Leon Gallery wishes to thank the artist for confirming the authenticity of this lot

ABOUT THE WORK

Emmanuel Garibay’s Take on Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker F rom the get-go, Emmanuel Garibay harbors an intense creative interest in the marginalized and the masses. Born in Kidapawan, North Cotabato, the vibrant provincial life served as a muse for his works to come. “Every house has an old man or woman, a drunken man, a gang of kids roaming around town, and lots of stray dogs,” Garibay notes as Artes de las Filipinas writes in his artist biography. This fascination and respect for the masa is exemplified all throughout his career. He spent his college years lending his artistic abilities to the cause, interacting with other student activists from UP Diliman as a student of UP Los Banos. “The students whom I interacted with were using their art to epitomize the suffering and realism of the time,” he says. “It seemed like it was the natural thing to do” It was also the working people who internalized and interacted with his first exhibition. It was the working class type of shoppers who spent time examining Garibay's art, Artes de las Filipinas writes. The other simply gave a sweeping glance and moved on. As such, it was the ordinary people who populated Garibay's canvases. “It is the richness of the poor that I am drawn to and which I am a part of, that I want to impart,” he had said and his 2012 Anyo shows just that. Garibay’s Anyo portrays the figure of a man as he rests his head dejectedly on his arms. With his legs folded beneath him and his arm wrapped around himself, he is an image of suffering, emphasized only by the bareness of his body and the slump of his shoulders. However, like many of his works, he does not dwell on the negative. “The painting’s background is dark, but as in most of my work I have refused to give too much emphasis to the negative,” he says in an interview with Jo-Ann Van Reeuwyk published in the Image Journal. “The human spirit is overcoming that darkness. The figure becomes the light in otherwise dark surroundings.” Though Garibay’s quote pertains to a specific painting, it also rings true for Anyo. The man’s figure, dejected as it may be, still serves as a beacon of hope, a positive light (both figuratively and literally) amidst the dark background. Suffering may be suffocating but in the end, human resilience prevails. The masses, through a continuous struggle for freedom and equality from an oppressive system, will be liberated once and for all. (Hannah Valiente)