Pow Martinez Destroys Planets

Pow Martinez liberally throws around the word astig.  He uses it nonchalantly, with a casual shrug.

Pow Martinez, "Punk House #1", detail

Exhibit installation view

George Condo, the American artist who paints caricature-like figures with pursed lips, bulging eyes, and scrunched up heads?  He’s astig.  Philip Guston and his cartoonish renderings?  Yup, him too.  Ditto the Scottish animator David Shrigley, and provocateur Dash Snow, he of the hedonistic lifestyle who died of an overdose two years ago.  On the local front, the word is reserved for the likes of Manuel Ocampo and Jayson Oliveria, purveyors of chaotic and sexually explicit images.

Clearly, the inclinations of this boyish, 28-year-old Ateneo Art Awards winner do not lean towards order and discipline, or anything remotely intense. He admits that his decision to become an artist stemmed from a distaste for academic work.  “Hindi ako mahilig mag-aral”, a realization that prompted him to attempt UP College of Fine Arts.  He discovered that that too required some sort of effort.  Pow moved to Kalayaan College’s program after UP kicked him out for his grades (“Sumobra sa inom at sa jutes!”).

Pow Martinez, "Earth 3040 1"

While in Kalayaan, classmate and friend, Robert Langenegger, drew him to the independent art space Big Sky Mind where Roberto Chabet, the iconic UP professor and former director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, conducted workshops and lectures.

Pow Martinez, "Earth 3040 2"

“Para siyang Jedi Master”, Pow describes Chabet, considered by Manila’s art community as the pioneer of Philippine conceptual art.  Here he found kindred spirits.  “I realized na puede pala yung ganun, yung art na impolite, na messy. Yung art na gusto ko.”

Initially, Pow was drawn to more conceptual works, producing sound installations that jive with his predilection for punk music.  He decided to paint two years ago, filling his canvases with thick dabs and smears of brightly colored paint, with crude figures that gravitate to the lowbrow, a nod to German artist Jonathan Meese (another astig).  He called his paintings ridiculous. But that 2009 exhibit at West Gallery, 1 Billion Years, wowed the Ateneo Art Awards panel of jurors for its refreshing move away from the photorealistic images that permeated the auction circuit.

Three more solo exhibits have since followed: Hyper Blast Abominations in Mag: net and March of the Pigs at LOST Projects in 2010,

Pow Martinez, "Wreck Yard #1" and "Wreck Yard #2"

and Cut Hands Has The Solution, a return to West Gallery early this year.  In between, Pow has been featured in numerous group shows.  He also participated in a survey of contemporary Philippine art organized by Manuel Ocampo for the Freies Museum in Berlin last October.  He laughingly recalls how one of the museum visitors told him that his work was the worst painting he had ever seen in his life.  “Ok lang ‘yon. I want my paintings to take up your space. Na touch ko pa rin siya.”

Destroyed Planets, Pow’s solo exhibit at Pablo Fort, has drawings, paintings, an installation piece, and featured a performance from Pow on opening night. His paintings and drawings keep to his cluttered, rough, and raunchy aesthetic, but play with more abstracted forms.

For someone with such a laidback, relaxed approach to art, Pow counts among the busiest of today’s young visual artists.  Concurrent to the Pablo show, he has a two-person exhibt at DAGC Gallery, and has works on view at NOW Gallery.  He draws every day, filling sketchbooks in the Commonwealth Avenue studio he shares with girlfriend and fellow artist, Maria Jeona Zoleta.

There is an authenticity that emanates from Pow’s work despite his seemingly inconsequential subjects. He brushes off his success, almost as if it were accidental, even irrelevant.  He would not do things any other way.  As he scans the half-finished canvases that lean against the walls, Pow describes the essence of what he hopes to convey: “What if gago ang mundo?”

Is that astig or what?

Pow Martinez, "Destroyed Planet #3", detail

Destroyed Planets runs from 20 August to 24 September 2011 at Pablo Fort, Unit C-11 South of Market Condominium, Fort Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.  Phone (632) 5060602 or visit http://www.pablogalleries.com

An edited version of this post appears in the August 2011 issue of Rogue Magazine.  See http://www.rogue.ph

Romeo Lee and Pow Martinez Wreak Mischief and Mayhem

Romeo Lee and his mural

The exhibit may have taken its name from Manuel Ocampo’s favorite wine,  but Mischief and Mayhem perfectly suits the works of Romeo Lee and Pow Martinez.  Those who follow these two know that their art hews closely to the messy, racy, and raunchy aesthetic, favored by the likes of Jonathan Meese and indeed, by Ocampo himself.

