The very threshold of contemporary Independent Films takes pride from Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, a story of a youthful love of a gay to another older man.  Last year Cinemalaya 2012 created a canon out of Bwakaw, a story of an old man inside the closet and the alienation of not coming out. Cinemalaya, unshaken by the norms and conventions set by society, serves as an open avenue for the propagation of gay art or gay centered art. By this, some would even mistake independent films as gay oriented movies. Currently, a gay movement within the borderless confines of Cinemalaya has not been lost nor eradicated. It underwent a very Kafkaesque metamorphosis from the darkness of a closet, perks of coming out to the rudiments of their challenged existence. Now, Eduardo Roy Jr. establishes a new identity and a new perspective to patrons of film. Something that transcends our notion of gay – their struggle against the aesthetics set by Divine providence. This is Quick Change. It shatters the gay film stereotype.

                Our conformity with our world of technology is manifested by our lust for immediate response. The title of this film dignifies the patronage of transgenders to renewal of their physical attributes defying their origin and future (from being a man and to be old). Quick in today’s context would mean two things abrupt and affordable. Ergo, they fall in line to Dorina’s offer. Painfully accepting their bereft from origin and their future. This is the assumed bedrock of their existence. Whether it is money or anything that deters them they will do everything to conquer this queer desire. What we are now describes our absurdity, our non conformity with the nature and our volition over the Divine. This is the great alteration of man the setting of a mortality of the dictates of heaven – no longer do we consider old fashioned obedience.

                                Quick Change bequeaths gay community as a microcosm of the society that bend on unlimited and illogical consumption. The dilemma is actually caused by machinations of ruling forces that create an illusory answer to their impossible endeavor. Science has not yet confirmed a full validity of sex implantations or any such neo eugenics. They lure consumers to fill a bucket infested by holes. It is therefore the modern depiction of the capitalist treachery towards a lost market. That despite a prohibition the ‘pagpapaturok’ continues.

                                Popular culture of the ruling class hypnotizes the people to prioritize beauty over their very own safety. In the fear of being out dated and ostracized the follow to an enforced tide. Much like of the workers who settle on dangerous workplaces for filial sustenance. The film opens our senses to a vast reality that gravely needs action- a visible force.

                In the movie are scenes of the Virgin Mary, religious processions, and other Church related activities. Director Roy, vividly pictures our society that appears to be religious but is amoral. The fraud, unwanted relationships, and greed are too much to be concealed by mere prayers without a reconstructive repentance. No matter how many rosary bead you are in contact with, it all ends with how one destroys and creates life. You cannot sugarcoat the dark shadow in us.

                A prototype family of Dorina, his boyfriend, and Hero build a deconstruction of the holy family. Dorina, though not a Virgin, assumes the responsibilities of parenthood of another. She rears a child she never begot. She visits many Elizabeths in different spots with a syringe. One thing would not be sure, if she would be hailed as saint. His boyfriend takes them not by a donkey but by a motorcycle. He unfaithfully executes being a father. Hero in parallel with Jesus builds a different angle, an angle of innocence that their family fails to reach.

                If this would be Phillippine Cinema, then we have a better future ahead.

With a hefty week in school, it was nonetheless a divine conspiracy that we watched PORNO at its Gala Night at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The title itself speaks of something carnal, ecstatic, and vile. The standards of contemporary society label pornography as vile, a foul staging of sexual activities for gratifications of the flesh. But deep within a collective rejection are massive patronage, stately neglect, and flourishing industry. Ergo, such rejection is actually a sugarcoat of a denied indulgence of the many.

                The film allows us to peek in three lives of men – how they live with it [porno] and how they face its harsh consequence. Viewer’s eyes will roll on their oblique existence in a world that tries to be linear.

The Assassin’s Tale: Sex and Blood

                Yul Servo’s role as assassin, hired to kill a prelate, was capsuled in the four corners of a motel. In it, he drew his paradise with a prostitute[Rosanna Roces] forgetting the fact that he failed to fulfill his task. But along the coital activity, he hears voices that lurk behind the room’s walls and feels voyeurism. However, with the pleading of his partner, Servo continues his sexual intercourse. In his misery, he opts unorthodox solutions for the bounty of a distant family. It is his killing of the prelate that emphasizes man’s brute force to the extinction of faith and death of spirituality.

