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THE GODMAKERS

The Artist Space of the Ayala Museum presents “The Godmakers,” the recent anthology of works of JCrisanto Martinez. With a set of highly detailed sculptures, Martinez reveals the grim face of human worship as he shows us the archetypes of “God” as conceived by man. Martinez exhibits an iconography all presented in an emblematic comportment, though despite its certainty of form, is evidently anthropomorphic. The figures are also enthroned in separate niches/kingdoms, and what binds them together are their crowned heads. At some perspective the figures in the sculptures appear to be mythological.  

One major standpoint of these recent artworks is the concept of demigods; human by flesh, treated and given the attributes of a god. The demigod, as inevitably prone to the clasps of human worship and divination, is often dignified beyond mortal means. “We crown them, we worship them, we listen intently when they speak and we play servants to their beck and call,” the artist explains.  With the church’s universal central dogma on the foreground that concentrates on preaching the evasion from carnal transgressions; these flesh-based iniquities which ironically are those that we paradoxically consider (or presume to consider) as what make us human. Contradictory then is the fact that there constantly and consistently parade in our midst the “deities” we covertly idolize the most. It indeed emphasizes the matter-of-fact that we worship the gods we crafted and pay them reverence because of our own personal clandestine desires and urges.

By practice a multitude of the human race pays worship for images of those who they engage in prayers and acts of devotion. There is a representation of someone revered for chivalry, for the true, the good and the beautiful, and the like. Why is there not a representation of a persona which in reality and beyond hypocrisy people really patronize the most in their everyday grind?  Perhaps an image that man idolizes and worship for his carnal cravings? Such raison d’être then becomes the pivotal declaration in Martinez’s artworks. These eidolons correspond to the ‘ramp models’ of society, the social chimeras that we adore much and exalt to a degree that is even beyond gods. We want them. We want to be them. These are the man-manufactured Gods complete with fake crowns and apocryphal kingdoms in which they habituate and rule. These faith-induced monsters, who suck everything that we are or what we own, like black, fat leeches with gilded crowns on their cranium, draining blood, dreams, and even freedom itself.

But then again, we are not in the position to blame because they did not create themselves. They did not install those golden tiaras on their heads. They never called themselves God.   

Oh but we did. And continue to do so.

The Godmakers opens on 05 May 2010 and shall run until 17 May 2010 at the Artist Space of the Ayala Museum located at Makati Avenue corner Dela Rosa St., Greenbelt Park, Makati City 1224 Philippines. For inquiries please contact (632) 757.71.17 – 21 or visit the website www.ayalamuseum.org.

Image:

JCrisanto Martinez, “Face of a Saint, Hands of a Sinner,” Mixed Media on Old Wood / Relief Sculpture, 2010

Text:

Dave Lock and JCrisanto Martinez, “Of Gods and Godmakers”

Technorati Tags: artepinas, Ayala Museum, jcrisanto, Philippine visual arts

The Center for Art, New Ventures and Sustainable Development (CANVAS), in cooperation with the Vargas Museum and with support from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), launches two major exhibitions aimed at promoting truly meaningful, relevant, and transformative elections in the Philippines.

In EVERYDAY FILIPINO HEROES, emerging and senior artists participate with works that send a collective message about the role of the electorate in free elections, one that is critical and discerning, and therefore heroic, never needing to be taken by saviors and messiahs of change. Images of their original works also serve as outdoor banners and line the University’s renowned acacia-sheltered Academic Oval to create an engaging parallel public art exhibit open to all.

In DEKALOGO, ten Salingpusa artists including Elmer Borlogan, Manny Garibay, Anthony Palomo, Karen Flores, Jose Santos III, Cris Villanueva, Jim Orencio, Tammy Tan, Neil Manalo, and Ferdie Montemayor reflect on Apolinario Mabini’s “10 commandments” for Filipinos. Their interpretations are going to be integrated with Mabini’s words to create thought-provoking “Vote Wisely” posters. These will be made available as high-resolution files, downloadable for free on the Internet as publicly accessible pieces of socially-relevant art.

Both exhibits open at 4pm on Saturday, May 1, 2010 at the Vargas Museum of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, and will run until May 31, 2010.

Galerie Anna presents SIGNOS: a slash/art project
at the Megamall Art Center
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These are weeks that bring us on the brink of change. Whether this transition translates into transformation is hardly the question anymore. Elections are deemed as another exercise in a conflux of signs and signifiers, wherein we gesture a functional democracy through a process of campaigns, equal opportunity and symbols of the individual’s power to decide. It is both a gamble and a game: to take hold of these names, numbers and be able to place them in positions and domains.

SIGNOS signifies portents and omens: images and manifestations of what is to come. What could take place as one may imagine or wish for through symbols of specific constructs. On the brink of passage, or afloat in stasis, these are signs that could just be telling us what to think, what to do, and where to go.

Galerie Anna co-presents with slash/art artists’ initiatives the group exhibit “SIGNOS: Signs, Streams and Signals” featuring new works in various media by Con Cabrera, Buen Calubayan, Joey Cobcobo, Marika B. Constantino, Don Djerassi Dalmacio, Karen Ocampo Flores, Lotsu Manes, Emil Mercado, J Pacena II, Mervin Pimentel, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Iggy Rodriguez, Kirby Roxas, Don M. Salubayba, Mark Salvatus, Art Sanchez, Mimi Tecson, Teta Tulay, Wesley Valenzuela and Kalye Collective (Dennis Atienza, Robert Besana, Alvin Cristobal, Alfredo Esquillo, Kirby Roxas and Archie Ruga). SIGNOS also features live art performances by Jef Carnay, Kaye O’ Yek and Jepren Solis on its opening night.

The exhibit opens at the Megamall Art Center on April 23, 2010 at 6:00pm and will be on view daily mall hours until May 9, 2010.

For particulars, contact Galerie Anna at 632.4702511 / 632.5679483.
Email galerieanna.events@yahoo.com or visit www.galerieanna.com

Contemporary sculptor Riel Jaramillo Hilario presents Baro/Balasang, an exhibit of wood sculptures on the theme of theEternal Child at Art Informal to open on April 29, Thursday. The title is Ilocano for boy/girl and the show collectively refers to the artist’s take on the archetype of the Puer Aeternus and Puella Aeterna – The Eternal Child of Jungian psychology. For the artist the archetype is an operative part of the psyche that contains a complex of ideas and feelings that pertain to the essence of childhood – innocence, pure freedom and unbounded consciousness sans the confinements of the idea of self. In its heart is the energy of perpetual youth: a realm of pure possibility and the fullness of being. Hilario explores this concept with the production of playful pieces with the majority of the works revolving around a reinterpretation of the 1914 classic The Little Prince written by the French pilot Antoine de St. Exupery.

The artist says that the works in Baro/balasang “represent a channeling of the eternal child as a spirit of creativity and possibility, where each work stakes a simple truth that we can be made to remember that we are not as blasé as we think: at heart we are still seeking a way back to our own small planet in the sky.”

Hilario studied santo-making in Ilocos Sur in 1994, and later took painting and art history at the University of the Philippines. He returned to working on wood sculptures in 2002 and was a participating artist to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts traveling exhibit, Sungdu-an 3: Making the Local in 2003. Baro/balasang is the artist’s ninth solo exhibition.

Baro/Balasang runs from April 29 to May 16, 2010. For inquiries please visit www.artinformal.com or call 7258518. Art Informal is at 277 Connecticut St. East Greenhills Mandaluyong City.

Artinformal is at 277 Connecticut St., Greenhills East, Mandaluyong City. The exhibit will be on view until the 26^th of April.
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