2View Exhibition

Ross Capili, Pinggot Zulueta celebrate abstraction in joint show

By Dexter R. Matilla 

Philippine Daily Inquirer8:45 am  

Monday, September 1st, 2014

    

Ross Capili and Pinggot Zulueta are stalwarts in photography and photojournalism, but both have also a growing abstract art practice.

Individually, they translate the process of photography into abstracted forms that reveal intellectual depth and technical talent.

The exhibition “2View” brings these two artists together for the first time. It will open at Galerie Francesca-Megamall today, Sept. 1, at 6 p.m.

Multiawarded artist  Capili uses the flowing nature of Asian calligraphy as an inspiration for his new works. Using the spontaneity associated with Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, Capili works with glass and lacquered acrylic to bring about a different kind of art.

The series was first conceptualized in 1998 for a show in Ayala Museum. However, the lacquer fumes were difficult to deal with. So Capili spent the next few years working on the series, and the works in the exhibition will be the first time the public can view them.

With over 30 exhibits, Capili’s works in the exhibit not only reflects on the entirety of his oeuvre, but his philosophy as well.

“Floating Thoughts,” for instance, gives off a “soft” touch and radiates tranquillity.

“Song Imprints” is an abstraction of what Capili feels when listening to one of his cherished vinyl records.

Producing portraits of newsmakers is hardly an effort for Jose “Pinggot” Vinluan Zulueta. But then again, this veteran lensman is hardly just that. How he got his break in newspaper drawing editorial cartoons is known mostly to his colleagues and close friends so his foray into painting was to be expected.

Zulueta would be the first to admit to uncertainty as to how his abstract works would be accepted by the audience. Even before joining the press, he was already a painter of representational works along the Social Realist vein.

His representational phase extended to his abstraction.

“It was full of human drama and emotion,” Zulueta says. “I was conscious to try and evoke Social Realism, and now that I look back, I realize my works were sad.”

In his upcoming show with Capili,  Zulueta is now more freewheeling as an abstractionist. Now, the photographer-artist concentrates more on the process rather than meaning.

His fascination with lines and geometry continues and while these elements are the main focus of this new collection, the vibrant colors that encompass the surrounding space prove that Zulueta has evolved as an abstractionist who’s no longer constrained by fear and uncertainty.

“I’m just enjoying painting now,” Zulueta says. “The works are nonrepresentational and it has no narrative and I guess as I grow older I realize that the struggle is over and it’s only right that I am able to express myself through this. It’s my commitment to myself.”

Capili understands this sentiment quite well. He deals with a medium that’s difficult to control primarily for its permanence.

“It’s irreversible, using lacquer and enamel,” Capili explains.

Capili says he is guided by the spontaneity of intuitive calligraphy.

With layers upon layers, Capili says he builds up his work into a complete piece that’s both fragile and intimidating. The separation of colors gives credence to his attempt to create a painting within a painting.

“It is an intuitive expression in abstract,” Capili says. “Different medium, different approach. You can see the abstractionism but it’s not the type that disturbs.”

The show  “2View” will serve as a precursor to the two artists’ participation in the 2014 Langkawi Art Biennale and the 2014 Malacca International Contemporary Art Festival in Malaysia. “2View” will run until Sept. 15.

Galerie Francesca is at 4/F,  SM Megamall Building A, Mandaluyong City. Call 5709495; e mail galeriefrancesca.mega@gmail.com.

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/170304/ross-capili-pinggot-zulueta-celebrate-abstraction-in-joint-show

Galerie Francesca presents 2 View

"2 VIEWS" TWO-MAN EXHIBIT OF WORKS BY ROSS CAPILI AND PINGGOT ZULUETA OPENING AT GALERIE FRANCESCA  ON SEPTEMBER 1

Abstraction requires a certain mindset. The artist needs to balance his emotions with an affinity for his chosen medium. It also requires a desire to experiment and push the boundaries of what his practice can accomplish. What more when two abstractionists hold an exhibition together?

Philosopher Jean Piaget said that, "Reflective abstraction, however, is based not on individual actions but on coordinated actions." Perhaps this is the best way to describe the two man show of artists Ross Capili and Pinggot Zulueta. The two artists are stalwarts in the field of photography and photojournalism, but both have burgeoning abstraction practices that are complex and highly nuanced. Individually, they translate the process of photography into abstracted forms that reveals both intellectual depth and technical talent. The resulting show is a combination of these two practices of like-minded artists, using their artworks as a staging point into a larger discourse into the nature of balance.

