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

VIAJES : Celebrating Memories and Solitude

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/90453/pinggot-zulueta-records-his-viajes-in-diptychs-and-triptychs-at-galerie-francesca-exhibit

http://www.philstar.com/arts-and-culture/2013/02/18/909972/pinggot-zuluetas-viajes-galerie-francesca

Migration’s Painful Heart Bleeds in Zulueta’s Canvas

By Filipina Lippi
Published: March 25, 2013
Manila Bulletin

Artist, political cartoonist, and photographer Jose “Pinggot” Zulueta has experienced migration and has painted his experiences abroad like images of a bleeding heart. In his art works, he has also captured the essence of a migrant whose heart belongs to two places – both in his own native soil and the host country where he has stayed and taken root. Again, navigating between two worlds, whether real or imagined, makes the migrant perpetually hybrid and schizophrenic; or in an eternal state of being lost and found, qualities that are not lost in Zulueta’s self-referenced art works.

In his fourth one-man show entitled “Viajes” at Galerie Francesca in Mandaluyong’s Megamall, from February 21 to March 7, Zulueta’s works included diptychs and triptychs with abstract and figurative works. His abstract pieces depicted pure emotions and raw impulses with colors and gestures; his figurative works depicted the migrant’s persona, a steady body, but whiplashed with colors that could easily signify a tumultuous and unsettled existence of someone who keeps coming back and forth from his origin.

Combining his abstract and figurative images with straight and colorful lines, Zulueta succeeded in underlining the narrative of a migrant’s psychological tension. His titles: Blue Figure, Blue Night; Flight; Figure Rising; Introspection; Meditation; Moon Dancer; Night Walker; Oblivion; Quiet Mind; Dawn, and Wind Talker, were also tell tale signs of a migrant’s desire to overcome himself and his giddy, and global world.

In “Viajes”, Zulueta also showed stand alone abstract pieces entitled Albany on My Mind, Castle Hill Memories; Crying Heart; Dreaming of North Shore; and Imagining Parramatta River. They were all about memories of his adopted home that kept haunting him even after he has returned to the Philippines.

“I never thought much of these places that I saw abroad. But they keep coming back in my mind like intimate spaces, after I have returned home in 2008,” says Zulueta.

He and his wife Vanessa, a top social development worker for international agencies; and daughter Paula, (now a media graduate of Macquarie University), left for New Zealand in 2002. They transferred to Australia in 2006. His wife and daughter were left behind in Sydney when he returned to Manila in May 2008, to pursue his art while working as a lifestyle photographer of The Manila Bulletin.

“It is hard to be a migrant (especially if one has to give up one’s art while abroad). At the same time, it is harder to be away from my family while pursuing my art alone in the Philippines,” confesses Zulueta. It is a never ending tension for the artist who has also realized after returning to the Philippines, that going home ironically means being with one’s family whether it is based abroad or not; that one’s country is no longer a place, but one’s soul.

His life abroad was full of sacrifices and unnecessary alienation. Like any other overseas Filipino worker (OFW), he has experienced asserting his identity either through persuasive interactions or clashes of cultures.

It was not the first time that Zulueta tackled the issue of migration. In 2005, just three years after living in New Zealand, he depicted images of a man with clipped wings in an exhibit entitled “Aotearoa Series,” at the Philippine Center on Fifth Avenue in New York.

These early pieces on migration were more expressionistic in depicting the pain and loneliness of being uprooted and the difficulty of settling down abroad, says Zulueta, adding there was no other authentic voice he could amplify in his art at the time.

Although other artists have explored earlier Zulueta’s signature theme on migration, many of them have tackled the issue objectively, not subjectively, because majority of them have not experienced painful episodes of living abroad.

In 2012, social realist artist Edgar “Egai” Fernandez depicted the OFWs using a balikbayan box and candles shaped like human beings. Unlike Zulueta, he has not lived abroad for a long period of time.

In 2011, installation artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan used rows of compressed boxes in telling stories of migration, in an art exhibit entitled “Address” at the Vargas Museum of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. Although Australian residents since 2006, the Filipino husband and wife team has been doing collaborative works on migration that tend to be more Platonic than expressionistic.

