JOPUNK ROCKS, JOPUNK ROLLS 2

By Arnel Mirasol

Shown in this photo, cutting the ceremonial ribbon with Jojo Garcia, are guests-of-honor Flora Urquico and Atty. Raymond Fortun. Also in photo are, from right, Ria Malvar, gallery owner Nina Malvar,  Aileen Beltran-Gutierrez , Oca Magos, and myself. I don't know the name of the lady at extreme left.

Jojo Garcia opened, last December 12, his first solo exhibit at the Kartini Gallery. And preposterous as it may seem, he had Rod Aniag to thank for it. Why preposterous? You see, Garcia had complained to me several times about Aniag's shameless plagiarization of his jeepney paintings. Aniag not only copied Garcia's paintings without crediting Garcia for it, he also had the temerity to exhibit those copies and post them online at facebook. I did something to help Garcia. I announced on one of my facebook sites the plagiarism done without mentioning the name of the plagiarizer.

To no avail, because Aniag did a reprise of his dastardly act and copied this time Oca Magos' Gitarista.The last straw was when Aniag submitted to the Kartini Gallery the very image of Garcia's Byaheng 80s painting for use in the poster/invitation for Kartini's forthcoming Mission Artists Philippines' group art exhibit. Garcia and I cried enough!, and post right after on our respective facebook timelines our condemnation of Rod Aniag - this time mentioning his name.

Aniag fell into disfavor with Kartini owner Nina Malvar because of that, and Garcia became her darling of sorts. Nina was so struck by the talent and humility of the man, that she prodded Garcia to go for a solo show in her gallery. Which Garcia did. As expected, what Garcia exhibited are the motifs that are near and dear to his heart - like jeepneys, an electric guitar, soda cans, and his favorite rock star apparently, John Lennon. (below).

I've already written lengthily about Jojo Garcia's art that I see no need now to expound on it once more. What I'll do is repost below my April 3, 2014 blog on him -  the blog whose title is the precursor of the title of this piece.

JOPUNK ROCKS, JOPUNK ROLLS

Jojo Garcia's love affair with jeepneys continues. Jeepneys as subject matter in painting have already been done to death, so to speak, by many Filipino painters in the past. Vicente Manansala, Antonio Austria, and Rock Drilon, to name only the most prominent, have dabbled with the jeepney motif at one time or another. There was also Junjie Versoza, Jojo's close friend in college, who made the repeating frontal images of jeepneys his signature style then. It was perhaps fascination with Junjie's paintings that prompted Jojo to do his own take on jeepney images. (below left, a painting by Junjie Verzosa)

Anyway, despite not being the pioneer in the field of jeepney painting, Jojo's substantial contribution to jeepney visual lore isn't diminished one bit. His jeepney paintings (samples below right) also fascinates - and amuses. The words and phrases written on the jeepneys' "headboards" (or visors?) and bumpers are very revealing not only of the milieu, but also of the very personality of the artist himself.

From words like Rock n' Roll, Walastik, Wild Street, Betrayed, Oioioi, Dead Ends, Bandits, Sex Pistols, Rakista, and Kankaloo, we can easily deduce that Jojo Garcia was a "punkista" from Caloocan, who have chucked off his old ways and found his true path in art. Jopunk rocks, not through music, but through his paintings. And he's also on a roll these days. Jojo excused himself from joining us on several occasions because he was up to his neck with painting jobs. His jeepney paintings are - pardon the cliche - selling like hotcakes. That's why he no longer has time to bond with us, his old comrades-in-art. But that's a positive development, I suppose; because I'm sure that when he gets to find the time to join us, he won't hesitate to pick up the tab and treat us all to the mother of all drinking binges.

Above photo, taken during my younger son Kai's first birthday celebration in 1988, shows from left, Rolly San Mateo, George Calma, JR Alonzo, and Jopunk Jojo Garcia himself.