The exhibition, entitled "2 Views," brings these two artists together for the first time. It will open at Galerie Francesca in Megamall on September 1 at 6:00PM. Galerie Francesca is located on the 4th floor of SM Megamall Building A, Mandaluyong City. They may be reached through their landline phone at (632) 570-9495 or email at galeriefrancesca.mega@gmail.com.

Multi-awarded artist Ross Capili uses the flowing nature of Asian calligraphy as an inspiration for his new works. Using the spontaneity associated with Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, Capili works with glass and lacquered acrylic to bring about a different kind of art. The series was first conceptualized in 1998 for a show in Ayala Museum. However, the lacquer fumes were difficult to deal with. So Capili spent the next few years working on the series, and the works in the exhibition will be the first time the public can view them. 

With over 30 exhibits under his belt in a career that spans decades, Capili's works in the exhibit not only reflects on the entirety of his oeuvre, but his philosophies as well. "Floating Thoughts," for instance, can be viewed through the prism of emotional calm. Like many of the works, the painting wasn't planned, giving it a "soft" touch that radiates with tranquillity.  Likewise, "Song Imprints," is an abstraction of what Capili feels when listening to one of his cherished vinyl records. 

The works of Jose "Pinggot" Zulueta, on the other hand, is an evolution of his abstract practice that now examines the role of geometric figurations to the concept of balance and harmony. The UST-educated Zulueta is ostensibly known for his Manila Bulletin series on the work spaces of visual artists, Zulueta's concern is of the multidude of perspectives that abstraction can afford. "Chasing Lines I" is representative of this approach. Against a purely abstracted backdrop, Zulueta uses lines in ever-changing viewpoints that allows the viewer to consider the very nature of perspective.

The works of both Ross Capili and Pinggot Zulueta come together in this one-of-a-kind exhibition that also serves as a precursor to their participation in the  2014 Langkawi Art Biennale and the 2014 Malacca International Contemporary Art Festival in Malaysia. "2 Views" is an art event that definitely should not be missed. 

‘What you see is what you see.’ - Frank Stella

PREVIEW

Above Us Only Sky, 3x5ft, mixed media, 2014

“Line is a rich metaphor for the artist. It denotes not only boundary, edge or contour, but is an agent for location, energy, and growth. It is literally movement and change - life itself. “ – Lance Esplund

The words of noted art critic Lance Esplund perhaps best represents the natural evolution of Pinggot Zulueta’s work into what it is today. His latest collection depicts the product of his latest visual contemplations. Coming fresh from an exhibit last year in which he explored connecting his impressionist figurative works with diptych lines. Since then, Zulueta has been fascinated and drawn to lines. 

Lines, being the very foundation of all artworks, became the very idea that he wanted to bring into the foreground as it is the corner stone of every image. In a way, as Zulueta goes back to the basics, removing all pretentions and reverting to the raw skeleton of every artwork, it is evident that he is also unleashing the most primal elements of his emotions in color and strokes to contrast the disciplined and imposing connotation of the line.

The geometric structures become the very subject of his collection as central in composition, he pays  homage the ever dependent and often under appreciated line. 

There are no pretentions to his work, it does not claim any narrative or message, it has no hidden meanings  or manipulations, no agendas or accusations. It simply revels in the very being of aesthetics, and in the words of Frank Stella, ‘What you see is what you see.’

Chasing Lines

Chasing Lines, triptych, 30x102in., mixed media, 2014

Makatulog Ka Pa Kaya? at the Crucible Gallery

New Works by Pinggot Zulueta in collaboration with Virgilio S.Almario, National Artist for Literature at the Crucible Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City. November 5-17, 2013

About the Exhibition

VISION AND VERSE

By Patrick D. Flores

Poet and photographer come together to reflect on images. These are scenes of everyday life in the dense city taken by Jose Zulueta, speaking of conditions that are testimonies as much to sordidness as to survival. They are portraits of how people have been refused and how they have prevailed. This situation is a demolition of houses and thus evokes homelessness and eviction, the struggle to live with dignity and the authority of the state to carry out a policy on housing and urban development. 