In 2007, Antipas Biboy Delotavo who belongs to the group of social realist artists, made a large oil painting entitled “Diaspora,” which portrayed a sea of lonely and passive people moving away with their luggage (at the airport). Using the same “objective” approach in depicting OFWs, Delotavo held a one man show on migration entitled “Street Guide: A Roadmap from Home” at the Artesan Art Gallery in Singapore in 2008. Like Fernandez who has not lived abroad, Delotavo’s interest on migration has a strong socio-historical flavor.

In 1978, National Artist Ben Cabrera (Bencab) also made a series on OFWs and mail-order brides in a show entitled “Larawan II: The Filipino Abroad” at the Luz Gallery. Although he has lived abroad with his now estranged wife Caroline Kennedy, and raised their three children in London, Cabrera’s works about migration did not refer to him, but to other OFWs who worked as professionals and domestic helpers abroad.

Filipino installation artists like Canada-based Lani Maestro and France-based Gaston Damag, have amplified the visual-voices on migration that are now resonating from almost all other ethnic artists based abroad.

In comparison with the more philosophical and objective works done by other artists on migration, Zulueta’s approach is more autobiographical, heartfelt and personal.

About nine million OFWs are based worldwide.

Zulueta is also involved with several art activities. This year, he will launch a coffee table book, a compilation of his photos of 75 artists in their studios that he shot for Manila Bulletin’s Artist At Work section.

In 2012, Zulueta’s 40 editorial cartoons, a collection of his daily output for Abante from 1986 to 1991, were included in a group show entitled “Papelismo,” at Crucible Gallery, SM Megamall in Mandaluyong.

In 2002, his images of political and socio-economic events for a show entitled “Asinta: Images and Imageries”. In 1985, he painted, in representational style, marine life for a show entitled “Tilamsik”.

For inquiries, call Galerie Francesca at +63(2) 570-9495 or email galeriefrancesca.mega@gmail.com.

                                                             Night Walker, Triptych, Mixed Media

                                                                                        2012

                                                                Night Scape, Triptych, Mixed Media
                                                                                        2012

                                            

Imagining Parramatta River

                                                     Mixed Media, 16 in. x 22 in. 2012

                                                 Dreaming North Shore, Mixed Media
                                                                16 in. x 22 in. 2012

                                                         

                                                Moon Dancer, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005

                                                 Quiet Mind, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005

                                                   

                                             

Cathartic Evolutions

Text by Hannah Jo Uy

  “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. “ - Paul Cezanne

                                                                                                              

Catharsis had its Greek origin in Kathairen, meaning to ‘cleanse’. The word was derived from Aristotle’s Poetics, in which it set forth the notion of release through art and drama. For Pinggot Zulueta, his process of catharsis gave birth not only to powerfully evocative paintings, but also the opportunity for his audience enjoy the works as a secret window to the intimate expressions of his soul.

There are two dimensions of loneliness that a man feels in his life. One is reserved for those away from home living in a foreign land; A loneliness that consumes the mind and body making it hunger for familiar sights, sounds and smells. The other is the loneliness in finding yourself a stranger in your own land as a result of being without the people you love; A loneliness that consumes the heart, aching for those who matter most making the quiet emptiness of the home chilling. It is the tension between these two dimensions of loneliness that has driven artist Pinggot Zulueta to create a deeply personal collection of works.

More than a diary of his thoughts, his latest exhibit is a tribute to the therapeutic qualities of art. The healing characteristic of an empty canvas, the soothing excitement of the oil and acrylic and finally, the hypnotizing beauty of a finished work that serves as a welcome and temporary intermission from the sobering realities of life.

However, Pinggot Zulueta graces us not only with his personal memories, he also takes us with him as he relives through the work his evolution as a painter. The collection is a retrospective of his recent evolutions as an artist. Exhibiting never before seen works, he includes his figurative, as well as gestural abstract works.

