Tracing the evolution from pigment to venerated object
Don’t expect to see only beautiful paintings hanging in this show.
The current Lopez Museum exhibition The Sum of Its Parts features pieces from the Lopez Memorial Museum collection which have undergone or are slated to undergo conservation procedures. These are the works by Felix ResurrecionHidalgo, Juan Luna, Pacita Abad, Nena Saguil, Juvenal Sanso and Claudio Bravo. Also included is contemporary artist Jonathan Olazo’s installation work called “Healing Achiles” taking off from the “Diaphanous Series” of his father Romulo Olazo which the latter began to develop in the late 1960s through printmaking.
At the opening, husband and wife curator Eileen and Chit Ramirez, museum director Cedie Vargas, Mrs. Olazo and Romulo and Jonathan Olazo
The young Olazo’s installation consists of three sets of works: large-scale paintings, light boxes with pictures of the staff, and Mouse Traps. The paintings, borrowed from his father, were exhibited circa early 80s in a one-man exhibition in the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
He said “I learned from my folks these paintings were stocked in my grandfather’sbodega in Pasay City, for almost a period of 20 years. Just recently, my folks had gotten very excited over a survey of Dad’s body of art work, and had begun initial salvos to recount and go over their storages, and hence, they ‘discovered’ these paintings, cast by Dad as a landmark output that can easily highlight his almost forty year artistic career. The find was marred though by the state of the paintings: very dilapidated and almost decaying in a degree beyond recognition, all of us were dumbfounded and shell shocked. What we have at the most are documentations of the pieces via catalogues published, and we were prompted with the challenge of what can be done to salvage these paintings, or at least arrest its pending deterioration.”
The Lopez Museum‘s conservation team fumigated and installed the pieces.The installation itself is a visual statement alluding to states of rest, a position of surrender to conservation processes. By sharing weathered art objects crafted by the hands of his fellow artist and father, Jonathan brings up questions about how art gets treated and conflated with value through the workings of institutions, collectors, viewers and cultural workers.
The exhibit aims to make the viewer aware of how various agents in the art world – from the artist, the institutions and the audience themselves – participate in the transforming an art work from pigment to venerated object.
The Sum of its Parts exhibit will run until September 30, 2008 at the Lopez Memorial Museum, ground floor Benpres Building,Exchange Road, Pasig City. Museum days and hours are Mondays to Saturdays, 8am-5pm, except holidays. For more info, call 631-2417.
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