Provenance: Luz Gallery Galleria Duemila Private Collection, Bacolod City

ABOUT THE WORK

Bencab brings together aspects of painting in works that highlight some of the country’s most impressive cultural images. With an eye for detail and an assured technique he brings his subjects to life with a lush sense of nostalgia. It is hard to disconnect the radical change in fashion that has characterized the twentieth century from the radical change in art that accompanied. Same goes with the Filipiniana fashions of the tail end of the nineteenth century and the advent of sepia colored photographs at the turn of the century, both of which Bencab explores with his Larawan themes. Historical fashion and painting, boon companions in the past, have continued their relationship in our century, and the interchange between them is often deliberately provocative. Whether the clothes shown in works of art are charming or elegant, or historical, it is clear that fashion in painting is not just a matter of surface appearances but points to deeper social and cultural realities as well. Bencab is not interested in depicting a realistic image, but rather creating an illusion of ethereal volume and size.