Some works form a trio of paintings, the middle work a token from his early figurative paintings, an intimate revelation created in the time that the artist was abroad. The figurative paintings present themselves to be self-portraits; a representation of being that discloses the darkness of that period in his dim palette and poignant strokes.  This nostalgic piece, is flanked on both sides by abstract pieces that display a changed yet similarly emotional state in the gestural brush strokes that reveal the powerfully reminiscent mind of the painter. His abstract works, the shifting between one style from another the noticeably varied strokes, and change in textures and colors is testament to the artist’s need to push the boundaries of his craft, constantly exploring different possibilities.

The three paintings, a combination of new and old, is held together by three bright arresting lines, connecting them and making them into one. In effect, each work is a holistic revelation of his being. His existence, formed by past and present held together by his unbreakable love for painting. 

Not all however are positioned this way, some form diptych partnerships that similarly exhibit his movement from one style to another, other works stand alone as a statement of the powerful emotions he experienced in that particular period of time.

As a whole the collection divulges the passionate emotional state of the painter during the specific periods of his life. The shift from one style to another speaks of the restless that connects the works all together. However, taken by piece, each work can stand on its own by its very style.

However, beyond his cathartic process, is a message of hope. Hope that serves as a reminder that life, in its periods of solitude, still holds within it the possibilities, of beauty, love and friendship.

                         

AOTEAROA SERIES Philippine Center, 556 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY December 2005

“ At  first glance,  this series of Jose Zulueta is a  terrible discourse on the annihilated self. Man’s contorted  and sometimes  mutilated body perhaps  best  expresses  Zulueta’s own sentiments as a migrant  Filipino artist. Yet his humanity as a Filipino also seems  to   urge him into providing spaces for dreams—some literal wings of  hope for a future redemption. Zulueta still  fervently wishes  for man’s  ultimate salvation from a  history  of  violent  and violated existence.”
                                                                                              

                                                                                         Virgilio Almario

                                                                                           National Artist for Literature

                                                      Scream

                                                      Oil on Canvas, 2003

                                                        Introspection
                                                        Oil on Canvas, 2003

                                                           Journey
                                                          Oil on Canvas, 2003

   

           

                            PINGGOT ZULUETA’S AOTEAROA SERIES IN NEW YORK

Visual artist Pinggot Vinluan Zulueta presents  his 3^rd-solo show, entitled Aotearoa Series on 19 December 2005, 6 o’clock in the evening, monday at the Philippine Center Gallery, 556 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York, NY. Invitational cocktail reception is scheduled during the opening of the exhibit.

Aotearoa Series is a collection of 25 paintings on canvas rendered in oil and acrylic. The paintings were inspired by the artist impressions and reflections of his experiences abroad, Aotearoa, which translates to “ Land of the Long White Cloud ”, is New Zealand’s indigenous name. The artist has made New Zealand his home since January 2003.

Aotearoa Series is a documentation of the artist’s experiences while living in a foreign country. The paintings chronicle the artist’s emotional journey, culminating in hope and a resolve to overcome. These works have served as the artist’s refuge…his sanctuary.

The visual images portray upheaval, adaptation and redemption. They are presented in surreal and meditative forms, which may elicit profound contemplation or reflection on existencial issues. A fundamental idea underpinning these works is the potential for self-affirmation in a context of cultural dysfunction.

 Consul General Cecilia Rebong of the Consulate General of the Philippines in New York along with Department of Trade and Industry Representative Eugene Reyes and Philippine Center Management Board General Manager Gavino Abaya, Jr. lead as Guests of Honor during the exhibition.

Prior to his migration to New Zealand, Zulueta was an exhibiting artist and news photographer in one of the major daily newspapers in Manila, Philippines. In September 2002, he launched a successful one-man art exhibition and book launched dubbed “ Asinta: Images and Imageries” at the RCBC Plaza in Makati City. The exhibition was in collaboration with UP Creative Writing Director and TOYM Awardee Vim Nadera.

 The exhibit runs from 19 to 30 December 2005. For further details and information, contact the Philippine Center, New York, at  telephones (212 )575-4774, Fax (212) 575-3133.