The Porn Dubber’s Tale: Moan of Conscience

                Carlos Aquino plays a role of a dubber who hardly meets the standards of a perfect masculine moan. He is noted for his immaturity to bring the cudgels of his labor – his lack of sexual experience. But, aloof from this impression, he is inclined to a peculiar habit of posting pictures of women whom he anonymously met in social networks. His petty addiction begets the wrath of a lady who decides to die. Through the end of his tale, he encounters unusual calls. Aquino, then receives an adverse consequence of his perfidy and ends in the sympathy of an old prayer group. While there is rampant delight in earthly pleasures, there is a small ailing group of faith. This draws the perfect image of the senility of faith but the senility is held by the youth not the old.

The Transgender’s  Tale: Acceptance of the New Self

                The central dilemma of Angel Aquino [the transgender] is his son’s acceptance to his deliberately altered identity. He laments that his son, with an innocent age, longs for the natural paternity that he cannot offer as he already crossed a different gender and there is no point of return. Gender alteration is an immense reality to be immediately grasped by a family especially for the young ones. But whether we deny it or not, its presence is something to be thought about as context in the Filipino family. It is also harder for Angel Aquino since his son lives abroad. For all cases, it is hard to convene a realization with a family in Diaspora.

                One thing commendable with Director Adolfo Alix is his astonishing organization of the smooth continuity of three lives as if it were in a singular story. Each story cuts through every tale of the whole film. He neatly sews a plot of open secrets of the society. He enables the audience to independently venture to the depth of the story. PORNO gives us not the stereotype of obscene imagery but the obscenity of life itself- the fragments of a shattered life. It openly tackles things which are talked in clandestine. It provides more than the depictions of sexual intercourse but leave the audience with a cerebral discourse.  The audience is therefore challenged to evaluate whether the lives are abyss or bliss. It also aligns itself to the theme Cinesthesia: Synergy of Senses as it culminates the multi-dimensions of life, engaging the senses to the merge of reality and art.

                PORNO asks us to consider the bitter and the foul in the society. And the Filipino Film should never hesitate revealing the truths in our society whether good or bad.

TRAILER:

*This films is only screened at the Cultural Center of the Philippines because of its sensitive and explicit contents. For more info CLICK ME.

**Schedule

July 27 9:00 PM

July 28 10:00 AM/LT; 9:00 PM/THB

July 29 10:00 AM/THB

July 30 10:00 AM/THB; 3:30 PM/THB; 6:15 PM/MKP

July 31 10:00 AM/THB; 12:45 PM/TMC

Aug 1   10:00 AM/MT; 3:30 PM/MKP

Aug 2   10:00 AM/LT; 12:45 PM/MT

Aug 3   10:00 AM/LT; 12:45 PM/LT; 9:00 PM/TMC

Aug 4   12:45 PM/THB

THB- Tanghalang Huseng Batute

MKP- MKP Hall

TMC - Tanghalang Manuel Conde

AT- Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino

MT- Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo

           

 A student’s life would mean a lot of incapacities and time constraints as tasks rain cats and dogs. My summer-born love for visual arts was clear that it would end whether I like it or not.  But I want to fulfill this wish despite the immobility so I surfed the net for solutions. I gladly found Art Informal, an open and free space of exhibits that showcases artworks online. Though nothing can surpass an actual face-to face meeting with the piece itself, I still consider this as advancement and a continuity of my love for arts. I mean I have seen Da Vinci’s  Mona Lisa (a billion times) but it can’t parallel the feeling when I first saw Juan Luna’s Spolarium actually. Live is better than tapped.

