SELECT ART CRITICAL WORKS BY

Cesare A.X. Syjuco

for The Manila Times
(July September, 1987)

Compiled by

Roberto Daniel Devela

Diane Samson
Katrina Nicole Yap

A project for Art Studies 192

2nd Semester, A.Y. 2013-2014
Under Ms. Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez

INTRODUCTION
The art critic indubitably plays an integral role within any given art world as an interpreter of the
language of art. Their job description basically revolves around comprehending art and articulating their
experience of the work into words. While art criticism is not exclusive to the written form, it is certainly
the preferred medium of practitioners of this discipline. Art critical works are often published in
newspapers where critics find themselves within the boundaries and politics of journalism, a practice
which favours more serious topics concerning society, consequently relegating art critics to the
newspapers features section.
With this hierarchical burden in mind, art critics are then challenged to uphold through their works the
notion that art is situated within a particular context, a reality that is not exclusive to traditional news
writing. Art critic Cesare A.X. Syjucos writing is conscious of the practices duty to contextualize art
within social, political and economic realities. Being an artist himself, Syjucos advantageous fluency in
the artistic language through his knowledge of the form brings credibility to his analyses of art and its
relation to the world around it.
But the effectiveness of Syjucos art critical oeuvre does not lie only in his proficiency as an artist. As
much as he has been awarded for his visual works, he has likewise garnered recognition for his poetry
such as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in English Poetry. This entails a way with
words that is necessary in translating a language often incomprehensible to its viewing audience.
Syjucos writing employs a language that is simple and does not delve too much into art world jargon,
preferring anecdotal narrations of his experience with the artworks over formalist analyses.
From 1987 to 1990, Syjuco has written for the lifestyle section of The Manila Times. This collection
contains eight articles written between July and September 1987, a crucial time for a country still buried
under the ashes of the 31-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos. What is considered the deadliest coup
attempt against the regime of then-President Corazon Aquino happened in August of that year, killing 53
and wounding more than 200 (Corazon Aquino Presidential Management Staff, p.23).
Through his works, Syjuco has brought to light the manifestations within the art world, both local and
abroad, of the political and social turmoil and uncertainty experienced by the Filipino people at the time.
In An American artists Filipinism, for example, Syjuco presents an uplifting nationalistic account of
fellow artist/critic Vincent Pollards thoughts on the political situation of the Philippines which calls for
unity among Filipinos and the growing interest for the welfare of the country among stateside creative
circles expressed through various works exhibited in the United States.
Another article, Philippine art in search of identity, places the situation of Philippine art within the
postcolonial mode of being trapped between the clashing cultures of the indigenous/
developing/eastern and the foreign/developed/western. By laying this issue on the table, Syjuco
presents to the Filipinos, or at least his readers, the developments and endeavours within the Philippine
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art world in its struggles to establish for itself a particular identity, which he ends by suggesting a
compromise between the contending personas of Philippine art:
It is good to remember that artists in the developed countries of the world have the whole of
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.
After his stint at the Manila Times, Syjuco transferred to the Daily Globe (1990-1992) and the Philippines
Graphic Magazine (1992-1993). He disappeared from the Philippine visual arts scene until his comeback
in 2004-2005 in an exhibition entitled Flashes of Genius at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main
Gallery. Together with his wife, Jean Marie Syjuco, he is currently busy developing Artlab, a four-level,
400-square meter glass house in Ayala Alabang that the couple pegs as a developmental facility for art
that aims to expose the public to new art genres.

