PAINTING # 1
Title: Burnout 4
Artist: Louie Talents Cauterized
Material: Bible Pages on Wood
Authors point of view:
"When
the bible becomes a person's diary, the religious becomes spiritual. It
is possessed and comes to belong to the life of both the believer and
the author of fate.
The
remains of the page from the sacred book, after the process of burning,
are mesmerizing, index of a meditative process that is at the same time
a manner of adornment, a beautiful way to praise the fire that subtly
razes.
PAINTING # 2
Title: Philippine Deep
Artist: Manuel Lotsu Q. Manes
Material: Oil on Canvas
Authors point of view:
"Drowning is a scenario that usually depicts a struggle to survive,
of holding into anything and of gasping for air".
"A portrait of a people that finally given up all hope of a better life" .
PAINTING # 3
Title: Cross Fire
Artist: Dennis T. Atienza
Material: Oil on Canvas
Authors point of view:
PAINTING # 4
Title: Signa Temporum
Artist: Joseph T. De Juras
Material: Mixed Media
Authors point of view:
Derived
from Thomas Carlyle's 1829 book "Signs of the Times", this painting is a
wrenching visual diatribe on the great tribulation - "a period of time
before rapture, a worldwide experience of hardship, disaster, famine,
war, pain, and suffering".
A
balletic dance of death twists in agony and intense pain before the
viewer's eyes, with the central image of two contorted bodies riddled
with bullets.
PAINTING # 5
Title: The Cure
Artist: Armand Jay S. Arago
Material: Acrylic on Canvas
Authors point of view:
With
the intense glare of radiant light overhead him, the anonymous man is
either genius or mad scientist, solitary in his work, transfixed in a
vision of a world obedient to his will. Like a surgeon, noble in his
white smock, he works with sharp precision, as though the least errant
move can mean a valentine or a valedictory to a vanished world. The
scene has all the hushed reverence of a priest celebrating the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass.
PAINTING # 6
Title: Real Time Connectivity
Artist: Arturo T. Sanchez Jr.
Material: Mixed Media
Authors point of view:
The
boldness of concept is exhilarating. the choice of material, abjuring
the painterly, is bristling. The conduct of approach is courageous. This
is the swift summation by this artwork that invites, even against one's
will, the viewer's participation by his mere physical presence. There
you stand, embraced by an aerial view of Manila, at once so familiar and
strange that the experience stuns you. Plotted red dots are connected
by the lines, doubtless exploring the possibility of simultaneous
presence in various destinations.
PAINTING # 7
Title: 14 Missed Calls
Artist: Alexander Marcaida Roxas
Material: Oil on Canvas
Authors point of view:
Sacrifice
lamb is the masked innocent child clad in white pajamas, prostrate on
the floor, and crouched in foetal position that alludes to the shape pf a
telephone. Beside him is a toy gun which is a symbol for the violence
that has wrought immeasurable destruction, impelled by the widespread
hunger, unemployment, homelessness, and the menace of illicit drugs. The
title is a direct reference to the past 14 administrations since the
country attained independence, a searing capsulation of the
mismanagement by the nation's elected leaders who have refused to listen
to the desperate calls and please of the people.
PAINTING # 8
Title: Cariton
Artist: Rodrigo R. Clapano
Material: Oil on Canvas
Authors point of view:
Like
an Escher painting, "Cariton" is an ingenious visual trick, but it is
so unlike the Dutch graphic artist's confounding stairways and passages
that dizzily cause disorientation. We are witness not to a mere
sleight-if-hand, as it were, but to a disturbing fissure that bruisingly
allegorizes the Philippine experience. An unflinching look at the
contrast between the privileged rich and the deprived poor, "Cariton" -
itself a word play on luxury car and the grimy pushcart, is social
realism on the cutting edge, laced with poisonous sarcasm.
PAINTING # 9
Title: Nang yumanig ang Mundo (When the World Shook)
Artist: Ricky V. Ambagan
Material: Mixed Media
Authors point of view:
Fact
or apocrypha, an urban anecdote engendered this, wall-shaking painting.
It was said that a legendary First Lady once bought an entire bookshelf
from a venerable London antiquarian bookshop because the leather-bound
vintage books would "look good" in her husband's study.
Pop-phantasmal
is this vision of a heavily-weighted bookshelf tilted at rakish angle,
with the books propitiously held in place. Japanese samurais rise amidst
battle tanks, while soldiers lurk between the nooks and crannies of
books. Pope Benedict is in good company with a Tibetan monk and a
worshipping Muslim while Mao Tse Tung is in dalliance with the Mona
Lisa. Indeed, a funny thing happened on the way to Armageddon.
PAINTING # 10
Title: Spolarium
Artist: Juan Luna
Material: Oil on Canvas
Authors point of view:
The author wants to express his concept about the Spanish Era, who ruled in the Philippines long time ago. This painting was submitted by Luna to the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884 in Madrid, where it garnered the first gold medal (out of three). In 1886, it was sold to the Diputación Provincial de Barcelona for 20,000 pesetas.