            The first exhibit that struck me was Memory Escapes My Head like a Blur of Dave Lock. Memory has a lot to do with everyone. It even becomes an incognito foundation of us as human, imagine life without it - every five minutes you meet new friends you've met ten minutes ago. It’s crap. I call it incognito because a few people consider it, we always patronize the heart that does nothing but to pump blood. I don’t mean our hearts should be disposed in bins. But let us wake up to the fact that our memory takes the love we possess and not the heart. Our memory links us to a greater portion of the world and continually reminds us that we belong, whatever happens. From this, memory is thus a core faculty of life. Psychology teaches us that there are two classifications of memory – short term and long tern. Sadly, God doesn't provide permanent thoughts only lasting ones. Our memory is always at a brink of loss in the infinite space. The mind has no strength to be a container of unlimited memories and maybe by this we bear the capacity of fully forgiving those who hurt us. The when memory takes its own way, it becomes a chameleon to mist and remains unfound. And an abhorring fact to be grieved upon is that these memories are snippets of our creativity. Unlike those memories we induce to forget that doesn't quickly escapes.  Good thing Dave Lock willfully got a chance to retrieve and prevent these memories from running to the abyss.

There is a poem of Angela Manalang Gloria entitled Poems (1940) saying:

“But all of them, however perfect

In my mind’s retreat,

Appear bewildered when released

And oh, so incomplete.”

The poetess appears so distressed of incompatibility of the actual opus to its mental state as Fr. Miguel Bernad SJ calls it – inchoate. Memory Escapes My Head Like a Blur’s completion as a magnum opus and incompletion as inchoate heavily anchors on our judgement and on how we unravel the semantics of the works.

            One distinctive touch of Dave Lock’s works is his titling. He sublimely justifies the correlation of its nomenclature to the artworks. It seems to me that the marriage of his titles to the works can parallel the essence of an epic. It’s not like the parodied Mona Lisa of Marcel Duchamp entitled L.H.O.O.Q which embodies lone Dadaism. Lock attempts to give meaning from the bosom of the opus to its extremities therefore nothing is bypassed.

                Of the many colors that the world offers, Lock uses only two black and white – white as the space while back as consumer of space. The synchrony of black and white, matter and content, drives us closer to the gamut of the artist’s expression. Black and white tends to be dependent, mutually owing their existence from one another as white defines black and black defines white. Though monochrome in nature, his works offer a prism that introduces us to pastel interpretations in a spectrum. Its action as dualistic is converted to a purposive plurality relatively ranging from the imaginative to critical interpretations.

            From a pool of his works, I have selected ten (not in order). The basis of my selections is personal than conceptual. It’s the subjective relation that paints the details that match to what has been stored to our memory. For example, Leap of Faith appears to be an illusion of a faith moving forward but is visually dismal. The paradox it shares among an array of audience signifies the artist’s capability to reflect or deflect man. Siamese is dichotomy of the human personality torn between wraths. In the other hand, Coil gains our pity from a female interfered by her environment to be naturally dependent.

            Four Place at Once established an ancient concept of balance, order and tranquility much like the coexistence of earth, wind, fire and water. From the distinctions of its shades, we take a vivid picture of each detail simultaneously working to create an equal existence, relying from one another for creation and survival. Aloof from the balance that the aforementioned work offers, comes the opposition of matter versus natural order. Gravity is an Ugly Lover depicts the matter pushing itself away from its usual ground against natural order that pull matter back. The conflict gives rise to chaos and eminent death. Lock doesn't only paint death. Out of the decay of a Sarcophagus, he breathes life in it. That within a sarcophagus is a system that relies on the process of nature and that dying is somehow of life itself.

            But between Life and Death, the artist gives stress to the dominance of death. In a clash between fire and flowers, life becomes submissive and transforms into ashes. Unlike the Phoenix that has an innate chance to rebirth, the flower has none. In the context of the society Lock’s equation is true. Try to measure to speed of the propagation of bad and good news, the results are amazing. Pass an examination, your family will celebrate. Fail it, prepared to be devoured and feasted by your neighbors.

            Memory Escapes My Head like a Blur builds a bias to what is happening in a mental realm especially dreams. Forgotten Dreams express a frustration from a break-out idea. And once you find it, you will discover that it is badly shaped and obscure in figure. Probably,  one of the greatest imperfections of humanity is to mentally recover its very own dreams exactly. Indeed, it is the epitome of a memory that escapes like a blur. Even worse is Dreamless 1 that having nothing at all is problematic. But we are relieved by Dream are Longer When You don’t Sleep because it assures us that we have an all day chance to find our slipping dreams, wide awake.

