ABOUT THE WORK

Renowned contemporary sculptor Michael Cacnio is best known for his slice-of-life works in brass. With a fondness for the subject of the Filipino folk, his artistic practice seems a whimsically tactile takeoff from the rural folk of his father Angel Cacnio’s paintings. While his father drew inspiration from the collectivity of rural living by portraying fisherfolk, farmers, cockfights, and town festivities in his paintings that combine a classic Amorsolo-esque naturalism with an illustrative flair, Michael Cacnio singles out peripheral subjects that often camouflage themselves into the background of everyday life. Vendors, children at play, imagery of folk livelihood and the domestic are singled out to capture a more personal experience of the everyday in his work. These quotidian subjects, all too easily forgotten in passing, are far from monumental. And yet, in the works of Michael Cacnio, they become solidified in brass as little monuments evoking the nostalgia of Filipino childhood. Perhaps that is exactly the charm of Cacnio’s body of work—the childlike eyes through which he sees the everyday. There is always a playful exaggeration to his treatment of subjects that is ever present in the piece at hand. Here, however, the artist selects a more daring choice of subject—one that brings out a stronger social realist voice than is typically seen in a Cacnio sculpture. In place of the common folk, we see in this piece a stout man donning a large top hat. Seated on a comically tall chair, the man carries three gold bars and holds out a palm to the heavens, as if waiting for a blessing to come from above. Cacnio’s most favored subject, however, is not totally absent here. The caricature Cacnio makes of the greedy man recalls the whimsical humor of the folk that is epitomized by characters of the fool archetype (or the pusong) such as Juan Tamad and Juan Pusong in Filipino folktales. Similar to the stories of Juan Pusong where the titular character Juan mockingly outwits authority, I Want More possesses a subversive humor that can only come from the playful mind of the commoner with a humble stature, thus rendering the folk ever present despite their sculptural absence. (Pie Tiausas)