Another view of Romeo Lee's mural

The Department of Avant-Garde Clichés or DAGC Gallery supplies something fresh to Metro Manila’s art landscape.  As the only gallery entirely devoted to prints and multiples, the folks behind it have brought our attention to the possibilities of extending printmaking to works of artists who lean to the lowbrow. These have

Examining Pow's prints

included artists from Spain and Germany.  Like all who exhibit in the gallery, they showed pieces produced within the premises. One gets the impression that artists enjoy working in-house. Perhaps, this provides a break from their routines.  The last exhibit, Misprint Messiahs, featured pieces by Louie Cordero and Carlo Ricafort.  Prints and multiples also allow for more affordable pieces, perfect for the young urbanites who flock to the gallery.

Lee and Pow developed prints in black and white, pieces that complement Lee’s mural on the gallery’s long wall.  Pow bound some of his images together, like a comic book one can flip through— a nice alternative to the works on paper installed on the walls.

Image inside Pow Martinez book

Mischief and Mayhem runs from 3 August to 17 September 2011 at The Department of Avant-Garde Cliches (DAGC Gallery), 2289 Pasong Tamo Extension, UPRC III Bldg, Makati.  Phone (632) 8172042 or visit http://www.dagcgallery.com

Framed print by Pow Martinez

Framed print from Romeo Lee

Pow's books and another framed print

 

Pow Martinez Gets LOST

 

Pow Martinez, "Flushed", oil on canvas, 6ftx 7ft

 

I got lost getting to LOST.  I made a wrong turn the first time I dropped in on LOST Projects, Manila’s newest alternative art space.  I came two days before the venue formally opened, and the sign outside had still been covered up.  The ground floor gallery slash artist’s studio smelled faintly of paint, and its walls dazzled with a fresh white coat.

 

Pow Martinez, untitled, oil on canvas, 16"x 12"

 

 

Pow Martinez, "Ghosts #1", oil on canvas, 5ft x 4ft

 

Australian artist, David Griggs, runs LOST.  David first came to Manila six years ago on a residency grant.  He moved here permanently last year, shipping his work to his Sydney and Melbourne dealers as he completes them.  David’s paintings and photographs have been exhibited widely in Australia, at the gallery of the Sydney Opera House and as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s permanent collection.  It has been through his efforts that Filipino artists, like Poklong Anading, have had the chance to show their work in a few Australian galleries.

 

Pow Martinez, "Skull #1", oil on canvas, 5ft x 4 ft

 

LOST Projects stands squashed between a butcher and a tailor, in a low-rise commercial building across the Church of the Nativity in quiet Major Dizon St., Industrial Valley, Marikina.  David has his studio on the topmost floor, a spacious aerie that allows for generous natural light.  He decided to open up the ground floor space to residency grants, giving artists leave to use this as a studio and as an exhibit venue.

 

Pow Martinez, "Leviathan"

 

Pow Martinez, LOST Project’s first grantee, started his residency on July 1.  He caps three months of work with March of the Pigs, a solo show that also serves as the gallery’s inaugural event.

 

Pow Martinez, "Pig Army", oil on canvas, 5 ft x 4 ft

 

One of the three winners of this year’s Ateneo Art Awards, Pow brings us more of his anti-painting paintings, works he has called “ridiculous”.  By now, Manila audiences have become familiar with his dabs, squirts, and crude, somewhat juvenile, renditions of figures.  The humor which he manages to inject in his pieces continues to surprise, as does the gradual appreciation for his paintings— the more you look at them, the more they draw you in.  What at first seem like random sketches in “girlie colors”  (Pow’s words) start to grow on you without trying too hard to do so, or imparting anything more

than the images before you.

