ATENEO ART AWARDS 2008 CATALOGUE ESSAY
ZONES OF INFLUENCE:
Past, present, future
Anniversaries are a time for reflection and projecting new ideas. This year the Ateneo Art Award turns five. Its theme, “Zones of Influence”, prompts one to ask how the Ateneo Art Award has described, and indeed influenced, the Philippine art scene of now, especially in light of its constantly expanding horizon nationally and internationally?
in·flu·ence when used as a verb means ‘the power to affect something’. The power to affect change is an often illusive and arduous task in the Philippines. It is a credit usually reserved for the nation’s revolutionary heroes rather than its artists, but the Ateneo Art Gallery’s founding benefactor Fernando Zobel de Ayala was a visionary that changed the landscape of contemporary art. He supported the avant-garde of his time: Vincente Manansala, Artruo Luz, David Medalla and Roberto Chabet, the modern masters who form the backbone of the gallery’s collection. It was this philanthropic vision that pricked the attention of Ramon Lerma when he took the reigns as Director at the Ateneo Art Gallery in 2002, sparking the next ‘zone of influence’ that lead to the birth of the Ateneo Art Awards.
Recognizing postmodernism's multiplicity and the fracture that ricocheted across the art scene of the day, Lerma used Zobel’s dictum to exposé Filipino art marking in the 21st century. He recalled the Critics Choices of the 1980s when renowned commentators such as his predecessor Emmanuel Torres, Rodolfo Paras-Perez, Leo Benesa, Paul Zafaralla and Alice Guillermo produced an annual list of the year's best. Lerma updated this ‘zone of influence’ in 2004, convening a jury of himself, Fr. Rene Javellana, Celine R. Lopez, Cid Reyes, Gerardo Tan and Ringo Bunoan for the Inaugural Ateneo Art Award, pulling the critic's selection into the present day. Appropriately it was titled "Critical Condition."
Naturally the Ateneo Art Award has equally been defined by its nominees. It is not surprising then that among its coterie of artists many have been the energy behind a succession of alternative spaces that pushed art across the 1990s and into the new millennium. We just have to track the winners over the past five years.
Louie Cordero, Geraldine Javier and Jayson Oliveria were the recipients of the Inaugural Ateneo Art Award. While Javier’s success has notably rippled through the regional auction circuit in recent years, it was her connection with Cordero and the Cubao space / collective Surrounded by Water (1998-2003) that illustrates the Ateneo Art Awards’ identification with a Manila scene. If we are considering zones of influence, 7 of the 13 artists from SBW have been short-listed over the history of the Award. Similarly, 18 of the 43 artists short-listed for the Ateneo Art Award in its life-span have been recipients of The Thirteen Artist Award at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines. What a cynic may describe as a calendar of ‘usual suspects’ perhaps illustrates of a more endemic situation: the sheer pace that shows are churned out by this scene.
Over the last five-years Awardees have caught the eye of galleries off-shore and captured the heat in the Asian Auction market with outstanding results on this previously blue-chip secondary market. Its rollcall, Geraldine Javier, Ronald Ventura, Rodel Tapaya-Garcia, Nona Garcia, Maya Muñoz, Jayson Oliveria, Kiko Escora have already been joined by this year’s short-listed artists Lyra Gacellano and Baguio artist Kawayan de Guia. While one might question what relevance this satellite market has locally, or how is it defining a ‘style’, what is conclusive is it has led senior regional galleries to trowel the local scene for ‘fresh paint’ and the Ateneo Art Award has provided an entry point.
While Cordero went on to establish Future Prospects (2005-07) after winning the Ateneo Art Award in 2004 across town 2005 short-listed artist Isa Lorenzo de-centralized the Cubao gallery-gulch by opening Silverlens Gallery, focusing on photography. During its first year Yason Banal’s exhibition was nominated for the 2006 Ateneo Art Award, the same year he was included in the inaugural Singapore Biennale. Lena Cobangbang, also hailing from SBW and Silverlens, followed the same trajectory selected for 2008 Singapore Biennale with a series that placed her on the 2006 Ateneo Art Award short-listed, “Terrible Landscapes”. Fast track to 2007 and the growing acceptance of contemporary photography gave Wawi Navarroza the Ateneo Art Award for her mature manipulation of the medium. This year’s short-listed artists Christina Dy and Rachel Rillo lift our expectations of photography and push it boundaries to a new place. It is just one example in the Award’s history that weaves across venues, time, boarders and medium.
Recalling the titles of past Ateneo Art Awards: “Global / Vernacular” (2007) and “Outbound” (2006), this year’s catch title is far from accidental. It sits well with the theme described as, “Working within geographic and metaphysical localities whose boundaries are constantly being transgressed and redefined.” It encapsulates Zobel’s vision that provoked a future generation and continues its sentiment through the contemporary idea of expansionism by offering residencies at La Trobe Visual Art Centre in Australia, Artesan Gallery in Singapore and Common Room Networks Foundation in Bandung, Indonesia. The greater award is this “calling card” for the future.