NOTES ON ADAM NACIANCENO'S "UNMASKED" SERIES

By Arnel Mirasol



Vivid Memory of One Night Bliss

This painting exemplifies best the theme that Adam Nacianceno tackles in his Unmasked series. Unmasking involves the exposure or revelation of the true hidden self. It is the peeling of layers that opaques a hidden truth. This painting, which tells of Nacianceno's recollection of a smile, is his way of prodding us to jog our memory and recall for ourselves the selfsame experience of being smiled at. Nacianceno claims that the bliss he speaks of here is not of the physical or sensual kind which dissipates easily. He portrays here the mental or intellectual kind of bliss that fixes itself in one's mind and stays there forever. This painting is a revolving composite of faces. We see eyes that seem to be randomly placed, but are in fact components of faces masked by repeating floral patterns. The fusion here of Jackson Pollock's drip and splatter technique and a Jugendstil artist 's obsession with intricate floral drawings is what distinguishes Adam Nacianceno's art from those done by abstract painters before him. Not to mention his obsessive predilection for black and white, which make him a rare bird indeed in a Philippine art scene aswarm with colorful artistic personas laden with their colorful paintings.

Cultivating My Own Flaws

Flaws are part and parcel of everything. Nature has them. and so do human beings. Artists, by being more sensitive and attuned to outward appearances, are very much preoccupied with finding flaws. But they do not seek flaws to denigrate: they seek them to correct and perhaps make those who have them more visually appealing. Flaws shouldn't be look at as something permanent. They should be starting points on our path to bettering ourselves. Artists in particular should consider flaws not as prison walls that confine, but as hurdles to jump over and leave behind. That is the essence of life - the struggle to attain perfection or something resembling it. Again, the swirling drips of paint can be seen as something other than what they are - they could be looked upon now as the flaws marring the faces. But then, it is these twirls and swirls of white and black paints that lend these painting its abstract expressionistic charm. Without them, the bravura and dynamism that are this painting's principal strength would be lost. We now come to the question of Adam Nacianceno's choice of palette. Why does he persist in his achromatic ways you may ask. Nacianceno said that white and black represent for him the two principal landmarks in a man's like - which is birth and death. In between these two, according to him, are the various shades of gray, which a creative and resourceful man could turn into a full spectrum of colors that would represent a life lived to its fullest potential. 

Hunting My Faceless Reflection

Moments of doubt recur with disturbing frequency among artists, especially so among serious painters who don't look at their art making as mere money-making ventures. Being practical is not always a serious painter's strongest suit. Although the impulse to create never ceases, there are times when artists pause to ponder whether the things they are doing are worth their while. It is during those moments that artists conduct a thorough search for their own true selves. They are faceless at this point. They are not yet unmasked. The urge to veer off in another more practical direction surges strongly here. The artists dissect their faces with minute precision to seek there the marks that would indicate whether they are truly built to suffer and afterwards triumph for their art. The spirit of a true artist triumphs sometimes. But many fall along the way and leave serious art making to spend their energies in more lucrative enterprises. The face that can be discerned in the painting is the finished artwork, the creation. The paint drips and splatters, and the intricate patterning are the veils that mask the artist's face and render it faceless. Nacianceno's art is painting at its most serious. He had cast the die, in a manner of speaking, minutely analyzed his face that was previously masked by doubts, and saw it as the visage of a true artists willing to suffer, and perhaps triumph thereafter, for his art.



Illusion of an Unfolded Dream

Illusion of an Unfolded Dream

When we speak of dreams, we speak of illusions. We speak of hopes that have not come into fruition yet. There are pleasant dreams, and there are nightmares. It is the pleasant dreams, which are unfolded serenely during sleep, that we want to prolong. Here, Nacianceno speaks of abrupt awakening, of the sudden cessation of a pleasant dream, resulting in feelings of frustration and the strong desire to resume sleep to recapture that lost dream. That frustration is reflected in the raised eyebrow and glaring eye of the face in the painting. The drips and splashes of swirling paints, the smudges, and the blurring floral patterns hint of the turmoil a person deprived of his sweet dream is undergoing. The floral images here are all graphic patterns. They are not representations of natural flowers, and are all distinct or non-repeating. Doing that is not easy. But Nacianceno did that, facilely, proclaiming to all his heightened sense of design and rampant creativity. The very title of this painting, and all of his paintings for that matter, suggests Nacianceno's poetic leanings. His paintings are visual poems saying something without explicitly saying them.