Such is the case with Flushed, one of the eight paintings on exhibit, and one of the two larger ones at 6ft x 7 ft.  A mass of bodies crowd inside a drain; they seem about to be sucked out of the frame, ready to float away into a black hole beyond our point of view.  The absurdity of this image, coupled with Pow’s bright colors, somehow makes this piece work.  I don’t always like Pow’s paintings, but this I do.  As I do Ghost #1, a smaller piece at 5 ft x 4ft.  The congregation of monster faces remind me of graphics from the computer games of the 1980s, with their garish, neon colors that flash on your screen. Pow used his hands to paint Skull #1, and that gives the piece (also at 5ft x 4 ft), done in white with hints of pink, its texture.

 

Exhibit installation view

 

Two of his paintings, as well as his installation at the center of the gallery space, make references to Pow’s affinity to heavy metal.  As a sound artist, he takes his music seriously.  Napalm Death and Slayer depict metalheads proudly brandishing their band shirts.  While Leviathan, fabricated from plywood poles anchored on hollow blocks, embellished with wigs and white gloves, and held together by packing tape, attempts a rough simulation of  the sea monster’s coils.  Leviathan is also the name of another punk rock band. It mirrors Pow’s painting style, with its crude fabrication, as if a bunch of kids played pretend and decided to build a creature .

After Pow’s show completes its run, David’s plans for Lost Projects include establishing links with and exhibits by Australian artists.  Future grant recipients include photographer Sam Kiyoumarsi and multi-disciplinary artist Mark Salvatus (another 2010 Ateneo Art Awards winner).

 

Another exhibit installation view

 

Both David and Pow will fly to Berlin for Bastards of Misrepresentation:  Doing Time On Filipino Time, an exhibit of contemporary Philippine art organized by Manuel Ocampo at the city’s Freies Museum.  The show opens in two weeks.

Because LOST Projects lies off the beaten track from most commercial galleries, one experiences art without any frills, at its most raw.  Somehow, it felt a little more pure.  Or perhaps that’s because the space forces the viewer to concentrate on the pieces on exhibit.  After all, I have seen Pow’s work in more glitzy settings.  I do look forward, though, to what David and LOST have in store for us next.

March of the Pigs runs from 6 October to 14 November 2010 at LOST Projects, 18A Major Dizon St., Industrial Valley, Marikina.  Viewing is by appointment only.  For more information visit http://www.projectslost.wordpress.com or email griggsart@hotmail.com or cell (+63920)840-7277

 

Pow Martinez, "Slayer", oil on canvas, 5 ft x 4ft

 

 

Pow Martinez, "Golden Boy", 7ft x 6ft

 

The 2010 Ateneo Art Awards

Just like everybody else in the audience, I eagerly awaited the announcement of winners for this year’s Ateneo Art Awards.  The

Shattering States: The Ateneo Art Awards 2010 Winners: Pow Martinez, Leslie de Chavez, and Mark Salvatus

Ateneo Art Gallery staff kept the final results under tight guard, even to us jurors.  Thankfully, they paced this year’s awards night programme so that none of us had long to wait.

Joel de Leon from the Ateneo Art Gallery, and Marina Cruz, 2008 winner, pose with short-listed artists for 2010: Leeroy New, Rodel Tapaya, Mark Salvatus, Joey Cobcobo, Riel Hilario, and Kiri Dalena

Since 2004, The Ateneo Art Awards has served as a barometer for the country’s contemporary arts landscape.  Past winners have gone beyond the critical recognition that the awards provide to, in most cases, huge commercial success.  Just think of how far Louie Cordero, Geraldine Javier, Ronald Ventura, and Marina Cruz have taken their art practices.  A cursory glance through the list of  even the non-winning finalists, the artists who have made it to the shortlist through the years,  reads like the art scene’s who’s who.

Lovely ladies: Bingbing Fernando, Gilda Cordero Fernando, and Boots Herrera

The 2010 Ateneo Art Awards winners are (in alphabetical order):  Leslie de Chavez for Buntong Hininga at SLab, Pow Martinez for 1 Billion Years at West Gallery, and Mark Salvatus for Secret Garden, Sungduan 5 Daloy ng Dunong at the National Musuem.  Winners receive eligibility to four residency grants abroad—in Sydney, Singapore, Bandung, and New York.  A win does not guarantee a residency, as the program directors reserve the right to choose which artist they give these to.  For this year, both the La Trobe University Grant in Sydney, and the Common Room Networks Foundation Residency in Bandung have been given to Mark.  The grantees from Artesan, in Singapore, and Art Omi, in upstate New York, have yet to be decided.

