The Calm Before the Storm
Propositions for regarding the work of Jeho Bitancor
Riel Hilario
(a)
It is often a practice, I daresay even a habit, of an accompanying text to an exhibition to be a sort of transliteration of the symbolic meaning of images. Thus, it performs as a key to understanding artworks, if not a peek into the creative mind and its sense of authorship; a genealogy tracing back to the artist. The presumption is that the text and the writer (and often the curator) is privy to the sanctum sanctorum of the creative process and thus can claim primacy to original and intended meanings. The public's readings are regarded as emanations or reactions to the text and image: mere convulsions.
That is not the case here as this brief collection of aphoristic paragraphs is nothing but a reaction to the work, one of the many convulsions, reactions, aftershocks and tremors that come at the wake of a viewing. Although I have known the artist for more than a decade now, I cannot claim that having access to the artist and his studio guarantees preferential knowledge.
An artwork remains potent not just because of its manifestation from the artist's endeavors but also even only after multiple framings, exposures and public regard, along with misconstructions and misunderstandings, dismissal and criticism.
(b)
We dispense with the presumption that this text is a sort of guide to looking at the works of Jeho Bitancor. I write from the role of a spectator, just like you, a mere bystander whose impressions add to the texture of the work.
---
(1)
The paintings of this series by Jeho Bitancor recall to mind the concept of "timpi", temperance in the face of adversity. It also feels like the deadly calm before a storm. You feel like something big, dramatic, disastrous is coming to the surface and the artist paints cross sections of this imminent catastrophe and aggression, exposing the dynamics of tension and trouble. Bitancor reminds me of the fiery San Vicente Ferrer, whose finger is raised upwards to heaven, trembling with the certainty that the judgment is coming, soon. But another hand is gestured, palm down, in an affectionate manner and intended to calm the fears of the just, and keeping the blood of the victimized from boiling unto retribution. There is pagtitimpi: not a call to arms but a call for calm introspection. A sense of urgency, however looms: we need to think and inspect in haste.
By evoking the word "timpi", we can also refer to the attitude of keeping tabs of all threats to our well-being, even as we refuse to respond to them rashly. "Hinahon" is a virtue that has emerged from our very core, and it applies well congruent to timpi. The by-product of hinahon and timpi, alas, is an aggregation of faults and missives, of pains kept under the strong-willed discipline of restraint. Bitancor may very well be painting these accretion of aches in his sense of surplus and maximalism. He sees to it that these things are in check, and sufficiently transparent (yet also veiled), so as to remind the public and its rulers that tension is rife, below the crust of our banal everyday spectacle-driven lives.
In his groundbreaking work "Pasyon and Revolution", writer Renaldo Ileto describes how the values articulated in the Pasyon, namely hinahon and dalamhati, tempered the revolutionary fervor and violence. The striking thesis here is that the early Philippine revolutionaries, through the language of the Pasyon, were able to articulate that their rebellion is due to a tipping point of "pagtitimpi". The Spanish colonial masters have become too cruel for any tolerance: hence the justification of revolution. During the Marcos period, the sense of this similar tipping point were articulated in the post-Aquino assassination with cries of "Sobra Na! Tama Na! Palitan na!"
Bitancor may very well echo the sentiments of this ebb and flow of revolutionary ferment and the precedence of accrued pains and injustice. His paintings express the imminence of yet another episode of singularity, charged with the tones of historic and epic narratives.
---
(2a)
We observe the artist has painted with a visual device that we can call superimposition. The main figurative images are either shown to be under layers of text, character, symbol, in alternating presences with an almost empty ground that serves as a visual base of reference. While this scheme conveys a frontal plane, like a picture window, Bitancor also uses a divided composition to present what is below and above. We see an attempt to use this visual scheme as a metaphor of "loob" and "labas", whereas the surface (or labas) is stripped of its pretensions with its viscera exposed. The artist, an avowed progressive advocate of social issues, criticizes social ills, class conflicts, subversion and subterfuge, and power positions through the means of this schema of "exposure". He cleaves the ideological skin and cuts through the marrow of the social disease. Thus we have images also, of diagnoses. Do not be fooled by appearances.
(2b)
The layers of superimposed elements forming a sense of transparency is a confrontational device, a pose for critique. Bitancor regards a theme as a structure, and his themes are handpicked from a series of observed injustices, inequalities, imbalances that are prevalent in his world, and even in his hometown. It is the viewer's challenge here to discern what these subjects are, for they are deliberately represented to be both veiled and obvious. Such is the game embedded in Bitancor's layers of paint.
---
(3)
Then there is the image of The Flood. Globalization (or its attendant symbols and presences) rush through the canvas like an inundation of surplus. We are overwhelmed by it, but like the boys who live along the esteros of the Pasig, we have learned to swim among the flotsam and jetsam. The water, although polluted, is still bouyant and that is what counts.