             The exhibit is toughly mental; it challenges our imaginations and the very knowledge of us. Take time to visit Art Informal at 277 Connecticut Street, Greenhills East, Mandaluyong City, Philippines. Gallery hours are 11:00 AM-7:00PM (Monday to Friday) while 10:00AM-6:00PM on Saturdays. The gallery is always closed on Sundays. For further details refer to these numbers: 63 (2) 725-8518 or 63 (918) 899 2698. Don’t wait until July 1, 2013

About the Artist

B. 1986. Dave lock is a non- art school undergraduate. He has had 6 solo shows to date, and a number of group shows around here in the Philippines and one recently in Singapore, where he also had his two week in-house artist residency. His latest exhibition is currently ongoing at the UP Vargas Museum. His method of painting and drawing are quite similar, as they are both done freehand and executed in an obsessive compulsion for detailed etchings. The habitual line drawings and repetitive patterns crawling among his eerie portraits describe his almost neurotic paranoia of existence, and its cyclical dominion over us.

Leap of Faith

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2050

Wildfires Spread Faster Than Flowers
ink and acrylic on paper
49 x 36.5 in / 4.1 x 3 ft
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2061

Four Places at Once

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2048

Gravity is an Ugly Lover

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2049

Sarcophagus

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2055

Siamese

ink and acrylic on paper
49 x 39.5 in / 4.1 x 3.3 ft
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2065

Dreamless (1)

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2043

Dreams are Longer When You Don't Sleep

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2045

Forgotten Dreams

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2047

Coil

pen and ink on paper
23.1 x 19.25 in / 58.7 x 48.9 cm
2013
Dave Lock
Catalog Id: 20130613-2042

 

PS. I do not own the images. They belong to Art Informal.

                

Of all paintings in the world, nothing can surpass Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. John Lichfield described it as the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung, the most parodied work of art in the world. One can’t say he’s been to Louvre, if he never saw Mona Lisa. The painting was present on Palace of Versailles when the French Revolution broke out. It spent some time in Napoleon Bonaparte’s room. It’s loss painted a melancholic Paris, mourning until it was finally found. It took a poet and painter as primary suspects  of the theft; namely Guillaume Apolinaire and Pablo Picasso. Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q bequeathed it with bearded and titled Mona Lisa a horny woman.

And now its time for the Filipino artists to parody the most parodied art, and for everyone  to decipher Da Vinci’s code.

There have been ten paintings that captivated my interest. I have selected them as they fertiled my common imagination and dug deep an implication beyond eye-pleasing-aesthetics.

   

Ten.

Bembol Dela Cruz
Oil on Canvass
2011

Mona Lisa is a war time painting, overseeing revolutions and wars passing through through the West. Here she has a gas mask prepared for any threat that may alter her identity even to the least chemical strand . A woman threw a mug over her and a someone sprayed a red paint in the painting. But she still complacently smiles, unharmed.  She has a dynamite obedient to time. Mona Lisa is not eternity, she may last long but she shall come to an end, no matter what gas mask she has. And it is men who will destroy her from her dignified identity to the physical painting itself. After all it is men who created dynamite. 

Nine.

Iya Consorio
Ink Acrylic on Paper
2013

Mona Lisa is a streaming art, passively flowing through space occupying null minds. She fills ideas and memories to any one who sees her. Much like this painting, cannot be grasped easily. She fleets as an omnipotent thought intricately wielding concepts.

Eight.

Kaloy Sanchez
Acrylic
2013

Mona Lisa is widowed by humanity. She hides under a black cloth hoping to be consumed by darkness to be numb of humanity’s maleficence. She mourns for the evil of times – injustice, infamy and greed. She hears our cries, let us hear hers.

Seven.

Manok Ventura
Oil on Canvass
2013

Mona Lisa is a witness. She has witnessed time before anyone of us. Her innocence is our innocence. And in that eyes loom not only history but a tale of a woman of her times. She is gradually receding from humanity, don’t waste a moment with her.

Six.

