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“If I don’t terrorize, I’m not pop.” – Iggy pop

POP, the very onomatopoeia of something that just burst out of nowhere, or from the simmering soupcon saturated in instantaneous thrills, much like movie monsters springing forth from mad science experiments gone horribly wrong producing hybrids such as Godzilla itself which was conceived as a cross between a gorilla (gorira) and a whale (kujira) to verily embody size, power and its aquatic origin, JP Cuison’s 2nd exhibit opening this 29th of April at Secret Fresh Gallery treads the same nuclear amniotic pool which has spawned his own mash-ups of vintage cartoon and media characters in re-imagined scenarios wrought out from this polysoup of influences that now pervade both imagination and waking life.

The title of the exhibit POPZILLA, itself a word mash-up, implies an invasion by massive media exposure and from which pop art has started to utilize or rather parallel the tools , signs and systems by which consumer culture is manufactured and in turn consumed again which systematized as well and established art as an industry in itself, aside from being a topical reference to Cuison’s line of posters, Gigzilla, which he makes for various gigs around Manila. In these posters, he casts beloved cartoon characters in irreverent situations doing what they are otherwise known for, stripping them off the wholesome innocence of childhood memories to re-enact their personas in the adult imagination – Penelope Pitstop of Wacky Races sporting tattoos as Kat Von D, or the Planters peanuts minions invading as an SS troop, or a corny take on Ilong Ranger being olfactorily assaulted by Pepe le Pew. Even Philippine masterworks are not spared from this spoofy mash-ups as Amorsolo’s idyllic planting rice scene is invaded by a Boazanian battleship skull (from the 1970s Voltes V anime) floating in the pink-blue clouds and Luna’s Spolarium whose central figure, a fallen gladiator being dragged on the bloodied floor with the other fallen ones is mutated into a gloppy drippy creature who seemed to have been an accident of a freak time travel experiment, nuked out off the kooky time-space continuum.

Their persistence is somewhat an invasion of memories repressed and then re-activated to form new narratives out of these re-combinable hybrids that now can be easily extracted from their original context, through their numerous and variable appropriations and re-appropriations, ad infinitum, with their original value deflated to mere signs.

The conflation of Rizal and Marilyn, mutated into one iconic persona, and reproduced as silk screen prints as a direct homage to Warhol, best illustrates this and more as being both ubiquitous symbols that have digressed into mundane cultural objects , or at the extreme, kitsch, yet inflationary to their mythic currency.

What was shocking then with pop art when it first came out was the brashness of its process and the randomness with which it selects its subject matter, not caring for the divine attributes of what a work of art is thought to possess then. What just pops out in the mind and to directly translate it into canvas is as automatic and as intuitive too of the very process of creating. The brashness transgresses into cannibalizing existing imagery to turn into something new, mediated anew, or repackaged anew to offer a different perspective of things which JP Cuison’ s POPZILLA is trying to convey and wishes to jolts us out of our preconceived notions of things pop and otherwise.

JP Cuison is a graduate of University of the Philippines with a degree in Fine Arts in Visual Communication and a Best Thesis awardee. He is highly recognized in the field of advertising being a two-time Philippine representative to the prestigious Cannes Young Lions International Advertising Festival. He makes up the loony trio that produces the underground comix sensation, PUNNX COMIX with Manix Abrera and Dennis Nierra.

His first solo exhibit, held in Pablo Gallery, Cubao, featured his series of Gigzilla posters.

Popzilla! Is his 2nd solo exhibit.

Popzilla will have its opening cocktails on the 29th of April, Friday at 6 PM. This opening will also include live performances by Gorgoro, ….

The opening will also coincide with the launch of Rizalborg, JP Cuison’s 1st art toy designed exclusively for Secret Fresh. Made of polymer resin, Rizalborg comes only in limited signed and numbered editions of 50.

Popzilla will be on view until May 23.