  

The photographer keenly registers their presence and discerns a part of their sentiment. This is the first moment of the gesture: the rendering of the stark urban world in black and white. As if the latter were so benighted and so explicit, he chooses to mediate the imagination. The second moment of the impulse is to offer an overlay of artistic disposition: graphic details of geometric motifs in acrylic paint that invariably frame, disrupt, adorn, embroider the photography. (What is the urge of this intervention, we might ask. Is this a sign of optimism? Or just index of experiment?) The photographic image, however, has undergone levels of mediation itself: it is printed through ink jet and then painstakingly transferred on canvas with the aid of emulsion. The tedious toil that goes with it is the photographer’s commitment to an artistic process.

Finally, the third moment comes with words. The poet Virgilio S. Almario, the National Artist who is also known as Rio Alma, writes around the edges of the photographs telling verses from his copious corpus; these converse with the images that try to elicit sympathy and engagement. They look like marginalia but are actually central to sensing the ties between the languages of light and thought, reality and realization, the handwriting of a poet and the vision of the photographer, both grasping with patience the woes of the world.

Photography and Poetry 

By Jasmine T. Cruz

BusinessWorld / November 12, 2013

AN EMACIATED child with pleading eyes looks at the camera. The child’s gloomy world is captured through a black and white photo that was transferred on canvas. As though hoping to inject color into this somber world, the artist used acrylic paint to superimpose colorful geometric lines and shapes on the image. Then on the edges of the canvas are written words that say, “Ang pangarap ng ulan, maglaro sa putikan, bago kunin ng araw (The dream of the rain is to play in the mud before it is taken by the sun).”

Photojournalist Pinggot Zulueta’s work features poetry by National Artist Virgilio Almario.

This is a piece by photojournalist Pinggot Zulueta done in collaboration with National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario for the exhibit Makatulog Ka Pa Kaya? at the Crucible Gallery. Curated by Renato Habulan, the exhibit employs photos from a demolition in Taguig, Metro Manila.

In a phone interview with BusinessWorld on Nov. 12, Mr. Zulueta recalled what it was like when he took the photos in 2008. It happened just two days after he arrived from living in Australia, and he was shocked by the poverty that he witnessed. “Galing ka sa magandang bansa tapos ’yun ’yung unang bumulaga sa akin (I came from a beautiful country then that’s the first thing that I saw),” he said.

From these photos, he submitted one entitled Taguig demolition Philippines to the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies photo competition in Rotterdam, Netherlands and won a special award. This photo is now included in the exhibit as a reworked piece entitled Diyos Na Ang Bahala.

On the choice to include Mr. Almario’s poetry in his work, Mr. Zulueta said, “Ayoko kasi na tignan yung mga litrato ng isang saglit lang (I don’t want people to look at the photographs in just one moment),” explaining that he wants the viewer to spend time looking at the photo and to think about it.

Mr. Zulueta had previously worked with Mr. Almario -- the National Artist was his editor back when he was making editorial cartoons in the 1980s and ’90s. “Sanay na siya sa mga tema ko kaya madali niyang natutulaan (He was already used to the themes that I do so it was easy to make the poetry),” he said.

The geometric lines and shapes on the photos are an expression of Mr. Zulueta’s sympathy for his subjects’ plight. “Pilit kong binubura ang kanilang kahirapan at pinapalitan ng isang imaginary at makulay na buhay (I am trying to erase their poverty and replace it with an imaginary colorful world),” he said.

The exhibit will run until Nov. 17. with cocktail reception on Nov. 13 at 6p.m. The Crucible Gallery is located at the 4th Level, SM Megamall, EDSA corner Julia Vargas Ave., Mandaluyong City. 

Makatulog Ka Pa Kaya?

Art – triangle on poverty and hope: 
Pinggot Zulueta’s mixed-media paintings and Virgilio S. Almario’s poetry

Text by Filipina Lippi

December 16, 2013 / Manila Bulletin

In an art exhibit entitled “How Will You Sleep Tonight?” at Crucible Gallery in SM Mandaluyong last November, photographer and painter Jose “Pinggot” Zulueta fused for the first time photos and paintings to depict homelessness, poverty, and hope. He has been separately working with the two mediums with great skill in the last three decades.

