of organizing a selection of local figurative painters for an exhibit he has arranged to have unveiled in West Berlin early next year.

While only one humorous episode in the ongoing tug-of-war between inward- and outward-looking proponents of a new and more vital chapter in our contemporary art history, the much-ballyhooed case of Adams vs. Perez characterizes the intense rivalry between camps that is quickly polarizing our small artistic population. The proverbial chasm that separates East and West – and in this case, the “homegrown” from the “foreign-derived” – has never been as widely nor as fiercely contested as now, rivaling in significance that memorable confrontation between “modernists” and the “conservatives” in an earlier era.

The argument for indigenous art-forms is clear enough. Apart from the pride-in-self they can undoubtedly cultivate in a people still enamored with a foreign culture situated almost pathetically beyond its grasp, the focusing of our creative energies on stylistic concerns that are our own by birthright seems altogether more meaningful in the light of recent developments that have taken shape within the larger scope of our collective national interests. Present-day realities not only warrant our artist’s all-out participation in the developmental process, but virtually dictate the need for viable alternatives to western precepts by force of circumstance. For instance, prevailing economic conditions have rendered traditional art materials beyond the reach of most Filipino artists, and it would indeed be ironic for our committed painters to celebrate their newfound liberational attitude in imported oils and canvas that cost more than the average Filipino laborer earns in a month.

There are other realities, equally as convincing. Artworks utilizing native materials like husk, twigs, fabric, and handmade paper, have recently dominated local art competitions, and have likewise fared well in contests abroad. It has been suggested that while western inspirational sources have become exhausted by centuries of tireless reworking, our vast cultural reserves offer a wealth of material literally begging to be tapped. To be sure, the gaze of western art through the years has repeatedly been turned on the Third World in an obvious attempt to broaden its own dwindling base – a sure sign, we are told, of impending cultural bankruptcy.

Motivated by a mutual interest in local indigenous references, a number of well-known Filipino artists have come together in recent weeks to assess the potential of this emerging trend, and to discuss possible ways of harnessing the generous store of creative energy it has unearthed. The recently formed “study group” is as yet unnamed, and, thus far, has only a very broad definition of immediate objectives to guide its way. Nevertheless, its Sunday afternoon meetings at Kulay-Diwa Galleries in Sucat, Paranaque, have been regularly visited by the likes of leading young abstractionist Lao Lianben, veteran conceptual artist Alan Rivera, Havana Bienale winner Lani Maestro, Metrobank awardee Roberto Feleo, Hiraya Gallery curator Bobi Valenzuela, Indonesian-trained scholar Yuan Mor’O, and CCP’s bright new hope Judy Freya Sibayan, among others.

This informal gathering seeks, in effect, to collaborate closely in investing local visual idioms through communal interaction, workshop dynamics, panel discussions, and the sharing of research material and individual findings. Eventually, a resource center for “Philippine and Asian-Pacific studies in the Visual arts” is envisioned by some of its participants – to be fueled in part by a series of comprehensive exhibitions beginning November of this year.

While almost certainly a solid step in the right direction, the group’s efforts can only benefit from the active participation of other talents of diverse inclinations. It is good to remember that artists in the developed countries of the world have the whole of the western part to contend with, and can at best elaborate on what has already been done before them. The Filipino artist, on the other hand, can opt to define himself within the context of two worlds simultaneously – and that clearly represents a choice beyond either/or.

Signed, sealed and delivered: Art in the mail!
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times | September 2, 1987

In the past month alone, we have received invitations to participate in a number of “mail-order” exhibitions, including those being organized for the Pusan Biennial in South Korea, the “Western Front” alliance in British Columbia, Canada, and the outbacks Australian group “ARX”. These three, in particular, represent some of the more imaginative ways in which the international postal system is being enlisted by artists to facilitate the lively exchange of creative ideas worldwide.

The Pusan organizers – undoubtedly motivated by the forthcoming Olympic Games in 1988 – have envisioned a way by which foreign artists can participate in their Biennial without great effort and expense. Writing directly to artists from all over the world, they are encouraging potential participants to “mail in” their entries for a special category ultimately destined for conventional wall display.

The artists of the “Western Front” alliance, on the other hand, are organizing the latest in a series of postal activities focusing on two-dimensional “disposable” art – particularly that which makes use of conventional office equipment like typewriters, photocopy machines, adding machines, mimeo equipment, personal computers and the like. “Western Front” stalwarts like Phil Goldstein and Ian Wallace hope to encourage the development of an art-form specifically intended for long-distance correspondence and easy dissemination. Both my wife and I have collaborated closely in the past with this progressive North American group, and have found their liberational attitude refreshing.

