Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

The barong-barong has been associated with Mauro Malang Santos as he popularized the subject by glossing over its sociopolitical implications. Others before him had already taken up the subject in the postwar period. Vicente Manansala was a precursor of Malang in this kind of painting. In Barong-barong from 1982, everything is recognizable, and yet everything is also slightly out of place or reconstructed into a new form of reality. The evident reality is not in appearance alone but the reality which is felt, imagined, and thought of. This depiction of the otherwise banal barong-barong takes us back to the different artistic phases and learning curves Malang went through over the course of his lengthy and productive career. This work from 1982 demonstrates the artist’s emphasis not on poverty but on the ethereal aspect of barong-barongs in collage-like juxtapositions.