Artist Jose Santos III finds that there’s no better way to know the self than to go back in time. This is the recurring theme that prevails in Times II, his latest one-man show at the West Gallery, SM Megamall that runs from July 21 though August 2.
Jose Santos III continues to trace his personal history through a myriad of vintage images from his grandparents’ scrapbook. He says that it is his way of exploring the past and finding hints of personal significance through people he might have not even met but have been a part of his grandparents’ lives.
Times II also pays homage to the style of his father’s old, humorous illustrations that came out daily in The Manila Times in the 1960s. He loved the idea of how his father would draw the featured artist in an amusing light. Digging through old family photographs also allowed Santos III to discover something different each time. Yet that’s where the similarity ends. Santos III says that his father, a graphic artist, did not push him to follow his lead. Santos III didn’t even intend to take up fine arts in college until the very last minute. All the while growing up, drawing was playtime.
Now he’d get ideas from old photographs and compose them in a style all his own, using symbols and narratives to complete what may be entirely different contexts or stylized depictions about entirely different people. He says that he tries to “erase” the original images’ dated quality, and gives each one a sense of timelessness, somehow connecting them to his own developing personal history, “I can’t also explain why I’m drawn to certain periods [in history],” Santos III says of his interest in the Spanish colonial period.
Working with mixed media, adds Santos III, is just as fun. The process must be systematic, but he enjoys playing around with the combinations of images and materials available to him. “It’s instinctive. I feel my way through which images to use, and play around with the possibilities. The first image sets the mood, and then I already know where it’s going.” In “The Choice,” Santos III depicts a man at somehow in a dilemma over a lamp and a miniature car. He says that such objects represent what he felt at the time, such as choosing in which direction to go, even when he only realizes it much later. He admits that sometimes he cannot make sense of it, conceding that painting in itself is a soul-searching experience. In the end, he goes with what he feels is natural.
Times II then becomes a collection of large, postcard-like images, as if frozen in time as pieces in the puzzle in Santos III’s personal journey. Totally unrelated images from scrapbooks and historical events may even be seen together. Leave it to Santos III to distort time references and find a distinct connection.
Jose Santos III majored in painting at the UP Collage of Fine Arts, and later taught technique classes to freshmen. In 2000, he was recipient of the CCP 13 Artists Award, as well as a recipient of a UP faculty grant. The following year, he received the Gawad Chanselor Award for Outstanding Visual Creation.
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