Thursday, February 21, 2013

INKCANTO | Lent, bikini wax penance, and Pinggot Zulueta’s ‘Viajes’

By Ramil Digal Gulle, InterAksyon.com · 
Thursday, February 21, 2013 · 8:30 am

  
The paradox at the heart of the OFW phenomenon is that so many Filipinos have to leave their families to provide for their needs and their future. Leaving home is the most difficult decision for a Filipino, for whom family is the end-all and be-all of existence. The psychological and emotional effects of this separation are well-document in the sometimes sad, sometimes tragic stories of our OFWs.

In the fourth solo exhibition of visual artist, photojournalist, and printmaker Pinggot Zulueta, titled Viajes, the phenomenon of Filipino migration is rendered not in tales of tragedy but abstractly—in forms and colors that evoke mood, atmosphere, and emotion.

The works feature diptychs and triptychs that combine human figures with abstracted forms. The gallery notes tell us that Zulueta’s works are about migration, the cycles of leave-taking and return, transits and transition—and while these notes and the titles are important in grasping what each work is “about,” I rather enjoy the wordlessness of the viewing experience.

The triptychs with human figures in the middle convey motion and emotion, although the sense of movement is most palpable in Bird Spirit compared to the others. The reds and blacks create a feeling of freedom and strength. Night Walker is more contemplative and slower in pace, with its blue, black, and yellow hues evoking a night stroll, with occasional pauses.

Rather compelling are the paintings that refer to places, or rather to “views” of places. “Castle Hills Memories” and “Dreaming North Shore”. Again they have that emotional quality but with a less solid rendering—more of emotions felt less vividly, with distance and longing.

It’s as though the “views” are seen through windows splashed with rain: colors, shapes, landscapes and feelings in dishabille. One wonders if they refer to memories that are themselves caught in a stream of transitions. Maybe the whole point of the exhibit is to map the dynamic of feelings and emotions that a wanderer would have, although I sense a reversal: maybe all the works map the emotions of someone who is always caught in a wave of transitions and displacements. It’s the journey not as a chosen undertaking, but rather as something greater than the journeyman: a force that sweeps the traveler away like a river or a sea.

Pinggot Zulueta’s “Viajes”, curated by Renato Habulan, is ongoing at Galeria Francesca, 4th Level, SM Megamall until March 3, 2013.

http://www.interaksyon.com/lifestyle/inkcanto-love-lent-and-bikini-wax-penance