                                                           EXHIBITION NOTES

From what we saw of his last exhibit on home grounds, Jose Vinluan Zulueta (Pinggot, still, to his many friends, though perhaps now simply Zulueta, the artist, to his increasing admirers), sets aside his digital palette and returns not only to "analog" paint but to the even more primal and interior territory that has always been there before it could be touched by any brush or "pick tool."

He returns, too, to the individual figure, not the dazed (by hunger) or distraught families or Madonna-and-streetchildren picking through garbage or lost in the middle of street marches cowering under the transmogrified manifestations of state power—remnants of his digitally-altered photojournalism.

Instead, the lone figure materializes in the by now recognizable Zulueta colors, the form not just disembodied but disemboweled, torn perhaps in the elemental struggle with loneliness and loss of a native foothold.

 But the title itself seeks homage to his adopted home, and though the Land's "lone white cloud" might be "stained" with his pained memories, it is the colors that triumph, less in the tortured manner of an Edvard Munch, but in the flushed, apocalyptic intensity of an early Legaspi.

                          Marne L. Kilates

                          Writer

Pinggot Zulueta is a truly gifted soul who is, in parts, a photographer, a painter and a cartoonist -- a combination of talents that he spotlighted in his one-man show in the Philippines. As a photojournalist for many years in the Philippines, Zulueta captured through his lens countless powerful images of unfolding current events as well as human-interest scenes that he was always on the look-out for as he roamed Manila’s streets.

Moving to New Zealand with his family proved daunting for him at first. Transplanted to a new land and suddenly immersed in a different culture, Zulueta faced the most difficult times. But it was here that he actually managed to return to his roots as an artist. In his paintings, he has sought to define the migrant experience – the wrenching emotions of being away from one’s country and all that is familiar, as well as the urgent need to uplift one’s self in the midst of a strange environment.

The New York exhibit is Zulueta’s way of showing fellow Filipinos -- especially those who have been based in the United States for a long time, a shared experience. In his themes of change and constancy, upheaval and adaptation, Zulueta particularly wants to establish a connection with those who, like him, have struggled to find meaning in a foreign land and have risen to meet the challenge
                            Susan A. de Guzman

                            Curator

“The burden of Pinggot Zulueta is a journeyer’s sorrow: cutting soles, skinning soul, singing paean to facelessness and peril in another land and clime. But a hand remembers the gift; the hand reaches the heart, and the heart remembers it beats to life, and is grateful.”

                           Rebecca T. Añonuevo, Ph. D.
                           Miriam College

                        

The road he has taken can be lonely, but Zulueta has used this experience wisely to get reaquainted with his art and raise it to a higher level of consciousness.  What we see are the inner roads of a man's journey.”

                         Nestor Cuartero

                         Panorama

“ After a year or two, Pinggot is back in vengeance, so to speak, with a fresher, ironically more mature, perspective and persuation,  or it is persuasiveness? Aotearoa Series is his way of saying his reason for leaving, and at the same time, living. “

                        Vim Nadera

                        UP Creative Writing  

Moon over Aotearoa

August 25, 2003

Philippine Daily Inquirer

By Divina C. Paredes

AUCKLAND, New Zealand-Jose "Pinggot" Vinluan Zulueta says his works as photojournalist and visual artist have always been social commentaries. The 42-year-old artist has always opted to depict "the good and bad in Philippine society, the challenges and shortcomings of Filipinos, as a nation and as individuals."

These themes were evident in his critically- acclaimed exhibits in the Philippines, the most recent of which was "Asinta" (Bulls Eye, September 2002), which featured digitally processed drawings and photographs of political and socio-economic events in the past two decades.

These days, however, those themes have been taking a back seat as Zulueta's art explores more personal feelings on a recent major change in his life.

In January this year, Zulueta and his wife Vanessa and daughter Paula, 16, migrated to Aotearoa, "Land of the Long White Cloud" New Zealand.