But by far the most imaginative and generous invitation is from “ARX”, an art organization based in Fremantle, West Australia. Along with a collapsible cardboard box and $30 for stamps, each participant is provided with the freedom to work in any medium within and around the box. Thus, even three-dimensional pieces are possible, and with all postal charges paid at that!

We have likewise received invitations to postal exhibitions in West Germany, the USA, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Japan, and several countries in South America, among others. And local artists like Fernando Modesto – who delight in lengthening their respective lists of recent international exhibitions – have managed to chalk-up a good number of overseas appearances for the price of a few stamps.

Since 1983, I have personally pursued an ongoing “art in our mail” project called “GAGAMBANG GOMA”, which now has an audience of more than 200 paid subscribers in four continents. I have sent periodic “editions” in brown envelopes which have contained virtually anything from tape recordings, to computer print-outs, pressed flowers and birdseed. Encouraging interaction with my subscribers, I have received a small mountain of objectified “reactions” from artists I might never come to know otherwise.

Those interested in forthcoming postal exhibitions may write to me c/o this section. I will be more than happy to inform you about invitations to participate that come our way in the future. The gateway to audiences abroad may just be as far away as your neighbourhood post office.

Hands across the ocean: An American artist’s ‘Filipinism’
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times | September 26, 1987

Of the correspondence received last week through my editor, Rosalinda L. Orosa, the one most certainly worth sharing is from Vincent Pollard, a poet and performance artist from Chicago, Illinois, who doubles as helmsman for the American transmedia group “South Side Audio-Visual artists.” Pollard’s letter was prompted by an article of mine that was published in this section (“Motion Potion – Do Photographs Ever Lie?”, MT, July 1), and which questioned the timeliness of a photo exhibit celebrating “the good life” amidst the turbulence and uncertainty of our present-day surroundings.

Although much of Mr. Pollard’s letter is of a personal nature, the wealth of photocopy material he had graciously enclosed for our reference should be of considerable public interest. As evidenced by this material, Pollard obviously represents a new breed of clear-thinking American artists deeply concerned with the problems that face the developing nations of The Third World, and the Philippines in particular.

Our plight and our continuing struggle, apparently, is generating more interest in stateside creative circles than we might have imagined, thanks in no small way to the persistent efforts of our brothers-inspirit like Vincent Pollard. A published critic and freelance writer on the side, his articles in several Chicago periodicals include a great deal of illuminating and sympathetic insight on Philippine art and culture, politics, history, and current events, and his intelligent reviews have been diligently focused on travelling Philippine exhibits in the United States.

An award-winning artist, Pollard’s latest multi-media work entitled “Trembling Volcano, Startling Eruptions” is influenced by themes from such well-known nationalist songs as “Bayan Ko”, and is even now taking shape as a slide/tape/poetry-performance piece to be presented before community and student audiences in the greater Chicago area. (Interestingly, Polland wrote in an article published in the Grey City Journal of the University of Chicago that a photograph of “Mayon Volcano Erupting” had “struck (him) as an apt metaphor for the developing political explosion in the Philippines.” This was 1985, in his review of a visiting exhibit of Philippine photographs curated by Jaime Zobel de Ayala and Arturo Luz.)

A great deal of stateside material mentioned in Pollard’s critiques would be of profound significance to us, and it is a pity that not enough effort is being exerted by our well-funded local institutions to get copies of said material for the benefit of local audiences. In his article entitled “The Survivors,” published in the Chicago Via Times, Pollard trains his sights on a film entitled “A Dollar A Day, 10c A Dance” (directed by Geoffrey Dunn and Mark Schwartz for Gold Mountain Productions), which chronicles the odyssey of Filipino immigrant laborers working the fields and canneries of Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska – from their arrival in the 1920’s, to the Watsonville Riot of the 1930’s and beyond.

The ordeal to which these brave souls were subjected included dishearteningly low pay, uncertain employment, harsh working and housing conditions, and – as might be expected – rabid racial discrimination. State legislation prohibited and outlawed marriages between Filipino men and white or Mexican women, and as a result, West Coast Filipino communities were “predominantly bachelor societies in the 1920’s.” Pinoys found their only opportunity for mixing with white women in the dance halls, where “Taxi-dancing”, a national fad, cost 10c a dance.