Water is painted, and is even suggested, and it seems some of the paintings even seem to convey being afloat. Filipinos know floods quite well, sadly enough. From the disastrous Ondoy flood of 2009 to the current inundations in Mindanao, we know the impact of being dislocated by forces greater than we can comprehend. Such is also the force of Global and transnational economies. Tons of surplus objects, rejects and used items (from jackets to luxury SUV's) make their way not just into our stores but also our consciousness. We have become consumers only. And we trade our labor elsewhere for the financial power to consume even more. We live in a time of great excess and Bitancor eloquently paints the floodwaters rushing.
---
(4)
"Filter" is a word Bitancor once used to refer to the critical examination of his iconography and his concerns as an artist. He is chiefly a painter but he has extended his oeuvre to performance art and its attendant processes. Not one to rush into inanities of expression, he is careful to the point of deliberateness in choosing what image he uses, how it is represented and what it represents and how it becomes an element to a visual discourse that contends social issues. The stream of images runs through a discursive sieve in his mind until these are discerned apt. Then he considers composition, with the same craft of certitude, until he has a work that has a unified statement, if not a comprehensive command for attention. His practice has been historically linked with Social Realism in Manila, although he states that as a provinciano from rural Aurora, he was only representing the social issues of his own hometown, as well as his reactions to the squalor of urban decay. Nevertheless his work remains forceful, always alert, ever vigilant: not a sense of frivolity or capriciousness. In essence, the artist strives for a clarity of message, while striving to find the contemporary images to frame them.
---
(5)
Tension exists in every figure and form:
Flowers versus thorns
Human versus machine
Organic versus metallic
Slave versus master (occluded)
Individual versus the System
Vernacular versus the Global
Red versus Green
Yellow versus Violet
Blue versus Orange
Squalor versus Splendor
---
(6)
Curiously while the themes Bitancor chooses to work with are within the context of Philippine society and its clash of squalor and splendor, the artist has painted these canvases in New Jersey, where he has been living for some years now with his family. It was as if he never really left home: the artist works like an overseas laborer who plies his trade elsewhere and then to remit his earnings back. But in his case the artist pursues his craft fulltime (a very difficult endeavor) in the US, amplifying his critical thinking, and transmits his insights through solo and group shows in Manila and in Singapore, on a regular basis. This is a testament to the artist's rootedness, as well as proof of how the Filipino always has home in his heart wherever he is.
Sent from my iPad
rebultomaker.weebly.com
riel.weebly.com
Propositions for regarding the work of Jeho Bitancor
Riel Hilario
(a)
It is often a practice, I daresay even a habit, of an accompanying text to an exhibition to be a sort of transliteration of the symbolic meaning of images. Thus, it performs as a key to understanding artworks, if not a peek into the creative mind and its sense of authorship; a genealogy tracing back to the artist. The presumption is that the text and the writer (and often the curator) is privy to the sanctum sanctorum of the creative process and thus can claim primacy to original and intended meanings. The public's readings are regarded as emanations or reactions to the text and image: mere convulsions.
That is not the case here as this brief collection of aphoristic paragraphs is nothing but a reaction to the work, one of the many convulsions, reactions, aftershocks and tremors that come at the wake of a viewing. Although I have known the artist for more than a decade now, I cannot claim that having access to the artist and his studio guarantees preferential knowledge.
An artwork remains potent not just because of its manifestation from the artist's endeavors but also even only after multiple framings, exposures and public regard, along with misconstructions and misunderstandings, dismissal and criticism.
(b)
We dispense with the presumption that this text is a sort of guide to looking at the works of Jeho Bitancor. I write from the role of a spectator, just like you, a mere bystander whose impressions add to the texture of the work.
---
(1)
The paintings of this series by Jeho Bitancor recall to mind the concept of "timpi", temperance in the face of adversity. It also feels like the deadly calm before a storm. You feel like something big, dramatic, disastrous is coming to the surface and the artist paints cross sections of this imminent catastrophe and aggression, exposing the dynamics of tension and trouble. Bitancor reminds me of the fiery San Vicente Ferrer, whose finger is raised upwards to heaven, trembling with the certainty that the judgment is coming, soon. But another hand is gestured, palm down, in an affectionate manner and intended to calm the fears of the just, and keeping the blood of the victimized from boiling unto retribution. There is pagtitimpi: not a call to arms but a call for calm introspection. A sense of urgency, however looms: we need to think and inspect in haste.
By evoking the word "timpi", we can also refer to the attitude of keeping tabs of all threats to our well-being, even as we refuse to respond to them rashly. "Hinahon" is a virtue that has emerged from our very core, and it applies well congruent to timpi. The by-product of hinahon and timpi, alas, is an aggregation of faults and missives, of pains kept under the strong-willed discipline of restraint. Bitancor may very well be painting these accretion of aches in his sense of surplus and maximalism. He sees to it that these things are in check, and sufficiently transparent (yet also veiled), so as to remind the public and its rulers that tension is rife, below the crust of our banal everyday spectacle-driven lives.