While the move, Zulueta admits, jolted him, it had a hint of irony. For the first time in nearly two decades, he had all the time in the world to paint; time, which was a luxury when he was working six days a week, sometimes more, as a news photographer.

His house in Auckland's North Shore is now replete with his works that he planned to exhibit in Manila. But while surfing the Internet for jobs, Zulueta stumbled upon the Big Idea (thebigidea.co.nz), the online community of New Zealand artists, and learned about a forthcoming exhibit of migrant artists.

Zulueta contacted the organizers, Arts Access Aotearoa and AB Arts Partnership, and is now one of the artists of the ongoing group exhibit "On Arrival."

The exhibit at the Bashford Gallery, in the trendy Auckland section of Ponsonby, brings Zulueta together with artists from Argentina, Brazil, Burundi, Cambodia, China, Colombia, England, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Kenya, Kosovo, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Somalia, Spain, Taiwan, Uganda, USA and Uruguay.

Zulueta opted to create three new works for the exhibit. The oil paintings, he declares, "represent mixed feelings of uncertainty and fear-emotions that a migrant experiences on arrival in his or her adopted land." The titles say it all-"Introspection," "Journey" and "Unknown."

While the colors may appear attractive and vivid, a closer look reveals sadness and fear. 

Those who are familiar with his earlier works would also note the colors are "darker," a fact Zulueta acknowledges.

The choice of surreal figures in his works is deliberate. "The figures do not have detailed faces and have protruding skeletal outlines indicative of the migrants' difficulties and challenges. The paintings depict their search for meaning and identity and what the uncertain future holds for them."

The figure in "Introspection" is actually faceless. In "Journey," the facial features are hazy. The principal figure is entering a door, but seemingly floating on the air, as if in limbo. This, he says, was how he felt the first few weeks and months in New Zealand.

The third painting, aptly titled "Unknown," shows his uncertainty on what his future holds in his adopted homeland.

A common image-the moon, always in flaming red-links the three canvases. In "Introspection" and "Journey," the moon is peering from behind the human figure. In the last canvas, the moon is less discernible, merging with the head of the human figure.

Zulueta explains the moon reflects constancy and a link to his past life. It is the same moon, after all, that could be seen in the land he left and the country he now calls home.

While Zulueta has devoted more time to photojournalism in the last decade or so (he won the first and third prizes in the 1997 Willie Vicoy Photojournalism Awards in the Nature and Environment Category, among other awards), his academic background is in painting.

He graduated in 1982 with a Fine Arts degree, major in Painting, at the University of Sto. Tomas and took up post-graduate courses at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts.

In 1982, while working as a graphic artist and illustrator in a government agency, he enrolled in a workshop of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The workshop lasted two months, but for Zulueta, it was "an eye-opener and paved the way for my sustained interest and studies in the visual arts."

He knew, however, he had to take on a regular job to sustain his craft, and, since 1986, has been working in major Philippine newspapers, first as an editorial artist, then as news photographer.

But the fast pace of newspaper work meant Zulueta did not have ample time to paint. He consoled himself by the fact that he had a daily "exhibit" of his works-on the front pages of the newspapers.

As he puts it, the nuances of injecting art into photojournalism and painting are different. As a photographer, he says, he sees the subjects outright, and can compose the picture. In painting, he starts on a blank canvas.

He credits, however, his vast experiences in news coverage-he has covered coup attempts, presidential visits, crime scenes and the less gritty lifestyle shoots-for providing him endless subjects for his artworks.

His current exhibit-a feat, considering he has only been in New Zealand for only seven months-is simply a first step in what he hopes to be a full-time career in visual arts in his adopted country.

Brett Hopkins, of AB Arts Partnership and curator of the exhibit says Zulueta's paintings are "unique" compared to the other artworks in "On Arrival."

"They have real strength in terms of both color and composition. As expressionist works, they deftly convey an intensity of experience that is intriguing, although a little disturbing. I particularly admire his ability to translate his recent experiences with such immediacy."

Even then, Hopkins finds a common thread in Zulueta's works with those of the other artists.

