Tyago Almario's Inquisition Symphony No.3
Running for the last week at the Blanc Gallery in Makati City, Philippines, is the two-man show of artists C.J. Tanedo and Tyago Almario titled ‘Babylon Zoo.’ I first got acquainted with the work of C.J. Tanedo last year when I saw his piece ‘A Dreaded Sunny Day’ at West Gallery.
Employing traditional painting techniques, albeit highly textured and glazed, CJ’s unusual choice of subjects and themes caught my attention. I made a mental note: here is an artist going against the tide that is sweeping the current Philippine art scene.
I don’t claim to be an expert on the latest contemporary Philippine art, but to me it was obvious that CJ is doing something that his ‘more-sought’ contemporaries have totally avoided or ignored. Going against the pull of the mainstream or refusing to succumb to the tendencies of what is generally approved or admired is a tough stance for any artist, and particularly to an artist whose art is also a main source of livelihood. The death knell for any artist is to handle his brush as dictated by the siren call of the all-too-powerful art market.
From what I gathered from the press announcements, the current Babylon Zoo exhibit is the second of a series, probably the second to the last (I stand corrected here) which is planned this coming July. I wouldn’t rely or go deeply into the introduction about the show in Blanc, but the show title refers to the infamous Babylon, a classic Biblical myth describing the mankind’s downfall. In the two-man show, the idea of a downfall is further reinforced by the idea of beastly creatures, or half-human, half beasts.
CJ Tanedo's Homage to Putridity
For the purposes of this short, cursory blog, I will focus my concluding comments on one piece, the ‘Inquisition Symphony No.3’ done by Tyago Almario, CJ’s collaborator in this project. The piece stopped me on my track. This is a matter of taste or preference, but my own personal meter of what an authentic , remarkable art is a work that provides a sort of sting, something similar to that tinge or humming excitement when a tuning fork or a metal detector stirs into action the moment it detects something vibrant beneath the ground.
Both Tanedo and Almario’s works are unapologetic, but its power may lie not so much in technique but in the imagined world recreated by their brush. In Almario’s Inquisition Symphony, the landscape is barren and nearly lifeless, where mutated human forms and ravens (harbingers of death and gloom) co-exist. Or rather the mutated human forms barely exist, their near broken forms animated only by the quack of the sinister, winged creatures.
It is the task of art historians to reflexively search for context, comparisons and the impulses or motives behind the art work, and in this case, the Philippine culture often analyzed and examined for its defects and shortcomings, should provide the basis of scrutiny. But Tanedo and Almario’s Babylon Zoo project can find resonance even outside the Philippine experience. And if tied to local experience their art can be read as the writing on the wall.
This approach may be regarded as heavy-handed, but for two young artists to venture into a bleak landscape requires audacity, the very same nerve and vibrancy that would hit the viewer when they are confronted with the bizarre world and atypical creatures. And this is precisely the reason why we need art: to have a full grasp of that tuning fork that connects us to a living and flowing source.
Counterfeit, works by Tanedo (left) and Almario
18th Moon 