Artist-colleagues Melvin Culaba, Dennis Mallares Gonzales, and Juanito Torres fill their canvases with images that portray their community and the society at large. They combine artistic forces in Katas ng Masa, opening at West Gallery, West Avenue, Quezon City, on October 24 and runs until November 11.
Organized by Alfred Esquillo for West Gallery, Katas ng Masa showcases the way the three artists see the different social mechanisms around them at play: from Culaba’s view of growing up in Baclaran, Torres’s take on religiosity, and Gonzales’s use of transforming vastly different images into visual narratives. While they have known each other for a long time, this is the first time they are mounting a group show together. All welcome each other’s points of view.
Esquillo likes the sense of chaos in each of the works, portraying life in the city as a series of contrasting images, simultaneously making sense and making no sense to the viewer at first glance. In a way, Esquillo believes, it is the reason why it has been difficult for us to establish a unified cultural identity.
Culaba has found his immediate environment such a rich source of ideas—Baclaran being a visual exposition in which Culaba can tackle different social concerns
simply from the way the different types of people behaved around him. “Bahay ni Grandpa” and Citizen Juan” both evoke memories of his childhood and the present situation in his community. They are like a montage of cultural snapshots, and by looking closer one can spot so many different socio-political subcultures, from avid cellular phone users to doctors leaving the country.
At young age, Gonzales was already fascinated with editorial cartoons. At the time, all he wanted was to fill the images with color and later tried copying them. The visual communications graduate from UP and 2003 CCP Thirteen Artists Award recipient is now creating his own” editorials” by way of depicting multi-layered characters on canvas. In the 6’ x 5’ oil on canvas work, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” he fills the canvas with what he describes as a circus—featuring a wide range of characters and familiar pop culture images. In another work, “In God’s Name,” he plays around the image of a nun, at once striking fear and exposing vulnerability. One needs time to see what the artist may be driving at—Gonzales himself says that images can be deceiving, and they are not always what they seem. But he also gives the viewer a free hand to interpret what they see. His goal is to always introduce new ideas or elicit new ways of thinking.
Torres takes inspiration from the people he knows and images of saints in composing his own narrative. “It is like a church that we are all a part of.” He says. Torres adds that his body of work is still evolving, always seeing other ways of presenting his subjects—giving them a living quality. “I also want to make them life-sized as much as possible because they become the bridge to my audience, especially when I use human figures.”
Documentation