In his groundbreaking work "Pasyon and Revolution", writer Renaldo Ileto describes how the values articulated in the Pasyon, namely hinahon and dalamhati, tempered the revolutionary fervor and violence. The striking thesis here is that the early Philippine revolutionaries, through the language of the Pasyon, were able to articulate that their rebellion is due to a tipping point of "pagtitimpi". The Spanish colonial masters have become too cruel for any tolerance: hence the justification of revolution. During the Marcos period, the sense of this similar tipping point were articulated in the post-Aquino assassination with cries of "Sobra Na! Tama Na! Palitan na!"
Bitancor may very well echo the sentiments of this ebb and flow of revolutionary ferment and the precedence of accrued pains and injustice. His paintings express the imminence of yet another episode of singularity, charged with the tones of historic and epic narratives.
---
(2a)
We observe the artist has painted with a visual device that we can call superimposition. The main figurative images are either shown to be under layers of text, character, symbol, in alternating presences with an almost empty ground that serves as a visual base of reference. While this scheme conveys a frontal plane, like a picture window, Bitancor also uses a divided composition to present what is below and above. We see an attempt to use this visual scheme as a metaphor of "loob" and "labas", whereas the surface (or labas) is stripped of its pretensions with its viscera exposed. The artist, an avowed progressive advocate of social issues, criticizes social ills, class conflicts, subversion and subterfuge, and power positions through the means of this schema of "exposure". He cleaves the ideological skin and cuts through the marrow of the social disease. Thus we have images also, of diagnoses. Do not be fooled by appearances.
(2b)
The layers of superimposed elements forming a sense of transparency is a confrontational device, a pose for critique. Bitancor regards a theme as a structure, and his themes are handpicked from a series of observed injustices, inequalities, imbalances that are prevalent in his world, and even in his hometown. It is the viewer's challenge here to discern what these subjects are, for they are deliberately represented to be both veiled and obvious. Such is the game embedded in Bitancor's layers of paint.
---
(3)
Then there is the image of The Flood. Globalization (or its attendant symbols and presences) rush through the canvas like an inundation of surplus. We are overwhelmed by it, but like the boys who live along the esteros of the Pasig, we have learned to swim among the flotsam and jetsam. The water, although polluted, is still bouyant and that is what counts.
Water is painted, and is even suggested, and it seems some of the paintings even seem to convey being afloat. Filipinos know floods quite well, sadly enough. From the disastrous Ondoy flood of 2009 to the current inundations in Mindanao, we know the impact of being dislocated by forces greater than we can comprehend. Such is also the force of Global and transnational economies. Tons of surplus objects, rejects and used items (from jackets to luxury SUV's) make their way not just into our stores but also our consciousness. We have become consumers only. And we trade our labor elsewhere for the financial power to consume even more. We live in a time of great excess and Bitancor eloquently paints the floodwaters rushing.
---
(4)
"Filter" is a word Bitancor once used to refer to the critical examination of his iconography and his concerns as an artist. He is chiefly a painter but he has extended his oeuvre to performance art and its attendant processes. Not one to rush into inanities of expression, he is careful to the point of deliberateness in choosing what image he uses, how it is represented and what it represents and how it becomes an element to a visual discourse that contends social issues. The stream of images runs through a discursive sieve in his mind until these are discerned apt. Then he considers composition, with the same craft of certitude, until he has a work that has a unified statement, if not a comprehensive command for attention. His practice has been historically linked with Social Realism in Manila, although he states that as a provinciano from rural Aurora, he was only representing the social issues of his own hometown, as well as his reactions to the squalor of urban decay. Nevertheless his work remains forceful, always alert, ever vigilant: not a sense of frivolity or capriciousness. In essence, the artist strives for a clarity of message, while striving to find the contemporary images to frame them.
---
(5)
Tension exists in every figure and form:
Flowers versus thorns
Human versus machine
Organic versus metallic
Slave versus master (occluded)
Individual versus the System
Vernacular versus the Global
Red versus Green
Yellow versus Violet
Blue versus Orange
Squalor versus Splendor
---
(6)
Curiously while the themes Bitancor chooses to work with are within the context of Philippine society and its clash of squalor and splendor, the artist has painted these canvases in New Jersey, where he has been living for some years now with his family. It was as if he never really left home: the artist works like an overseas laborer who plies his trade elsewhere and then to remit his earnings back. But in his case the artist pursues his craft fulltime (a very difficult endeavor) in the US, amplifying his critical thinking, and transmits his insights through solo and group shows in Manila and in Singapore, on a regular basis. This is a testament to the artist's rootedness, as well as proof of how the Filipino always has home in his heart wherever he is.
Sent from my iPad
rebultomaker.weebly.com
riel.weebly.com
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