Zulueta’s artworks included photos of families who lost their shanties in a demolition that he covered in a slum area near a railroad track in suburban Taguig in 2008. “That was after my arrival from Sydney where I stayed with my family for two years. We were in New Zealand earlier for four years. In Taguig, I encountered the same images of poverty that I left behind in Manila in 2002,” he recalls.  One of his “demolition photos” received a special award in the Rotterdam Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies’ photo competition in 2008.

Last August, when he went back to his family in Sydney, he brought the colored photos with him to prepare an art exhibit. He printed them in black and white and transferred them on canvas through a process called emulsion transfer. He dissected the middle part of his canvases using a network of colorful lines. Then he added abstract forms of houses, stilts and scaffoldings, including geometrical forms: squares, rectangles and trapezoids – within which the poor and the homeless could be viewed as if they were no longer sheltered by a wide sky above and an empty railroad track around them.

Zulueta’s profuse overlay of abstract elements on his photos creates a meditative texture and an external scar. It is a willful “inward” navigation toward understanding the heart and predicament of the poor and the oppressed, he says. His abstract overlay of scaffoldings over the photos initially look like barricades (or scars) that also symbolize his wish: “I want them to have their own homes where they can eat, live, love, pray, and sleep.”

Critics usually presume that photographic images of poverty should be projected to prick the conscience of the viewing public. But for Zulueta, the concern is, first, to reveal his conscience (his understanding and relationship with the poverty he has captured in photos) and not to project poor people as poverty object. For him, understanding and relating with the images — not projecting poverty per se as art — is the more important thing.

He thus creates a moral universe for the poor – aided by photos – in his artworks. “I want to enhance the soul of the images by showing my stand (or how I feel) with the poor people I have encountered,” Zulueta says. It took years for him to dare transform his photos into artworks that reflect a photographer and an artist’s life-changing encounter with poverty.

“Pure photographic forms of poverty benumb and create reality-fatigue. To hide the starkness of poverty and oppression a little bit can entice viewers to a closer look so that they meditate on what they see. This way, they will not take for granted what they encounter. Through my artistic embellishments, I think they can experience my own encounter with the subjects in my photos.” he adds.

 Justified and ethical style

 Zulueta’s aim in creating tight and contrasting layers of reality and possibilities justifies his method of blending photos and paintings.

As a photojournalist who peripatetically takes photos of rich and poor people alike, Zulueta has enough stock to fuel his artworks towards an attitude of class struggle. His use of photos that are patently his intellectual property – in his artworks, is more ethical than the habit of other modern artists who rampantly source from everywhere the “found objects” that they use for artistic projects.

 Almario’s poems on Zulueta’s artworks

 Poet Virgilio S. Almario, also known as Rio Alma, National Artist for literature in 2003, has added to Zulueta’s artworks lines from his own poetry.

“When I made poems for the exhibit, I sought the meaning of his photographic images underneath the layers of colorful lines,” Almario says. The poet’s words therefore do not become mere captions for Zulueta’s photos-cum-paintings. They appear in Almario’s handwriting — permanent and autonomous calligraphic art at the borders of Zulueta’s canvases. The jamming of Zulueta’s art works and Almario’s poems has interesting results.

Abject reality

 Zulueta’s images of two men staring straight across the canvas, entitled “Titig sa Kawalan (Staring at Nothing),” for example, makes Almario despair about the predicament of poor people: “Wala. Walang kabilang buhay para sa daga, maliban kung nakatakdang angel ang pusa (No. There is no after life for rats. Unless cats are destined to be angels),” he says in his poem.

Zulueta’s image of a sleeping man, in “Humahabi ng Panaginip (Weaving Dreams),” is accompanied by Almario’s sarcastic lines on inequity: “Pag nawala ang pobre, sino pa ang kliyente ng mayamang teknokrat at manedyer ng World Bank? (If the poor disappear, who will be the clients of the rich technocrat and the World Bank manager?”

 Necessary revolution

 What about revolution, the staple of conscientious art? Zulueta’s image of a poor couple entitled, “Naghihintay ng Himala (Waiting for Miracle), triggers Almario’s impatience and he writes about a sense of possibilities and defiance of one’s mortality: “Di naghihintay ang oras. Humihinto lang sa wakas (Times does not wait, but only stops in the end),” is his comment.

Zulueta’s inscrutable faces of father and child, entitled “Kapalaran (Chance),” become a platform for Almario’s prediction that poor people’s outrage has only one logical and bloody end. “Sampisik lang kalawang kakain balang araw sa sambundok mang bakal (The tiniest bit of rust will eat a whole mountain of scrap),” the poet blathers.

