Why You Should See the Juxta:Position - 20th/21st Century Abstract Philippine and Traditional Philippine Cordillera Art Displays
My Pinterest account
is filled with boards on home decorations and one of my favourite photos is this.
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The idea of antique
Bulul rice gods from Ifugao tribes with an Ivan Acuna abstract paintings in the
background is somehow aesthetically correct in my point of view, captivating is
really the right term. So imagine my delight when I come round 1335Mabini in
Karrivin Plaza earlier today to attend a presscon for a display that will be
held starting this weekend.
Most Filipinos
knowledge of carved wooden figures may be only those that are commercially sold
in Baguio but we don’t really know much about the ones that can be found in Ifugao, the
rice deities or the Bulul. Same goes for Filipino artists that are popular in
abstract arts. But that is about to change as beginning February 16, 2019,
there will be an impressive collection of traditional Cordillera pieces that will be
seen in public alongside artworks by 20th and 21st-‐century Filipino abstract
artists. This will be a first time in the gallery art scene in the Philippines.
Owned by Hong Kong-‐based AsianArt:Future (AA:F), which is
chaired by Swiss Martin Kurer, some of the collection will be on display at
1335Mabini in Karrivin Plaza, Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati, from February 16
to March 2, 2019.
Aptly titled
“JUXTA:POSITION”, the exhibition comes as a result of Kurer’s particular
interest in the universal and widespread use of the aesthetics of reduction,
something present he says in the carved wooden figures or bulul, which are
closely associated with the Ifugao peoples of Northern Luzon.
Not only that but a three‐part book, JUXTA:POSITION (The
Aesthetics of Reduction), will be made available to the public. In it, Kurer
goes into greater detail on the aestheticism of the carvings of the Cordillera
peoples, which he says can also be perceived and described utilizing an
artistic vocabulary similar to the one of the Abstract Art movement. The second
and third parts highlight the bululs, boxes, kinahu, and spoons of the
Cordillera peoples, mostly from the 19th century and earlier, and a number of
abstract paintings from Filipino artists, as photographed by At Maculangan of
Pioneer Studios, Manila.
Similar exhibitions
have been done before by the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1988 and
accompanied by William Rubin’s catalogue “The Primitivism of Modern Art”, and
in 2009 at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel titled “Visual Encounters, Africa,
Oceanic, and Modern Art”, which showed tribal masterpieces alongside works of
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Vassily Kandisnky, Rousseau, Constantin
Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Mark Rothko.
More recently, the exhibition of Les Collections Barbier-‐Muller
“100 Years of Passion” showed tribal art pieces from Africa and Oceania in the
context of contemporary art of Baselitz, Jeff Koons, and others.
“I am not looking at
the use of these aesthetic principles from a scholarly point of view,” Kurer
says. “Rather, I look at pieces of art from different backgrounds and periods,
and attempt to search some aesthetic interaction or connection among them.”
WHY SEE JUXTA:POSITION?
What will be interesting and why you should see this exhibit
is that each bulul, a box or bowl from AsianArt:Future’s collection, most of
which were gathered from old collections, assembled in the last century, will
be shown with a corresponding artwork from José Joya, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz,
H.R. Ocampo, Lee Aguinaldo, Cesar Legaspi, Arturo Luz, Fernando Zóbel, Lao
Lianben, and Gus Albor, who created a painting specifically for the exhibition.
Kurer invites the audience to look at the partnered pieces
and perhaps spark a dialogue on the aesthetic vocabulary of the two genres of
artistic creation, which, on the face of it, may not have much in common.
Yet, through the simplicity, directness, discipline, the
reduction to the essence, understatement, and the ability to show a hidden
reality, it does according to Kurer. This approach, Kurer
adds, is not to subordinate traditional Cordillera art to the viewpoint of
“modern” or “fine” art point of view but to allow both sources to be looked at
on the same level.
“That also means to avoid looking, in the traditional
approach, at the Cordillera pieces shown from the perspective of their
anthropological, ceremonial, and functional background and use,” Kurer says.
“What the exhibition and juxtaposition focuses on is the artistic
implementation of the carver’s dealings with the spiritual world in their
natural environment, and the search for the unconscious, and how it co-‐relates
or connects with the same search for aesthetics of their modern artistic
counterparts.”
In the January/February 2017 edition of Asian Art Magazine,
AsianArt: Future published an article that looks in detail into the art of the
Cordilleras people and their counterparts around the globe. The write up points
out that pieces they have created match the quality of the pieces of African
and Oceanic tribal art. Kurer also published a book titled Simplicity.Ifugao
Sculpture.Power (Hong Kong University Press/Columbia University Press).
As a collector, Kurer remains fascinated by the fact that
artists from different continents, with very distinct cultural heritages, and
from very different epochs, could end up employing—or be perceived to be
employing—very similar aesthetic approaches and furthering this dialogue is
what he hopes the exhibition will achieve.
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