The National Malaise as
Art
by Gino Dormiendo
The Philippine Daily
Inquirer, August 4, 2003
'Ordinary folk'
HE PAINTS stylized figures of ordinary
folk, the same people he sees and comes into contact with
in his daily life. The painter knows intimately whereof
he paints, being a native of Binangonan, Rizal, a lakeshore
town where he has lived all his life and whose own folk
have served as the main inspiration for his seriocomic portraits
of Pinoys perpetually engaged in various games of chance.
Guiliano Flores, who signs his works "Sakay,"
perhaps as a tribute to the Filipino revolutionary who refused
to surrender to the Americans, has mounted a most impressive
debut show. Dubbed "Solitaryo: Pusoy Into Art,"
(Hiraya Gallery, extended to Aug. 15), the show of a dozen
oil on canvas paintings provides a seething commentary on
the Pinoy character, his legendary follies and foibles,
as reflected in his long-running affair (or, more aptly,
addiction to) with the game of chance.
Sakay's canvases are mostly inhabited
by the menfolk-workers killing time by playing pusoy, young
men ascending the pole in a palo sebo game, ordinary citizens
role-playing as if they are the gentlemen of the legislative
chamber-although a totally naked woman appears in Circus
V "For Art's Sake," as well as in another
work. (She is presumably working in the movies, where her
ilk are recruited to perform in sexually explicit scenes.)
It is yet another game of exploitation in the way of the
flesh, a trade that its purveyors often disguise as being
pursued for a purely artistic agenda.
Indulgence
The figures in his canvases are not unlike
those of many lakeshore artists with their robust, heavily
tanned bodies, and distinctly indigenous features. They
are perpetually prone to indulging themselves in a game
of pusoy, as well as tong-its, perhaps to satisfy an instinctive
craving for instant fortune.
Eschewing the more prevalent and state-sponsored
games as the lotto or the now illegal weyting (for waiting,
literally), Sakay prefers to explore the more indigenous
kind, incorporating the motif of the playing cards into
the background, if it were not an essential fixture on the
canvas like a mask worn by the character.
The works are truly remarkable for their
rare ability to capture the strange workings of the Filipino
psyche, which, in the artist's philosophical bent, closely
approximate the level of malaise.
'Crab'
Indeed, in such pieces as "Crab,"
the allusion is to our own penchant for backstabbing and
muckraking, more often referred to as crab mentality. Here
we see three men caught in a fierce battle for the booty.
In Sakay's view, it looks like a life-and-death scramble
for the loot, which hangs from the top of a palo sebo post.
In a remarkable work called "Fire
Spitters," the game involves a group of barefoot
men in ordinary shorts and shirts, perhaps market butchers,
huddled together as they stare down at their bet in a street
game of cara y cruz. Judging from their faces, and their
body English, they have perhaps pinned all their remaining
hopes on the side of the coin that will spell the difference
between winning or losing.
The work called "Wall,"
on the other hand, is an atypical piece from the rest of
Sakay's work. It shows naked bodies of men and women, perhaps
in a live show, with the faces of spectators slightly discernible
from the contours of their bodies.
It is of course a subject that's perfectly
in keeping with Sakay's chosen theme, the body serving to
prop up one's chances in a game of survival.
Next Review:
A Dialogue of Cards and Humans
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