by Emmanuel Torres

The Philippine Star . May 3, 1999

This September the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia, will be featuring the works of three Filipinos at the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, indisputably one of two or three preeminent international expositions in this part of the world. Two of them, Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and John Frank Sabado, are currently holding solo gallery exhibitions, the former of pastels at Finale (April 10 - May 3), the latter of mixed media colleges at Hiraya (April 25 - May 10).

Though both work in the idiom of abstraction, it isn’t abstraction for its own sake, or one completely detached from the world of natural appearances and traditional symbols. Their output may be called Lyrical Abstraction in the use of suggestion or evocation to bring about perceptions other than purely optical. Which is not surprising, given that the Pinoy sensibility is less inclined to a geometric configuration of circles, triangles, squares, cubes etc. a la Arturo Luz, or the drips and blots of Jess Ayco derived from New York Action Painting. Hard to told back in the Pinoy is the tendency of fusing the purely abstract with biomorphic allusions to the human figure and the natural environment.

By collectively naming his pastels Maquiling (or Makiling, as commonly spelled), identified only by numbers rather than titles, Aquilizan…

In contrast, Sabado’s Ancestors in the Modern Age is a major statement from an immensely talented artist from the mountains of Benguet, a show of new collages better than his last year’s. They consist of meticulously detailed pen-and-ink drawings on handmade paper, at once representational and abstract, in combination with strings, fabrics and found objects. The craftsmanship they display is exquisite; so is their sense of native cultural tradition and visionary ambience (which should go over big in Australia with its rich legacy of aboriginal art). Each work is informed by an intelligence able to unify diverse elements cohesively and masterfully in warm earth tones: tiny hand-sculpted bulols (granary gods), fertility amulets, the spotted plumage of bingala (native turkey), black-striped shells, and more. Each of Sabado’s icons simulates a mandala in the two senses of the word: as in Oriental art a schematic representation of the cosmos, mainly characterized by a concentric configuration of geometric shapes, each of which contains an image of a deity or a divine attribute; as much as, in Jungian psychology, a symbol representing an effort to unify the self.

A unitive element is his use of parallel threads of white, black and red, stretched taut over his pen-and-ink icons showing the influence of Mountain Province fabrics: they form a framework plangent with associations of plucked musical instruments like the kudyapi. The threads complement the abstract-geometric format of each work; but far from being rigid and formal, this format is considerably softened by presentational and traditional symbols, as in Dreamer of the Vision of All Men I, where triangle, square, circle and convex Op Art effects fuse with trees, a heiratic face, and lizards in repeat patterns.

The symmetry of his vision is such that all details gravitate toward the pictorial center of works that go in pairs: two of Closer to the Gods, two of Warrior’s Charm, two of Chuno [Mass Wedding], and so forth. I am particularly enthralled by Vision of Unity II, in which broken shells and bingala feathers lead the eye toward a tiny fertility talisman... perfect for inducing a meditative state of mind.

Purple Haze, the tour de force of the entire show, is an imposing demonstration that there need be no irreconcilable difference between fine art and handicraft, ethnic culture and modernist sophistication. And in an ultra-sensate age when much of what we see of reality appears in the media in bits and pieces, all coherence gone, it’s good to see art-making that reflects a holistic, macrocosmic view of nature in harmony with supernature.

In all, Sabado’s is a quietly dazzling, virtuoso performance hard to fault. I intend to see his show again before it closes.