This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by Finale Art File confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

How deep was the Filipino engagement with Cubism? A handful of artists such as Ang Kiukok demonstrated a precise understanding of Cubism’s tenets and implications and they could parse its substructures with aplomb. Geometric forms are given life as visual elements by the way in which they are painted forms overlap suggesting hinted spaces on the flat canvas. Ang Kiukok has dispensed with all lifelike detail. The almost surreal method of presenting familiar objects in unfamiliar manifestations produces a disorienting effect. It is Kiukok’s metaphor of a world where something stable is not what it seems and security at best a temporary respite. The planes of color are juxtaposed at sharp angles from one another. The effect is disquieting, and yet compositionally, all is of a piece, each dissonant color precariously supportive of the other. Bright and dark planes make up the tightly interlocking pieces of a puzzle based on intriguing spatial ambiguities.