Romeo Lee
Oil on Canvass
2011

Mona is a woman size. Our modern world dictates skinny girls to be mouth watering. What if Mona Lisa was fat, would the world treat her as she is a queen today?  She challenges women to eat, defying public opinion slavery. And for everyone to not to belittle the bulging sizes.

Five.

Marija Vicente
Oil on Wood
2013

Mona Lisa is decomposing between two opposing weathers. This painting opens a realistic wounded flesh of her. If we position ourselves in the middle of everything,nothing will happened to us. We are born rational being to think, therefore to choose. Between beauty and vile, good and evil – there should be a choice. If we abstain we are rotten like the portrayed woman. Dante Aligheri told us that the darkest place in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality amid a moral crisis.

Four.

Luis Santos
Oil on Canvass
2013

Mona Lisa has no perfect emotion. She may have a perfect smile but her emotion lives as a question.  You cannot pin point what she feels. But one thing we can see is he defiance to the contemporary, may be going too far or too bad. She bears this time as a cross.

Three.

De Guia
2013

Mona Lisa is disturbing. The painting tries to convey a Da Vinci message. She becomes an artists’ colony - a sub-altern, forced to show her breast.

Two.

Tanya Villanueva
Digital Print
2013

Mona Lisa is a feasted lady. But unlike now, she has clothes to conceal her boldness. For centuries, we have her as an apple of the eye, now we have women who show what they can offer to lust. Men’s eyes are no longer into her beauty but into something aphrodisiac. The modern Mona Lisa moans rather than smile. The modern Mona Lisa wears her flesh with a strip of cloth.

ONE.

Arturo JR Sanchez
Collage on Mirror
2013

Mona Lisa mirror us. We see her shattered pieces in us. This art allows us to peek Mona Lisa’s vision – how does she see her visitors. It is something that diversifies itself for every spectator. For each who stands before her presence, sees a different version Mona Lisa with a very familiar figure reflected by the mirror. Who is the Mona Lisa in you?

More Delight

Allan Balisi
Oil on Canvass
2013

Bearded Ladies
Mixed Media
2013

Dave Lock
Oil on Canvas
2011

Dex Fernanadez
Acrylic Ink, Thread, Archival Print
2013

Epjey Pacheco
Pen and Ink Color Markers
2011

Froilan Calayag
Oil on Canvass
2011

Gail Vicente
Carbon Transfer Paper
2013

Jacob Lindo
Collage
2013

Jason Montinola
Oil on Canvass
2012

Jonathan Ching
Oil on Copper
2013

Mark Andy Garcia
Oil on Canvass
2011

Pete Jimenez
Steel
2013 

Pete Jimenez
Steel 
2013 

Ranelle Dial
Oil on Canvass
2011

Roberto Chabet
Digital Photo
2012

ARTISTS: Allan Balisi, Bearded Ladies, Lyle Buencamino, ZeanCabangis, Annie Cabigting, FroilanCalayag, Bjorn Calleja, Roberto Chabet, Jonathan Ching, IyaConsorio, Louie Cordero, Jigger Cruz, Don Dalmacio, Kawayan De Giua, BembolDela Cruz, Ranelle Dial, Dex Fernandez, Dina Gadia, Mark Andy Garcia, Nona Garcia, Sarah Geneblazo, Carlo Gernale, Edric Go, Raymond Halili, Troy Ignacio, NiloIlarde, Jon Jaylo, Pete Jimenez, Sam Kiyoumarsi, Romeo Lee, Jacob Lindo, Dave Lock, Luis Lorenzana, Jason Montinola, Jason Moss, RaffyNapay, Elaine Navas, Epjey Pacheco, LynyrdParas, Neil Pasilan, Raul Rodriguez, Arturo Sanchez Jr., Kaloy Sanchez, Carina Santos, Luis Santos, Stevesantos, Frederick Sausa, YasminSison, TatongRacheta Torres, Manok Ventura, Olan Ventura, Gail Vicente, Marija Vicente, Ryan Villamael, Tanya Villanueva, MM Yu, and Christopher Zamora.

PS. The lights are unfriendly my camera so please visit the exhibit in its last day.