"The artists are attempting to deliver their impressions of dealing with life in a new world order. 

Not all the artworks in this exhibition attempt this feat, but among those which deal with migration or relocation, there is a sense of dislocation and the trials of dealing with the unknown. In contrast to placing experience within past culture or the culture from one's past, Zulueta's work is about dealing with the present and its possible future."

It is worth watching, then, how the choices of themes and colors of this exemplary artist will change as he adjusts in his new home.

The author is a staff writer of an IT management magazine in Auckland, and a columnist of Diario Filipino, the newspaper of the Philippine community in New Zealand.

ASINTA: Images and Imageries, RCBC Plaza Galleria, Ayala Avenue, Makati City September 2002

The Artist As A Social Critic

For those who grew up during the period of authoritarian rule, the choices for the artist were very few: To create art for its own sake, as a manner of personal expression; or to transform art, perhaps even to elevate it, to the realm of social protest and give it a concience.

Pinggot Zulueta's art genuinely belongs to the second philosophy--and unabashedly so. It stirs the concience--and makes one realize, almost painfully, that one can never find true comfort and the pleasures of a tranquil concience if the broken, oppressed and exploited are left behind. Under autocratic  or more benign rules, the artist as a social activist and critic has persisted through decades. Zulueta follows in the eminent footsteps of Filipino artists in this genre. He has amassed a volume of work on canvas paper worthy of a one-man exhibit.

The artworks cover two decades--the Eighties and nineties, the most critical and memorable in the nation's life since 1946. The evolution of his technique is evident; it is evident too, that his themes are timeless, on the social, economic and political dimensions of national life that his generation has experienced. One can go back a century in our national life and find these themes starkly relevant.

His career took of as an Editorial Cartoonist characterized by riveting images of poverty, upheavals, street protests and subtle anti-imperialism. In his later works as a Photographer, his lens focused on both the faceless and famous, portraying a society of great achievers but with little soul and heart for the forgotten ones.

In all of his works, his true heart shines through brilliantly. He grew up believing that freedom. independence, and social values do not grow on trees. They are won at the price of a social struggle--with the artist very much part of it. We may not always agree with his art and his underlying philosophy--but we absolutely admire that courage that coats his paper canvas. The artist has found his true calling.

                                                                                                      Noel A. Albano, Journalist

                                                    Maestrang Kumain ng Sarling Bituka
                                                    Printed on Pigment Archival Ink, 1998

                                                     Orasang Walang Kamay

                                                      Printed on Pigment Archival Ink, 1998

                                                       The Media Activist

                                                       Printed on Pigment Archival Ink, 1998

                                                      The American Dream
                                                      Printed on Pigment Archival Ink, 1998

Gising Bayan, Bukas Tayo'y Lalaban

                                                       Printed on Pigment Archival Ink, 1986
                                               

                                                       

Pinggot Zulueta hits the bull's eye

By Lito B. Zulueta
September 30, 2002 

Philippine Daily Inquirer

REVOLUTIONARY is a cliche in these days when "world-class," "genius," "radical" and "sublime" are a dime a dozen, and one is hard-pressed to resist the temptation of applying it to exhibits and works that emerge out of the blue to surprise and impress. Definitely one should fight off the pull of doing just that to Pinggot Vinluan Zulueta's "Asinta: Images and Imageries," showing until today at the RCBC Plaza Lobby, Ayala Avenue, Makati City. At the least, it can be said that an exhibit such as this has been long in coming.
"Asinta" is a digital art exhibition. Both in medium and content, it extends the frontiers of art. It features some 50 works on canvas paper in pen and ink and watercolor, recast through inkjet print technology with UV-resistant coating. The themes are trenchant: poverty, human rights violations, street protests, slum demolition, repression, agrarian iniquity, neocolonialism and fascism.