Parallel to the diversity of these residencies: a university space, commercial gallery and alternative new-media venue, we witness that same spread across media celebrated with equal footing: video, performance and photography alongside figuration. Rewind to 2006 Ateneo Art Award winners to narrate the point: Poklong Anading for his lightboxes “Anonymity”, also short-listed this year for his painted cement shards in “Fallen Maps” at Mag:net. Co-winner Mideo M. Cruz nabbed the award for a challenging installation and performance titled “Banquet” at the CCP. Like the auction success of others, Cruz has shaped his own international profile since being awarded, performing at festivals in Japan, Italy, Beijing, Zurich, France and Singapore. The third winner in 2006 was Maya Muñoz for her abstract portraits at Hiraya Gallery.
This year we witness again that diversity; cite the line-up from Anading’s cement remnants to Mark Salvatus’ video “Wrapped” made on residency in South Korea, to twice-nominated Cristina ‘Mac’ Valdezco’s obsessive wall-piece of paper-tape and thread and self-taught Dumaguete-based artist Mark Valenzuela with his terracotta sculptures and drawings in “Warzone” at Galleria Duemila.
This breadth and mine of talent is perhaps best surmised this year by Marina Cruz-Garcia, short-listed for three exhibitions, a first in the Award’s history. Oscillating between painting, sculpture and a photo-based mixed media work, “Embroidered Landscape of My Mother’s Life” that landed her the Grand Prize for Philip Morris Philippines Art Award, she was among several artists that maintained the presence of figuration within a contemporary dialogue, including Robert Lagenegger’s satirical paintings critiquing the Filipino art scene and Lyra Gacellano’s haunting paintings in “Short Stories” with a post-SR consciousness.
While Manila’s emerging artists sit somewhere between these histories and eddies, the Ateneo Art Award provides a constant that cuts across it, morphing a new landscape of galleries and regional dialogue. It is an ongoing assessment. This year’s ten short-listed artists offer a marker for now and, when we look back, theirs will be the tenor of fresh voices being heard beyond the local noise – they are the ‘zone of influence’ of today.
Gina Fairley
Juror, 2008 Ateneo Art Awards
Independent curator and Regional Contributing Editor,
Asia Art News, Hong Kong
ZONES OF INFLUENCE:
Past, present, future
Anniversaries are a time for reflection and projecting new ideas. This year the Ateneo Art Award turns five. Its theme, “Zones of Influence”, prompts one to ask how the Ateneo Art Award has described, and indeed influenced, the Philippine art scene of now, especially in light of its constantly expanding horizon nationally and internationally?
in·flu·ence when used as a verb means ‘the power to affect something’. The power to affect change is an often illusive and arduous task in the Philippines. It is a credit usually reserved for the nation’s revolutionary heroes rather than its artists, but the Ateneo Art Gallery’s founding benefactor Fernando Zobel de Ayala was a visionary that changed the landscape of contemporary art. He supported the avant-garde of his time: Vincente Manansala, Artruo Luz, David Medalla and Roberto Chabet, the modern masters who form the backbone of the gallery’s collection. It was this philanthropic vision that pricked the attention of Ramon Lerma when he took the reigns as Director at the Ateneo Art Gallery in 2002, sparking the next ‘zone of influence’ that lead to the birth of the Ateneo Art Awards.
Recognizing postmodernism's multiplicity and the fracture that ricocheted across the art scene of the day, Lerma used Zobel’s dictum to exposé Filipino art marking in the 21st century. He recalled the Critics Choices of the 1980s when renowned commentators such as his predecessor Emmanuel Torres, Rodolfo Paras-Perez, Leo Benesa, Paul Zafaralla and Alice Guillermo produced an annual list of the year's best. Lerma updated this ‘zone of influence’ in 2004, convening a jury of himself, Fr. Rene Javellana, Celine R. Lopez, Cid Reyes, Gerardo Tan and Ringo Bunoan for the Inaugural Ateneo Art Award, pulling the critic's selection into the present day. Appropriately it was titled "Critical Condition."
Naturally the Ateneo Art Award has equally been defined by its nominees. It is not surprising then that among its coterie of artists many have been the energy behind a succession of alternative spaces that pushed art across the 1990s and into the new millennium. We just have to track the winners over the past five years.
Louie Cordero, Geraldine Javier and Jayson Oliveria were the recipients of the Inaugural Ateneo Art Award. While Javier’s success has notably rippled through the regional auction circuit in recent years, it was her connection with Cordero and the Cubao space / collective Surrounded by Water (1998-2003) that illustrates the Ateneo Art Awards’ identification with a Manila scene. If we are considering zones of influence, 7 of the 13 artists from SBW have been short-listed over the history of the Award. Similarly, 18 of the 43 artists short-listed for the Ateneo Art Award in its life-span have been recipients of The Thirteen Artist Award at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines. What a cynic may describe as a calendar of ‘usual suspects’ perhaps illustrates of a more endemic situation: the sheer pace that shows are churned out by this scene.