Cedie Vargas with Jean Marie and Michelline Syjuco

No doubt, everybody will have their two-cents worth on this year’s results.  As a member of the panel of jurors, let me just say that we went through long, even spirited, deliberations. Just to get our final list of 12 short-listed artists merited an extra, tie-breaking exercise after a whole day of discussion.  So as trite as this sounds, just to land on that list of 12 really means that the artist’s work stood out among so many.  I find that the list mirrors the excitingly-diverse attempts of our young contemporary artists.

Also, we must remember that these awards do not recognize the artists’ entire body  of work, but specific pieces and exhibits.  Thus, even the venues that host the shows in the shortlist receive special mention in all the Ateneo Art Gallery’s communications on these awards.

Artists Erwin Leano and Leslie de Chavez

The other finalists for 2010:  Frankie Callaghan, Joey Cobcobo, Kiri Dalena, Kawayan de Guia, Patricia Eustaquio, Riel Hilario, Leeroy New, Michelline Syjuco, and Rodel Tapaya.

The works of the 12 Short-listed artists for Shattering States: The Ateneo Art Awards 2010 may be viewed at the Grand Atrium, Shangri-La Plaza Mall from 6 to 16 August 2010.  The exhibit moves to the Ateneo Art Gallery from 26 August to 2 October 2010.  For more information contact the Ateneo Art Gallery at (632) 426-6488 or visit http://www.gallery.ateneo.edu.

Patricia Eustaquio, "Dear Sweet Filthy World", SLab

Photographs from Frankie Callaghan, "Dwelling", Silverlens

Fr. Rene Javellana, SJ from Ateneo's Fine Arts program, who also served as a juror

Frankie Callaghan, Rachel Rillo, and Patty Eustaquio

Joel Alonday of Art Informal

Joey Cobcobo, "7 Heads and Ten Horns", Avellana Art Gallery

A Kawayan de Guia jukebox from "Katas ng Pilipinas: God Knows Hudas Not Play", The Drawing Room

Kiri Dalena, "The Present Disorder Is The Order Of The Future", MO Space

Leeroy New with his piece from "Corpo Royale", The Drawing Room

Ateneo Art Gallery's Richie Lerma with wife, Karen, and son, Joaquin

Detail from Leslie de Chavez, "Buntong Hininga", SLab

Mark Salvatus, "Secret Garden, Sungduan 5, Daloy ng Dunong", The National Museum

Mark Salvatus' Secret Garden

Michelline Syjuco, "She Never Did Care About The Little Things" for "Draped In Silk", Yuchengco Museum

Pow Martinez, "1 Billion Years", West Gallery

Rajo Laurel

Detail from Riel Hilario's "Aniwaas", Art Informal

Detail of Rodel Tapaya's diorama to simulate installation of his piece, "Thrice Upon A Time, A Century of Story in the Art of the Philippines", now part of the Singapore Art Museum collection

A facsimile of Rodel's painting at the Singapore Art Museum

Yael Buencamino and IC Jaucian of the Ateneo Art Gallery

Sidd Perez of Manila Contemporary with Mark Salvatus

Portraits from Inside: Martha Atienza, Bea Camacho, Sam Kiyoumarsi, Pow Martinez

Now this is my kind of group show.  The concept is simple, and you don’t get overwhelmed by the range of pieces on view.  Four

Pow Martinez, "Walking Corpse"

artists seem to be a good number for the venue, both to give each artist enough space to showcase their work, and for the viewer to take in the variety of styles present.

From Bea Camacho's "Self Portrait", portrait of her hands

Beautiful Inside My Head Forever explores contemporary portraiture.  Curator Peewee Roldan worked with the artists, and they’ve come up with their own take on what makes for portraits.  Two of them, Bea Camacho and Martha Atienza, have drawn self representations.  Bea illustrates how her person can be transformed into something as anonymous, unsubjective, and unemotional as numbers on a graph.  She measured her body, from the tip of her head to the soles of her feet, taking her dimensions at half inch intervals.  The three pieces that result from this exercise deliver a pretty sobering image:  the totality of a person reduced to nothing more than lines drawn with the aid of a ruler.

