Provenance: Norman Crisologo Collection

ABOUT THE WORK

Buen Calubayan is undoubtedly one of the preeminent artists of his generation. Having been declared a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ esteemed Thirteen Artists Award in 2009 and one of three Winners for Visual Arts in the 2013 Ateneo Art Awards, Calubayan laid his claim over the Philippine art world in less than a decade, landing on Ateneo’s shortlist once more only two years after his first win. The 2012 exhibit Fressie Capulong, for which he won the Ateneo prize, notably marked a shift in Calubayan’s style, tending towards the personal subject as an entry point into exploring larger societal, even national themes. Prior to then, his exhibitions addressed these themes directly, often depicting through abject subjects the detriment of the mind and marginalization in art-making. Once he had turned to his own family history for material, Calubayan began to steer the discourse of his work in another direction. Inspired by old family portraits and photos, Calubayan filled the exhibit space with 57 portraits of varying sizes — family portraits, solo portraits, class photos, landscapes — juxtaposed to construct what appears to be the “complete” life of his subject. It was this sense of completeness that Calubayan grappled with, refusing to concede that these photos were really all it took to construct one’s identity. In order to manage this problématique, he included two more portraits, much larger than the others. The first portrait presents a woman in a scarf, smiling, surrounded by a mess of bright color. The second portrait, perhaps more striking despite its muted tones, puts the viewer face-to-face with a woman who appears to be on the verge of a breakdown, her posture still composed however, surrounded by the color gray. The contrast between these two portraits should strike the viewer, each having the potential to become the centerpiece, if not for the presence of the other. The result of these two images is a transformation of the exhibit into a negotiation of related contrary ideas — nostalgia and presence, memory and knowledge, past and present. This lot, which is the very same portrait that constitutes the centerpiece of Fressie Capulong and is now coming into market for the first time, is a key piece of Calubayan’s body of work, and marks his rise into prominence on the national art scene.