Zulueta (no relation to this writer) has said that the exhibit marks his "coming of age." Make that artistic coming of age. His social and moral rite of passage took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he was a fine arts student at the University of Santo Tomas and an artist of the school paper, The Varsitarian. Although not a campus activist, he was not inured to the heavily charged political climate obtaining at that time and drew illustrations that were remarkable for their scorching lines and graphic depiction, what Jose Tence Ruiz would later on call as the "gigil na gigil" style of drawing. Ruiz, who was later to draw illustrations and cartoons for newspapers, himself mirrored that style, which perhaps owed to leftist protest art and agitprop that singed the political landscape as the Marcos dictatorship became more repressive and the people were rising from their political lethargy.

Zulueta's evolution as an artist is notable. He started as a campus paper illustrator and layout artist, dabbled in oil and acrylic painting (his first one-man show consisted of paintings on marine life), shifted to newspaper cartooning (Abante and the defunct Globe), explored prints, and then, quite suddenly, reinvented himself as a photojournalist (Manila Bulletin). His latest reincarnation as a computer artist draws from the resources and wisdom of his past.

Well-grounded
Indeed, he cannot be accused of taking the line of least resistance. He did not come to computer art by mere caprice. His exploration of the new media is well grounded on the old. He is not your usual computer graphic artist: someone who hides his aesthetic ignorance behind computer flair.

Along the way, Zulueta has fine-tuned not only his aesthetics, but also his social consciousness. In a way, it couldn't be helped that he should turn to photojournalism. The graphic bravura and the burning social consciousness of his early works could only prefigure greater involvement with social concerns. But it is perhaps owing to the true artist in him that he could only embrace his subject with the objectivity and the discernment afforded by journalism.

Along the way, too, he has experimented with mediums that should betray the craftsman in him. It was only a matter of time for him to turn to computer print, considering the fast extinction of the darkroom and the rapid advancements in computer printing technology.

The result of all of this aesthetic and socio-moral evolution is a work that best represents the evolution of the Philippine artist in the last 20 years. It is an evolution in social realism (some would say a resurrection, considering the retreat of that school in the last decade) and technology. Social realism has been remade into the new media, the new art.

It has been an evolution that is inexorable. "Asinta" is bull's eye in English, that is, right on target. Zulueta's is an art that has been determined by the mordant social conditions of the Philippines and the essentialism and critical thrust of newspaper illustration and editorial cartooning. In fact, editorial cartoons are supposed to make socio-political comments by abstraction and caricature. They send the message right on target.

It is also an evolution that is technologically conditioned. Zulueta's art fulfills Marshall Macluhan's technological determinism. More and more, artistic statements have been molded according to the nature of the medium and material. Photographic technology and the new media will determine the aesthetics of the new century.

One can only welcome with both excitement and trepidation the contours of the emerging artistic landscape. Will the new media result in art that is more immediate, more open? Or will the new media further reify art, undermine and ultimately banalize social consciousness?

We don't know. What we know at this point is that technology has widened the frontiers of art and even collapsed some of its more cherished foundations. In Zulueta's case, the frontier spirit is also evident in the release of a book that complements the exhibit. In "Asinta: Tula and Tudla" (published by the UST Publishing House), Zulueta collaborates with poet and performance artist Vim Nadera, himself a visual arts practitioner, to craft a book in which text and image intersect. The book is an exercise in intertextuality and interactivity. The boldness of the project should be the subject of another essay.

"Asinta" the exhibit runs until today at the RCBC Plaza. Call Marge Ocampo at 887-4942. For orders of the book "Asinta," call 731-3522 or 731-3101 local 8252/8278.  

Take two for photography

Two artists present two disparate philosophies on the art of taking pictures
By Dexter Osorio
Monday, September 30, 2002
The Manila Times


Photography has undergone many metamorphoses since its invention more than 150 years ago. From being a mere apparatus for documentation, it has gone on to become a potent tool for protest and social commentary, and has become a legitimate medium for contemporary art making. 

 
The process of capturing images and making them tangible has fascinated man ever since the first daguerreotype made its mark on a silver-coated copper plate. As the artist Gilberte Brassai once said, “Even the most mediocre photographs contain something unique and irreplaceable, something that no Rembrandt, Leonardo, or Picasso — no masterpiece and no artist, living or dead — can attain or equal or replace.”