Polland writes that “as the Great Depression set in… sharper competition for scarce jobs intensified anti-Filipino prejudice. The dance halls were an obvious target. There were casualties. Fermin Tobera died of gunshot wounds received in a white riot against a Watsonville, California, dance hall in January of 1930.”

What struck Pollard most about the film, however, was the ability of these pioneering Filipino immigrant laborers to maintain “their dignity, insight, and sense of humor in the face of enormous odds.” Their secret, he tells us, was SOLIDARITY. “This persevering togetherness in the struggle against oppression is an implicit lesson one may draw from the film,” Polland concludes, adding that “the lesson is still a useful one.”

With such willing hands across the ocean, and such a heritage for bucking the odds, who can doubt that the brown man will survive and prosper?

Robles at the CCP: New-age Pandora
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times | September 23, 1987

For his thoroughly intriguing mixed media installation “The Box,” 31-year-old artist Roberto Robles has built a formidable apartment-like structure into the CCP’s Small Gallery, and has peopled each cubicle with the demons of art. Robles paintings, drawings, illustrated manuscripts, makeshift plateglass composites and sculpture, dating back to 1982, literally line the walls and spaces of this enclosure, an outpouring of personal produce that stands as testimony to his hyper-productivity.

One arrives through a narrow, central corridor where a louvered door opens up to the silent holocaust within. First impressions on entering include: (a) a recording studio very late at night, with the session musicians having all gone home or having fallen asleep on their instruments; (b) a pirate radio station off the air, with the records hung up to dry; (c) a whitewashed dormitory for Boy Scouts, possibly in Teacher’s Camp, Baguio; (d) the inside of a burned-out ham radio.

In fact, so potentially audal is Robles’ environment that the absence of sound immediately perplexes the viewer.

Robles is careful not to plot a course for us to follow, preferring to encourage our wandering instincts through this tight and arid hall of mirrors. On one end is a residential chamber, and in it, a spread of beddings marked by the outline of a figure not quite at rest, a sno-paked suspended in mid-air, and a scattering of small religious artifacts like talismans against bangungot and the toothfairy.

Another chamber centers on a levitating chair, and still another on a flight of pseudo-stairs that lead nowhere. This is not exactly original imagery, and it is to the artist’s credit that he manages to interrelate his incidental arrangements with his own intensely personal renderings on the walls – much like a visual fugue of vibrant shapes and textures both real and conjured.

The exhibit’s one small failing, I think, has something to do with Robles’ literary aspirations and with his penchant for labeling and text. The artist’s obsessive determination to write is clearly beyond his current capability to do so with intelligence and wit, and Robles’ own limited facility with language has him copying phrases at random from out of esoteric reading matter, composing clumsy ditties in delirious penciled tantrums, and repeating key words like “Plaridel” and “kahon” to the point where it is very nearly embarrassing.

Still and all, “The Box” is undoubtedly a landmark exhibit that comes both from a most unexpected source and at a most unexpected point in time, establishing the youthful Robles as a major new talent that bears close watching from hereon. More than just a postscript to the installational genre, it provides this obviously still-fertile ground with a second lease on life beyond the tired ramblings of the ageing avant-garde.

Preview talk: Four women, four visions
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times | September 16, 1987

The accompanying fanfare promises an ambiance oozing with Old World charm for “RAYAS PINCELADAS,” an exhibition featuring four women artists “celebrating a special vision” at the Galeria de las Islas in historic Intramuros. I am sure the organizers of this fund-raiser will manage to conjure something appropriate by the time the show open tomorrow, but the atmosphere left much to be desired when I dropped by for a “sneak preview” of the works last Sunday.

Climbing three flights of service stairs through a bombardment of more local handicrafts than I have ever seen in my life couldn’t possibly have helped, and couldn’t possibly have helped, and I did arrive to the small spectacle of the janitorial service scrubbing the floor. I must say that I have never felt good about reviewing art exhibits before they have been formally inaugurated, precisely because so much of the peripheral trappings that are said to make a difference – such as place cards, people, and the curator’s final touches – have yet to materialize.

While it would be wise, then, to reserve sound judgment on this one pending its unveiling tomorrow, a few candid insights regarding the work might be appropriate at this point – if only to provide material for discussion over cocktails.