 Life versus revolution

 But Almario also opposes rage and revolution when writing lines inspired by Zulueta’s images of innocent, poor, and young children.

Zulueta’s photo-portrait of a wide-eyed young girl, in “Tadhana (Fate),” makes Almario caution against violence: “Kung may mata, magmasid, kung may taynga, makinig, bago sundin ang bibig (If you have eyes, see. If you have ears, listen. Before doing what you say).”

The image of a young girl entitled “Liwanag (Light,” causes Almario to plead for peace over war, forgivenes against hatred: “Ano ba ang dahas? Isang bisig ng poot, kapanalig ng lakas, at kabiyak ng lungkot. (And what is violence? An arm of rage, a co-believer of force, a spouse of sorrow).”

A powerful close-up shot of a young boy, in “Musmos,” prompts Almario to compare youthful “rain-dreams” with elders’ sun-drenched labor.

Zulueta’s photo of a young girl carrying a school bag bearing a picture of Snow White, in “Kinabukasan puno ng alinlangan (A future full of doubts),” makes Almario quip, “Ito’y museo ng mundo sa bulag at pusong bato (This is the world’s museum for the stone-heart and the blind).” It sounds like an ironic description of art with conscience, which is Zulueta’s advocacy in this art exhibit.

Another photo-portrait of mother and child in “Pighati (Lament) provokes Almario to wonder:  “Hindi kaya Diyos mismo ay nabagot sa ganito (na imahen ng kalungkutan)? (Didn’t God himself tire of this daily labor?).” The poet’s reaction suggests revolutionary fatigue.  This nails an argument for life and sheltering, just like Zulueta’s need for nests for the homeless.

 A kind of art-triangle

 The show’s multi-media presentation of poverty – a kind of art triangle – brings back to life a fascination that once challenged young social realist artists to flirt dangerously with class struggle in the ‘70s.

Marne Kilates’ English translation of Almario’s poems was in the exhibit’s catalogue. Social realist artist Renato Habulan was the exhibit’s curator.

As a political cartoonist in the ‘80s, Zulueta also identified with the social realist artists. In recent exhibits, he has depicted migration issues, based on his experience as a Filipino immigrant in New Zealand and Australia.

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/tag/makatulog-ka-pa-kaya

Mixed-media portraiture converges with literature to give face to the homeless

By Lester G. Babiera

Philippine Daily Inquirer

On a mission to give a face to the homeless and displaced, José “Pinggot” Vinluan  Zulueta mounts his fifth exhibition in collaboration with National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario, titled “Makatulog Ka Pa Kaya?”

It will be on view Nov. 5-17 with cocktail reception on Nov. 13, 6 p.m., at Crucible Gallery (L/4, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City).

In this exhibit, Zulueta presents black-and-white portraits of people whose houses in Taguig were demolished in 2008. That year, one of his photographs received a special award from the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies photo competition in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Five years later, despite government commitment to provide safe and decent housing, there remains inadequate response to the plight of the marginalized.

The experience of missing what is right before our eyes as a result of misplaced focus is known as inattentional blindness. In our society today, there are various forms of collective blindness. One such phenomenon is the seeming invisibility of the homeless and displaced.

Curated by Renato Habulan, the exhibit invites the audience to acknowledge the constitutive relation between themselves and the portraits. Zulueta (no relation to the editor of this subsection) begs us to ask ourselves: How does your own perception and experience shape the way you look at the images? Whose perception is missing from the images, and whose presence continues to be invisible?

In his mixed-media works, Zulueta used the surfaces of the photographs as a base layer, then painted geometric lines and shapes that intersect through the images.

Rio Alma, the nom de plume of Almario, wrote his poetry on canvas and is integrated into the artworks. By recomposing the images and integrating poetry, Zulueta has contravened from usual practice and blurred the distinctions between photography and painting.

Zulueta believes the convergence of image and text enhances the depth and meaning of the artworks. However, at the heart of the creative articulation is the artist’s profound desire to depict the plight of the homeless and displaced.

“The person in the portrait is a real human being whose life

 can be transformed. In reality, it is our own prejudices and inaction that make the homeless invisible,” said the artist.

For further details on the exhibit, contact Chari Elinzano at 6356061.