Over the last five-years Awardees have caught the eye of galleries off-shore and captured the heat in the Asian Auction market with outstanding results on this previously blue-chip secondary market. Its rollcall, Geraldine Javier, Ronald Ventura, Rodel Tapaya-Garcia, Nona Garcia, Maya Muñoz, Jayson Oliveria, Kiko Escora have already been joined by this year’s short-listed artists Lyra Gacellano and Baguio artist Kawayan de Guia. While one might question what relevance this satellite market has locally, or how is it defining a ‘style’, what is conclusive is it has led senior regional galleries to trowel the local scene for ‘fresh paint’ and the Ateneo Art Award has provided an entry point.
While Cordero went on to establish Future Prospects (2005-07) after winning the Ateneo Art Award in 2004 across town 2005 short-listed artist Isa Lorenzo de-centralized the Cubao gallery-gulch by opening Silverlens Gallery, focusing on photography. During its first year Yason Banal’s exhibition was nominated for the 2006 Ateneo Art Award, the same year he was included in the inaugural Singapore Biennale. Lena Cobangbang, also hailing from SBW and Silverlens, followed the same trajectory selected for 2008 Singapore Biennale with a series that placed her on the 2006 Ateneo Art Award short-listed, “Terrible Landscapes”. Fast track to 2007 and the growing acceptance of contemporary photography gave Wawi Navarroza the Ateneo Art Award for her mature manipulation of the medium. This year’s short-listed artists Christina Dy and Rachel Rillo lift our expectations of photography and push it boundaries to a new place. It is just one example in the Award’s history that weaves across venues, time, boarders and medium.
Recalling the titles of past Ateneo Art Awards: “Global / Vernacular” (2007) and “Outbound” (2006), this year’s catch title is far from accidental. It sits well with the theme described as, “Working within geographic and metaphysical localities whose boundaries are constantly being transgressed and redefined.” It encapsulates Zobel’s vision that provoked a future generation and continues its sentiment through the contemporary idea of expansionism by offering residencies at La Trobe Visual Art Centre in Australia, Artesan Gallery in Singapore and Common Room Networks Foundation in Bandung, Indonesia. The greater award is this “calling card” for the future.
Parallel to the diversity of these residencies: a university space, commercial gallery and alternative new-media venue, we witness that same spread across media celebrated with equal footing: video, performance and photography alongside figuration. Rewind to 2006 Ateneo Art Award winners to narrate the point: Poklong Anading for his lightboxes “Anonymity”, also short-listed this year for his painted cement shards in “Fallen Maps” at Mag:net. Co-winner Mideo M. Cruz nabbed the award for a challenging installation and performance titled “Banquet” at the CCP. Like the auction success of others, Cruz has shaped his own international profile since being awarded, performing at festivals in Japan, Italy, Beijing, Zurich, France and Singapore. The third winner in 2006 was Maya Muñoz for her abstract portraits at Hiraya Gallery.
This year we witness again that diversity; cite the line-up from Anading’s cement remnants to Mark Salvatus’ video “Wrapped” made on residency in South Korea, to twice-nominated Cristina ‘Mac’ Valdezco’s obsessive wall-piece of paper-tape and thread and self-taught Dumaguete-based artist Mark Valenzuela with his terracotta sculptures and drawings in “Warzone” at Galleria Duemila.
This breadth and mine of talent is perhaps best surmised this year by Marina Cruz-Garcia, short-listed for three exhibitions, a first in the Award’s history. Oscillating between painting, sculpture and a photo-based mixed media work, “Embroidered Landscape of My Mother’s Life” that landed her the Grand Prize for Philip Morris Philippines Art Award, she was among several artists that maintained the presence of figuration within a contemporary dialogue, including Robert Lagenegger’s satirical paintings critiquing the Filipino art scene and Lyra Gacellano’s haunting paintings in “Short Stories” with a post-SR consciousness.
While Manila’s emerging artists sit somewhere between these histories and eddies, the Ateneo Art Award provides a constant that cuts across it, morphing a new landscape of galleries and regional dialogue. It is an ongoing assessment. This year’s ten short-listed artists offer a marker for now and, when we look back, theirs will be the tenor of fresh voices being heard beyond the local noise – they are the ‘zone of influence’ of today.
Gina Fairley
Juror, 2008 Ateneo Art Awards
Independent curator and Regional Contributing Editor,
Asia Art News, Hong Kong
The Ateneo Art Gallery would like to announce the final call for nominations for the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards. Nominations are on-going, and will close on 1 June 2009 at 5pm. Nomination forms are available at the Ateneo Art Gallery and can also be downloaded at http://gallery.ateneo.edu. All entries must be accompanied by the necessary visual documentation and received at the following address:
Ateneo Art Gallery
Ground Floor, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City Philippines 1108
For more information, please contact, Amanda Legasto, 2009 Ateneo Art Awards Project Coordinator at 4266488 or alegasto@ateneo.edu
Ateneo Art Gallery
Ground Floor, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City Philippines 1108
For more information, please contact, Amanda Legasto, 2009 Ateneo Art Awards Project Coordinator at 4266488 or alegasto@ateneo.edu
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