For instance, those familiar with the Calado series of Araceli Limcaco-Dans – introduced for the first time in her major exhibition of paintings at the defunct MOPA some two summers ago – should recognize new potential for her photo-realistic still-lifes in her shift from oils to watercolor. I, for one, have always been vaguely distrustful of that vintage predilection for such incredible imagery as farm-fresh eggs and seashells draped melodramatically with embroidered fabric, but Dans’ supple renderings of floppy cardboard boxes should reinforce anyone’s belief in her ability to snatch from life, and her many years as a professional artist deserve no less from us than a vote of confidence.

I have secretly hoped for some time now that Christina Garzon’s exceptional graphic abilities and manic devotion to detail might someday be trained on something closer to heart and home than Indian cowherds, and in this exhibit, I finally do get my wish. However, her welcome shift in focus to figurations inspired by the Tau-sug of Sulu is not without its setbacks, and Garzon’s youthful proficiency with pen and ink might appear somewhat hampered in this series by her preoccupation with the conscious probing of new material.

Remedios Boquiren will probably intrigue viewers with how her well-worked oil paintings could look so patently illustrational. Sharing more than a casual affinity with the works of other genre artists like Tam Austria and Jeff Dizon, her idyllic renderings of local womenfolk are very nearly reverential in treatment, but in this new series at least, aficionados may find that they somehow lack the dynamism, purposefulness and cultural depth of an Anita Ho or a Botong Francisco. Dreamy, sometimes preciously lyrical, Boquiren scratches the surface but not the soul of the mythical Filipina.

Surprisingly enough for an unheralded newcomer, Valeria Cavestany may enage the fancy of more visitors on opening night than the three veterans with whom she appears. This Catalan import marks her debut before local audiences, but what she still obviously lacks in exhibitional experience, originality, and singleness of purpose is more than adequately made up for by the refreshing vitality and candor that almost always sets promising talents apart. If some of Cavestany’s works smack of the confectionery and the infantile, blame it on her arbitrary use of paper doilies for compositional borderwork.

To be sure, exhibitions of this sort are always welcome fare, although what “special vision” these four women artists share in common may not be as readily apparent as we might expect. The great thing about “art” is that it is always open to interpretation, and if anything at all, this exhibit should serve to remind us that there are more ways to skin a cat than we are sometimes led to believe. Come to the opening and see if you agree.

Small fish in a big ocean? : Young art in Indonesia
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times September 12, 1987

I have heard it said more than once that the art of Indonesia is hopelessly steeped in archaic convention, limited to batik and religious ornamentation. The ongoing exhibit of recent Indonesian art at Kulay-Diwa Galleries in Sucat, Paranaque, should put an end to such idle talk.

Organized by that gallery’s budding young curator – the Asean-trained Yuan Mor’O (a.k.a. Juan Moire Ocampo) – the 50-odd works in a wide range of contemporary media from oils to photocopy and collage betray the steady onslaught of westernization and the beckoning lure of The Big Apple. Twisted figuration, sporadic drips and swirls, a fondness for garish coloration and austere monochromatics, fractured text and implied narrative, and an emphasis on spontaneity and introspections dominate many of the pieces on display, obviously preoccupied as they are with stylistic prerogatives, the permutation of myth and symbolism, themes of alienation and angst, and the bravura commonly associated with patent self-indulgence.

Undoubtedly, that’s good news for some and bad news for others! If progress be the great white way, then Indonesian art is alive and well and riding gung-ho into the 21st Century on the stout shoulders of its young. But on the other hand, when viewed on in the half-light of our own cultural paranoia, the very recourse to the term “progress through westernization” may be no more than a sleek excuse for paleface pollution.

That these young Indonesian artists are diversely talented is a matter readily conceded. For instance, Acep Zam Zam Noor’s anatomical variations extend beyond mere contortion into a rapidly transcribed dichotomy of energy and material form less erotic than palpably sensuous. The small textural abstractions of I Made Bendi Yudha possess an almost confectionery charm, like turn-of the century milliner’s embroidery or handcrafted papier mache embellishment. And Eddie Hara’s chronic irreverence dogs a distinctly personal iconography laden with cultural debris, whimsical incantations, and the detailed rape of traditional mores.

Others are not as apparently exciting. Singgih Hertanto’s swirling urban landscapes in oil and ik are deceptively simplistic, yet a compelling dynamism weaves and bends and winds through his clusters of residential structures like some malevolent undercurrent. Sutikno resorts to well-worn surrealist devices in his “Gua”, a backlighted mythological graveyard that seems strangely celebrational. Still others like Johannes Dyenar, Heri Doo and Hendro Suseno pare complex and turbulent outpourings into stylized, abbreviated notations as lyrical as the dance of life that compels them.

