Provenance: Liongoren Gallery

ABOUT THE WORK

One of the foremost mid-career artists working today, Buen Calubayan has created a body of work that situates the artists’ personal strife within the struggle of the nation. The self, therefore, is conflated with the country’s larger historical impulses, as both move towards self-actualization. In his vision of the landscape, Calubayan investigates the genre which has an established tradition in the canon of Philippine visual arts — from Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, to Fernando Amorsolo, to the slew of modernists who came after them. The impressionistic style for Calubayan is not style but an act of deconstruction. By whittling down the landscape as a collection of pigments, the artist inflects the canvas with the gestural action of his bodiyl force. Through this process, the landscape has seized to become a neutral space in which nature may be enjoyed in its own but a volatile field that registers the deliberate intervention of the artist. On the pictorial plane, self and space, the landscape and the artist’s visual language collide. These works are a part of the ongoing Biowork series of Calubayan — an autobiographical saga that constitutes the sum-total of the artist’s production.