DEVELA, SAMSON, YAP

April 2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Table of Contents
East vs. West: Philippine art in search of identity
The Manila Times July 22, 1987
Relentless explorers: Albor and Bargielska in midstream
The Manila Times July 22, 1987
On exhibit at the CCP: Reality according to artists
The Manila Times July 29, 1987
Signed, sealed and delivered: Art in the mail!
The Manila Times September 2, 1987
Small fish in a big ocean?: Young art in Indonesia
The Manila Times September 12, 1987
Preview talk: Four women, four visions
The Manila Times September 16, 1987
Robles at the CCP: New-age Pandora
The Manila Times July 15, 1987
Hands across the ocean: An American artists Filipinism
The Manila Times July 15, 1987
Bibliography

2
4
5
7
9
11
12
14
16
17
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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 worlds alleged
parochial mentality, spared no effort in exposing what he felt was a tragic lapse in Dr. Perezs
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,
rivalling in significance that memorable confrontation between modernists and the conservatives in
an earlier era.
The argument for indigenous artforms 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
artists 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
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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 MorO, and CCPs 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 fuelled in part by a series of comprehensive
exhibitions beginning November of this year.
Interested parties can call Kulay-Diwa galleries (827-7736 or 872-777) for more information. While
almost certainly a solid step in the right direction, the groups 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 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.

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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-70s. 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 Morenos caf 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 Abors 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
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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 arts current plight, and deeply regret what they perceive to
be the current administrations 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.

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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 Senas
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 Parials 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 alchemists shop presiding over a hysterical clutter of
severed anatomical spareparts. 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 Agawins subliminal erotica endears itself with precious insight, as two lovers with spiked faces
kiss in a bittersweet exchange of pleasure and pain (See photo). And Nestor Vinluans careless scribble
of a dissected head looks almost obscene when viewed in this company.
The mind in art can be either delightful of infuriating, and all the more so when engaged in the
investigation of reality. Benjie Cabangis exposes the rear supports of a reversed transluscent artwork on
glass and tracing paper. Ace 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 Chabets Tailor Tatlin Goes to a Communist party is the
superimposition of a satin-black image on a larger expanse of of black vinyl. Huge Bartolome similary
toys with poetics, objectified in a cramped corner installation. And one shameless participant, best
unnamed, attempts to pass off the work of Delcaroix 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
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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 justfiy 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 hairbrained 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.

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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 artform 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 threedimensional 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 and 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.

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Small fish in a big ocean?: Young art in Indonesia

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 gallerys budding young curator the Asean-trained Yuan MorO (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, thats 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 Noors 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 confectionary charm, like turn-of the century milliners embroidery or handcrafted papier mache embellishment. And Eddie Haras 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 Hertantos 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
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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.

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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 couldnt possibly have helped, and couldnt 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
curators 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 anyones 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 Garzons 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 Garzons 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
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that almost always sets promising talents apart. If some of Cavestanys 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.

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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 CCPs 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
Teachers 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 artificats 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 artists 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 exhibits one small failing, I think, has something to do with Robles literary aspirations and with his
penchant for labelling and text. The artists 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 pencilled 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.

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Hands across the ocean: An American artists 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. Pollards 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. Pollards 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, Pollards 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 Pollards 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 1920s, to the Watsonville Riot of the 1930s 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
Page | 17

societies in the 1920s. 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 antiFilipino 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?

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

"In The Face of Crisis: The Coup Attempts That Failed." Corazon Aquino Presidential
Management Staff, June 1992. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. <http://malacanang.gov.ph/wpcontent/uploads/IntheFaceofCrisis.pdf>.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "East vs West: Philippine Art in Search of Identity." The Manila Times 4
July 1987: n. pag. Print.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "Hands across the Ocean: An American Artists Filipinism." The Manila
Times 26 Sept. 1987: n. pag. Print.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "On Exhibit at the CCP: Reality According to Artists." The Manila
Times 29 July 1987: n. pag. Print.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "Preview Talk: Four Women, Four Visions." The Manila Times 16 Sept.
1987: n. pag. Print.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "Relentless Explorers: Albor and Bargielska in Mid-stream." The Manila
Times 22 July 1987: n. pag. Print.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "Robles at the CCP: New-age Pandora." The Manila Times 23 Sept. 1987: n.
pag. Print.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "Signed, Sealed and Delivered: Art in the Mail!" The Manila Times 2 Sept.
1987: n. pag. Print.
Syjuco, Cesare A.X. "Small Fish in a Big Ocean?: Young Art in Indonesia." The Manila
Times 12 Sept. 1987: n. pag. Print.

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