Two exhibits at different venues in Makati are currently paying homage to photography in two disparate ways — one as a jump-off point for social commentary, and the other as a personal chronicle of an artist’s memory.

Photography and social commentary

Images and Imageries by Pinggot Vinluan Zulueta pulls no punches in using photography as a tool for criticizing the ills of present society. The exhibit, which is ongoing only until today at the lobby of the RCBC Plaza (Ayala corner Gil Puyat Ave., Makati), combines the strength of digitally altered photographs and graphic prints in making its statement heard.

Zulueta started his career as an editorial cartoonist and then as a photojournalist. The exhibit shows 50 framed works that prominently features Zulueta’s two disciplines, portraying two decades of the country’s social and political life. 

 
Half of the exhibit is devoted to straightforward editorial cartoons in framed colored prints. All are done with a keen sensitivity for the pulse of the common tao. “Pamilyang Pinoy ... Salat sa Yaman (1989),” for example, shows three grotesque figures craning their neck upwards toward an unreachable bounty, and manages to convey frustration, hunger and rage at being deprived of life’s basic necessities.

“Ama ng Pipol Power (1989),” on the other hand, parodies Cardinal Sin’s role in the first Edsa Revolution by portraying him wearing a jester’s cap and a barbed wire halo even as the Dove of Peace spouts forth from his mouth.

Zulueta’s digitally altered photographs, however, are more arresting than his drawings due to the sheer visual contrast they present.

“Malacañang, May 1 (2001),” shows a man with outstretched arms trying to pacify an agitated throng of riot police. The ground is stained blood red, in contrast to the cops who are tinted in a swirl of turquoise and emerald.

“Mag-ina sa Demolisyon (1994),” shows a mother holding her bottle-feeding child amid the ruins of their shanty. The photograph has the look of a psychedelic poster from the ’60s — an incongruous comparison in light of the evident rage on the woman’s face.

Zulueta’s digital alterations, however, are not heavy handed — the photos retain their integrity, and are not cut up to be used as just another piece in an incoherent visual composition. Zulueta remained true to the photojournalist’s craft and used digital manipulation only as a means of adding color to his prints, thus presenting a more glaring, polarized view of reality where streets are red and cops are green, and everything ends up looking like an oil film on a dirty street puddle.

Lomography

What the Hell is Lomo? an exhibit by At Maculangan at the Photography Art Center (Ground Flr., Zen Bldg., 8352 Mayapis corner St. Paul Streets, Makati; ongoing until Nov. 2) poses an entirely different take on photography. Compared to Zulueta’s scathing social commentary, Maculangan takes a decidedly more lighthearted approach by way of “lomography.”

Maculangan, a Filipino-based artist based in Italy, uses a Lomo camera, a Russian invention with a rabid cult following around the world. Originally manufactured for the pre-Cold War Soviet Republic, the Lomo camera has a spy cam feel bolstered by its extremely rugged design, high sensitivity to low light conditions, and extremely simple operation consisting of no more than a shutter and two tiny levers located on both sides of the lens (one for aperture and the other for focus).

The Lomo camera’s cult following has spawned “lomography,” which is actually more of a philosophy than a technique. Lomography espouses the act of taking pictures as part of your lifestyle, and — thanks to the Lomo camera’s wide margin for error — shooting impulsively and instinctively without worrying about the technical details. 

As such, Maculangan’s exhibit features a “lomowall” — a collage of 450 individual “lomographs” neatly arranged to form a 4 x 12 foot rectangle on one wall of the gallery.

The lomowall in itself is already a visual delight with its pattern of colors and textures. But step closer and you will see snapshots of party revelers, street signs, household artifacts, and an assortment of captured moments that give us a peek into the artist’s recent memory. This is lomography’s principal charm — the ability to take running photos of life as it happens, and thereby giving the person a second memory that can be shared with other minds.

And whether it is used as a tool for social protest or as a personal journal, photography succeeds by offering itself as a tool — which the artist may use according to his own intentions — for capturing, examining, and distilling the human experience.