Secret Fresh is at the Ground Floor of Ronac Art Center, Ortigas Avenue, North Greenhills, San Juan, MM. Contact details : (632) 5709815 local 7. Email freshmanila@gmail.com or secretfresh.gallery@gmail.comwww.twitter.com/freshmanila. Secret Fresh is also on Facebook.

Secret Fresh is open from Mondays to Saturdays from 2 to 10 PM and Sundays from 1 to 6 PM.

Einstein once said “if you traveled into space in a straight line, you will eventually come back to where you started”. But could this scientific concept even apply in our personal life? 25 artists have gathered together to find out if it could. They took a second look at their childhood, revisiting childhood desires, dreams, ambitions, behavior, habit, frustrations, experience, the toys, sensibilities, mind sets, and anythings else that make up their childhood. Using photography and digital art to relate their inner journey, they share the lessons that proves that life does indeed come in full circle.

Featuring the works of

Anson Yu / Benjie Cruz / Bon Labora / Carlo Claudio / Chen Breva / Cherry Hilao

Chester Asehan / Chito Ignacio / George Barrios / Jemimah Dumawal / Joel Chua

John Bonham / Loren Marquez / Micheline Rama / Mike Andaya / Niel Marcelino

Noel Pocot / Paolo Castro / Portia Mendoza / Raul Roco Jr. / Recci Bacolor

Shaira Luna / Tom Estrera III / Tootoots Leyesa / Vaughn Tayag

Philippine Art Awards launches 2011 visual arts competition

Manila, Philippines – The much-awaited visual arts competition is now officially on. Philippine Art Awards (PAA), the only two-tiered arts competition in the country today, shall hold its regional selection this year for Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and Metro Manila, and shall award 10 winners from each of these regions, all of whom will receive P40,000 each. Next year, all these 40 regional winners will compete for the National component and vie for a grand prize and seven Jurors Choice awards to win a larger pool of cash prizes. The competition will accept multi-dimensional artworks, not just paintings, as it had expanded the entry categories in its last regional competition in 2009……….

Check more at The Philippine Star

(From The Philippine Star) Updated April 18, 2011

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Blanc Gallery Unveils Collective Memory
Featuring the works of Mimi TECSON and Wesley VALENZUELA

For most the area is congested, polluted and chaotic. For others, the place is charming, magnetic and reliable. To a select few that were born, bred and raised in Manila… it is undoubtedly, home. Mimi Tecson and Wesley Valenzuela share their views and reminiscences in Collective Memory.

This two-person show encapsulates the artists’ affinity to amassing objects and imagery related to pop culture. Through their daily explorations of their environs, they have collected a multitude of corporeal items and symbolic representations. By fusing these tangible and contextual portrayals with their distinct creative styles, Tecson and Valenzuela impart significant recollections, ideas and personas in their lives.

The artworks in this collection convey their musings on their roots, religion and society. The pieces evoke their affirmations and queries on personal relationships, interests and their evolving creative processes. Valenzuela’s work combines painting and collage while incorporating symbolic juxtapositions of imagery from the past and present. Tecson, on the other hand, employs bricolage; where she makes use of common objects to imbue an emotional connection through her art.

Tecson and Valenzuela accords the viewers relatable vignettes in their Collective Memory. Exhibit opens on Monday, April 11 at 6:00pm at Blanc Gallery, Unit 2E Crown Tower, 107 HV dela Costa St, Salcedo Village, Makati. For more information on the exhibit log-on to www.blanc.ph.

Dalawang Sakay by Mimi Tecson

When I Merge by Mimi Tecson

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Bembol Dela Cruz
House Blends

It’s a belated realization that white elephants do hang around in our cupboards and pantry, and which Bembol Dela Cruz, in his exhibit House Blends, points out in his latest series of paintings that jar the complacent banality and seeming incorruptibility of common household items. The odd juxtaposition of the technique with which they are made and the contents of each tableau confound further this fact.
These are presented as still life paintings reminiscent of 17th century Dutch still lifes which emerged and became popular at the apex of the then Dutch’s republic economic growth following their war for independence in 1568 – 1648.

