Provenance: Private Collection, Bulacan

ABOUT THE WORK

Jonathan Olazo’s art is a visual kick, a shout and yet a state of grace. It bristles with anger and sarcasm: a pent up release, what with his refusal to acknowledge the death throes of abstraction of the art that he loved most, he took up the cudgels for other artists who, while longing to get those auspicious commissions, resent the subservience demanded of space, scale and color palette, working under the specifications of the architect or interior designer. Olazo’s abstractions celebrate their own irregular asymmetry, an ‘all-over’ approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance and seem grateful that the hand behind their creation did not see it fit to tamper with their nature as material, with contrivance the farthest thing in his mind.