Notes on the Fly‍

I have my own bag of “frequently asked questions that I ask myself” during the preparation for an exhibition. I guess this is a bit funny to say, but I am led to believe most artists have their own said bag of “questions to self” - being filled to the brim with each of his/her own crises about their works and other battles with self-doubt.

‍

Vis-a-vis the exhibition on hand is no different - though it might be more fraught with decisions that have upped its ante. As artists say, no undertaking is worth it if no risks and freedoms are taken and tested. The most obvious question I had to wrap my wits around was, “Why make an unorthodox and eclectic kind of painting that has two or multiple grounds combined together?”

‍

My dialogue to self took me to a variety of combined resolutions and explanations. A train of thought that made sense was my fascination for images, especially the non-homogenous kind. This fascination was probably rooted growing up in the 1980s. Branded as the MTV generation, I was a nerdy “high schooler” and got easily seduced by the images and music, edited together as a form of entertainment.

‍

The artistic generation I belonged to was exposed to the tail-end of what was art historically classified as “high abstraction,” and we would watch video tapes in the UP College of Fine Arts, the debates of the Minimalists versus the Transavantgarde. The main protagonists would often be the puritan American sculptor, Donald Judd and the German expressionist painter, Georg Baselitz. I believe the polar directions subliminally informed the aesthetic of my generation, especially the artists and colleagues I looked up to. I considered both proponents interesting, rather than separating both of these directions. I was subconsciously looking into finding a synthesis for both ideals.

‍

In looking for a title for the exhibition, I looked at the texts and painting titles of the American painter Robert Motherwell, an artist I admired. His writings, almost always, lent context to the abstract and gestural paintings he made. “Drunk with Turpentine'' is an appropriated title of a suite of drawings Motherwell painted as an homage to Zen master Sengai and his painting “The Universe,” a meditative work portraying the shapes circle, triangle and square. I found out later too, that the title comes from a line from the poet Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Drunk on Drunk.”

‍

Somewhere in the middle of my introspection, I was led to think of my present work as a proponent of the abstract paintings of my father, painter Romulo Olazo. In his paintings, the translucent fields and organic planes are considerable grounds by themselves, and each element is elegantly orchestrated to be part of a glorious whole. From these, the assembly and build up of abstract forms caught my interest.

‍

More on my perplexing dialogue to self, a theoretical base that stood out was one that was shared to me by Roberto Chabet: “Each painterly gesture is a gesture of the mind.” I have carried this enigmatic and incisive mantra around for most of my painting career and relied on it heavily to do justice to the work I do, opening up possibilities and leading to more joy I’ve experienced while painting. In a nutshell, I think the axiom has become a subtle thesis I have reflected on.

‍

Digressing a bit to an autobiographical recollection, I am stranded between whether it was a meeting one humid afternoon when the “Chabet School” was in session, mapping out its foray for another big exhibition; or if it was in an everyday classroom setting—but  I am more inclined to think Sir Chabet (as is the familial honorific amongst his students) slipped me the said notes, casually jotted down on yellow pad sheets, during the big meeting, and my imagined memory still has Sir cajoling me about this axiom he had penned—in the lively spirits of a mentor and mentee: “Ayos ba? Ganda niyan!” And we would still discuss its validity after the meeting adjourned at a pizza joint for a round of beer (in reality, I only had Coke).

‍

In its terms now, I think I have found the expression of Sir’s theory in the various mediums I use in my work. I understand that the commonality between these overtly, unrelated stylistic classifications lies in my motives. For me, the aligning and juxtaposing of a singular and finished ground with other grounds is an expanded gesture. It may be a tall order, and it may or may not work to the uninformed eye, especially as the selected mediums have included digital printed grounds and the attachment of found objects with other “made” or constructed objects to these grounds. For me, it is interesting that there may be no logical connections between the mediums used.

‍

Swinging ideas to and from, my last swing is a quote from the American artist Frank Stella. In my opinion, it describes the plurality and inclusiveness of the artist’s mid-career and late work, and it is something to latch onto: “But, after all, the aim of art is to create space – space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.” I would like to interpret it as describing what art can be: art is something that latches onto anything that allows for its growth: a branch, a vein, a constellation of entities and ambiguities even, and then it becomes an organic space, an expanding metaphorical cosmopolis, no endings and beginnings … and art thrives.