Nexus: Pursuing an Elusive Conjunction

NEXUS:
pursuing an elusive conjunction

Jose Tence Ruiz, curator

There is often, if not always the elusive conjunction between the act of
proposing form and articulating lived circumstance. Art practice is
egregiously insistent on privileging crafty strategy over observed
substance. Artists are begrudged their penchant for the didactic, for the
sympathetic, for the involved issue and risk indifference whenever they
venture into alignments with the timely in lieu of cultivating spectacular
and entertaining formalist gymnastics. Such is the climate into which TuTOK:
NEXUS insists on insinuating its recent batch of site-specific
installations.

TuTOK as an informal collective of young and mid-career visual practitioners seeks to confront an inclination towards décor as against reflective visual
reckoning. NEXUS, its 7th venture since 2006 finds an appropriate venue –
the lobby of the Loyola House of Studies of the Ateneo de Manila
University,an institution devoted to contemplation, philosophical and
theological formation, itself a nexus on many levels, architecturally and
conceptually. 5 projects offer provocations against a complacent view of
artmaking.

Buen Calubayan’s h a p a g h (x) reconstructs a merging of the Last Supper
and a derelict convention. Is the repast that signals the entry into
apostolate a congress with the underprivileged? Does his playroom tile floor
chide us for our naivete that apostolate is dissipation or does he remind us
that innocence must underpin any struggle for upliftment?

Mideo Cruz has several segments to his project, the most prominent of which
is Anghel de la Guardia, a 9 and a half foot ethereal figure that is part
angel, part icon and part doorkeep to a hallucinatory yet gated wonderland.
He seems to ask: Is Disneyland the virtual surrogate for Paradise Fading? He
converts an in-house phone station into a dense collage of connectivity with
the complex political landscape with its deities, lords and coerced
idolatries in Politeismo 3. And his nearly cute but also subversive viriña
named Altar nudges us pixie like not to forget how the nexus between
materialism and proof of faith might, on occasion, reify into conceit and
fetish.

Lyra Garcellano offers accessories to the Lobby sofa sets and very aptly
labels her effort as Prime Time. Is not our window to the modern world
viewed with our posteriors attached so comfortably to sofa sets such as
these, our visions and vistas drenched beyond numbness with mediated
violence delivered at clockwork regularity and esthetic efficacy at such
prime hours? With at a large part of modern programming laced with mayhem,
might we not actually mistake telecommunicated tragedy for pathetic
embellishment?

UGATLahi collective’s White Lies offers a mattress of beaten scarecrow
workclothes, pillaged, crushed and shaped into a troubled dreamscape often
enough lain upon by those very ones who have sucked the dreams away from the
disenfranchised. Pseudo-baroque headboards and embroidered satin slipcovers
contrast disconcertingly with faded dungarees, disembodied limbs and flaccid
scarecrow heads. The bed stands on a section of dried river clay, a micro
landscape chronicling a wide social sector’s pained and sun-bleached
dissipation amidst the profligate privilege of an entrenched and narrow
minority.

Jose Tence Ruiz and Danilo Ilag-Ilag once again collaborate on their largest
version of a kariton/kathedral poised on the Sisyphean incline, ever aware
of the unavoidable imperative of struggling against gravity, described by
astronomers as the single most pervasive force of our measured universe. Is
gravity the defining condition of existence?

Is the decision to push against its natural weight the key to any salvific
transcendence. Paraisado: Rampa is bathed in yellow and black/bitumen,
reminiscent of warnings and schoolbuses, which education and religion
partake of. As does the Loyola House of Studies.

Thus a circle, maybe even a cycle, is drawn between the site and its
transient occupants, between the LHS lobby and the projects that make up
NEXUS. With Sisyphean determination to push upwards and forward, TuTOK
through NEXUS pursues that elusive conjunction between art and religion,
between matter and spirit, between the tangible and the ethereal, between
evocative propositions and a call to reflection and action.

TuTOK: NEXUS
An Exhibition of New Site Specific Installations
exploring the confluence, the intersections,
the nexus between and betwixt politics and art,
between idealism and stark reality,
between philosophy and pragmatic survivalism,
between the mundane and the transcendent,
between the violent and the sublime,
between the commercial and the heroic,
between the corporeal and the ethereal,
between heaven and earth

Buen Calubayan

Mideo M Cruz

Lyra Garcellano

UGATLahi Artist’s Collective

Jose Tence Ruiz
collaborating with Danilo Ilag-Ilag

Opening Ceremonies and Cocktails will be at
6:30 pm Friday, 15 June 2007

15 June to 20 July, 2007

Closing Ceremonies with Artist’s Performances at
6:30 pm, Friday 20 JULY 2007

Loyola House of Studies Lobby Ground Floor, Loyola House of Studies
Seminary Drive Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City

Curated by Jose Tence Ruiz

Tutok: KARAPATAN
in cooperation with
Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan

Loyola House of Studies
Loyola School of Theology
Jesuit Communications
Ateneo Fine Arts Program
Ateneo Art Gallery