More than a showcase of the material produce of trade and nature, they also served as moralistic allegories on the transience of life, however marvelously and sensuously these banquet pieces are rendered with each dimpled peel of a rotting lemon, the browning petal tips of a wilting bouquet and the sinewy loins of a newly-killed game animal paired with glinting silver, crystalline decanters and the most luxuriant silk fabrics.

Also called Vanitas, or rather the more didactic of such genre, the worldliness of how these are painted is only matched by the deft skill of the painter who revels in the conceit of his skill for rendering them so in great detail and with impeccable mimesis of light’s effect on various surfaces. Hence, the viewer is dazzled for the surface vanities of worldly objects, and always willing to be deceived by such, if only for the pleasure of this very process of bedazzlement. Indeed, the idea of trompe-l’oleil, literally little deception, encapsulates this and all the more makes apparent the “vanity” of such conceit/deceit, veiling behind the sheen and glimmer the morbidity and frailty of human existence.

Dela Cruz however presents us with commonplace pantry items that similarly conceals/camouflages the latent risk of their combination. The paintings read like a grocery list, not for a dish to be cooked, but for homemade explosives that can be concocted from these presented objects. Hence, a composition of eggs, garlic powder, and oil maybe misconstrued for the ingredients for some savory mayonnaise, if not for the presence of a liquid detergent container and a bullet.

Most of the contents of each still life painting were lifted from the infamous Anarchist Cookbook that was published in 1971 but widely circulated underground, and appended by anonymous pirate authors who put it up on the internet for downloading until it was discontinued or philtered 5 years ago for security breaches and the increased number of militant actions that have used the book for making their own bombs since its first release.

It can be surmised that these paintings are the industrial equivalents of the Dutch vanitas as by laying bare the instruments with which lives, properties and even whole cities are destroyed. It is a predicament very peculiar to our times and which have been engaged with seemingly in the course of the rise and fall of movements and civilizations – a theme that Dela Cruz has since explored in his early paintings – of bombed out cities overlaid by trompe l’oleil rulers, and of scratched car dents and warped car hoods smeared abstractly by another offensive vehicle.

The genre of still life has actually been the vehicle with which Cezanne has revolutionized picture making as he regarded the genre as perfectly wieldy for exploring forms in geometric spatial organization and with which he had taken painting away from its illusionistic/mimetic function to one demonstrating independently the elements of color, form, and line which paved the way for abstract art.

In a way, explosions are a form of abstraction. The fear elicited from such devices depicted in Dela Cruz’s paintings derive from a speculated unknown enemy, which is not necessarily directed to just one person but a group of persons who personify an idea, a belief system or even hierarchical structures built upon fanatical singular visions, wherein our Appolonian vision of the world is continually being threatened by the inevitability of chaos and the overwhelming void that births this chaos.

How do we arm ourselves in such times or do we start revolutions of our own or continually deny these truths in their very containment in our cupboards, camouflaged as one’s basic necessities for survival, or rhetorics as trompe-l’oleil measures for safeguarding one’s sanity against paranoia?

Or rather we let white elephants parade in our blissful ignorance of such and die at the sight of stars in a titian streaked sky.

Interestingly, the camouflage pattern used on warships during the two world wars and designed by artist Norman Wilkinson is also known as Razzle Dazzle or Dazzle painting.

E.g. the extreme leftist-Marxist group The Weather Underground that was formed in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and whose members called The Weathermen, devised innumerable number of bombs such as nail bombs to destroy government buildings and banks. The two high school kids behind the Columbine massacre is alleged to have read the book before beginning their attack on their classmates. In recent times, even the possession of said book could warranty jail time due to tighter strictures and provisions under international anti-terrorism laws.

-Lena Cobangbang

Bembol Dela Cruz Show opens on 6pm Saturday April 9 at blan compound

"BULB B" - Bembol dela Cruz

"EGG BASED B" - Bembol dela Cruz

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