Detail from Bea Camacho, "Self Portrait"

Martha works with video.  As an artist of dual nationality, she spends half of her time in the beaches of Bantayan Island, the other half in Europe.  Bantayan Island, off the coast of Cebu, has a strong tradition of folk Catholic celebrations dating from the Spanish times.  One of the oldest churches in the Visayas and Mindanao can be found here.  The place comes alive with tourists during Easter, eager to take part in its Lenten rituals.  While she calls the island home, the natives consider Martha a bit exotic.  In her film, Aba Reina Si Maria, we see her decked in white, garbed quite similar to the life-sized santos stored in her family home.  What I get from the clip I caught is her depiction of herself as spectacle.  The islanders look at her in the same way they regard the life-sized saints they use for their processions, as part of their life, but not quite.

Video still from Martha Atienza, "Aba Reina si Maria"

Pow Martinez seems to be the artist du jour, currently making waves with collectors due in part to his very distinct style.  Here we see two more of his anti-painting paintings, done in the layers of squirts and dabs which we have come to identify with him. He calls one of them Wife. Hmmm, portrait of his ideal woman, perhaps?  Sam Kiyoumarsi’s untitled photo diptych gives us twin portraits without faces.  It takes awhile to discern that he uses a female subject for one of them.  Both have his subjects in similar poses, their heads bowed, their hair slightly disheveled.  I get the same feeling I get when I look at Nona Garcia’s painted portraits of the backs of people’s heads, as if I’ve chanced upon a private moment.  I have this urge to give these two a nudge, just to make my presence felt.

Sam Kiyoumarsi photo diptych

Beautiful Inside My Head Forever runs from 7 to 31 July 2010 at SLab, 2F YMC2 Bldg., Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati City.  Phone (632)816-0044 or visit http://www.slab.silverlensphoto.com

Pow Martinez, "Wife"

Hyper Blast Abominations from Pow Martinez

Pow Martinez, "Sidekick"

I find them quite amusing, these globs and squirts and drips that Pow Martinez uses for his paintings.  I first came across his work a little less than a year ago at West Gallery.  Aptly titled 1 Billion Years, that show introduced us to Pow’s unique way of rendering figures, somewhat like the crude illustrations of primitive man.  He had small pieces, nothing bigger than 2ft x 2ft, or 2ft x 3 ft if I remember correctly, of faces made from smears and clumps of paint.  The kind you could also imagine up on the walls of a kindergarten.

Pow Martinez, "Unhappy Flowers"

Pow describes his paintings as primal.  They employ no particular references to art history, just fantastic reflections of an imagined universe. One filled to the brim with bright, sometimes neon, hues and provocative images that belie his childlike technique.

In this show, Hyper Blast Abomination, on view at Mag:net in Katipunan, we see more of his work.  This time Pow includes two large-scale paintings.  We get a glimpse of how this method translates to background landscapes and even still lifes.  He also adds a suite of works on paper.   Unsurprisingly, he reveals the influence of artists Manuel Ocampo and Jayson Oliveria on his art.  Like them, he depicts over-the-top, somewhat shocking, images to deliver impact.

I like Sidekick and The Plan for their abundant backdrops and lively colors.  These backdrops remind me of works by the Impressionists, albeit rougher and more imprecise, perfect foils to the characters he chose to populate these two pieces with:  the pair of cowboys, one tall, the other short, swaggering down a path in Sidekick, and the coven of gargoyles in The Plan.   Unhappy Flowers also makes me happy.  I thought, though, that the collection that make up Shit Drawings #1 deliver nothing we have not seen before.

Pow Martinez, "The Plan"

This past year has seen Pow Martinez return to painting after a stretch creating purely conceptual pieces.  While there has been a wave of his aesthetic all over the world, I feel that it has just gotten into the Manila mainstream .  As I told Pow when we discussed this show, anything new and different will always be a welcome development.  It certainly spices up the scene.

Pow Martinez, "Jew Mafia"

Detail, "Shit Drawings #1"

Hyper Blast Abomination runs from 23 April to 21 May 2010 at Mag:net, 335 Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Phone (632)929-3191 or visit http://www.magnetgalleries.com

Exhibit installation view