Whatever this emerging new wave of Indonesian visual artistry will simply breed more small fish for an ocean already vastly over-populated, or whether time will see our regional brothers moving relentlessly forward with the tide is a question best left unresolved for now. For us and for the meantime, the pleasure of discovery, of sharing visions previously rendered inaccessible by geographic circumstance, is valuable enough an experience.

(A small parting shot, made not entirely in jest:) Tita Cory has said that the private sector must do its share to champion the common good – and more than incidentally, to take up the slack brought about by government ineptitude. It is good to know that even while our public cultural institutions are scratching around for their place in the sun, many of our private galleries like Kulay-diwa are taking on the greater challenge of furthering our creative horizons. And all is well that ends well.

Relentless explorers: Albor and Bargielska in mid-stream
By CESARE A.X. SYJUCO
The Manila Times | July 22, 1987

I first heard of Augusto Albor in the mid-70’s. Even then he was a rising young star in the artistic firmament, the new darling of the local cognoscenti, a very important artist in the making. Arturo Luz, who was king of the woods in those days, was said to have referred to Albor as his “heir-apparent,” even as the younger painters works filled the growing vid in what seemed to be an endless string of towering edifices sprouting along the reclamation area and beyond. When Albor was awarded the coveted AAP Grand Prize in 1977, his destiny had become doubly assured.

I did not meet Gus Albor until 1983, and then of all places, at the opening of my own exhibit at the old Sining Kalig on Taft Avenue. Lee Aguinaldo had brought him over, and although Gus was only five years my senior, I must say that I was absolutely thrilled to make his acquaintance. He told me that he had loved the poems that I had read at Virgie Moreno’s café a few months before, and at the risk of sounding trite, I was tickled to the bone. As the afternoon wore on, I was even more delighted to find him a disarmingly uncomplicated person.

A few weeks later, Gus arranged for me to meet his wife, Teresa Bargielska. An American expat living in Manila, she too had a sterling reputation as a daring installational artist and experimental painter. The Three of us spent the evening talking about poetry, oddly enough, and we immediately became fast friends.

In the months that followed before their departure for India in late 1985, I had the privilege to work closely with both Gus and Teresa. Their combined creative energy and investigative knack were contagious throughout this brief association. Other “serious’ painters in the century had always seemed to avoid controversial new exploits like the plague, but the Albors were relentless explorers, consistently up front where the stakes were highest.

Seeing them again over dinner – during their current three-week visit to Manila – I felt certain that the lingering void brought on by their absence would remain unfilled until they had permanently returned to us. Knowing this, it was both immensely pleasurable and lot a little sad to hear them talk of their life abroad.

In their converted farmhouse some 20 minutes from downtown Delhi, Gus continues to work as diligently on his art, even while imbibing the spirit of contemporary India in its lush colorations and traditional geometric motifs. The mystical quality of Indian life would seem at once tailor-made for this young master of the ephemeral, and the Delhi audience has been unusually receptive to his work. But he craves for the Philippines above all else, and thinks of his small stead on the slopes of Mount Mayon Augusto Albor has always been a sensitive artist compelled by a strong sense of home and heritage, and the longing clearly shows in his unguarded lapses into melancholy. He had fought for tickets home when the February Revolution was brewing, and the “Ceasefire” theme of his latest exhibit at the Dhoomi Gallery speaks of his abiding concern for local developments.

Bargielska, on the other hand, reveals in the wealth of readily-available raw material that India has to offer. Her yen for installations knows no geographic bounds, and her own most recent exhibition in Delhi saw her making radical use of hefty timber scaffoldings, fired metal plates and a colorful spectrum of powdered pigment hurled arbitrarily onto sprawling adhesive surfaces. But she, too, thinks of Manila with fondness, and talks with excitement of bringing her Delhi works “home.”

Both Gus and Teresa are saddened by local art’s current plight, and deeply regret what they perceive to be the current administration’s lack of support for matters of cultural significance. Because of this, they feel, hardly anything has changed for the better in the almost two years that they have been away.

Their immediate plans will see Gus staging other shows in India, and probably a comprehensive solo exhibit of his latest works at Pinaglabanan Galleries early next year. Both Albor and Bargielska will be back in August 1988, “most likely for good.” And the long wait will almost certainly be worth our while.