Arts and Culture
F rom the original local name of the island comes the inspired title of the show Kolor Sugbu , opens on June 5 at the Makati Shangri-la Manila , organized by Hiraya Gallery . It is in effect an exhibition of the vaunted Cebuano artists ’ superb mastery of technique but now inflected with a more contemporary temper , a more direct contact with the times , to be sure , but without ungratefully turning its back on its heritage , hewn from the teachings of the late Cebuano master Martino Abellana , himself mentored by National Artist Fernando Amorsolo at the then UP School of Fine Arts .
Participating Cebuano artists are : Boy Briones , Ariel Caratao , Ramon de Dios , Efren Enolva , Audie Estrellada , Carly Florido , Jonathan Galicano , Romulo Galicano , SYM , Clint Normandia , Dong Tallo , Mariano Vidal and Pepe Villadolid . They are joined by Manila-based artists Romy Ballada , Cee Cadid and Nestor Villanueva .
Pure , unsullied innocence , at work and at play , in moments of glee and delight , are Audie Estrellada ’ s depictions of children in After the Rain and
Cornhusking , affirmed by his superlative handling of light and surface .
A day ’ s labor as a classic subject matter of conservative art is celebrated in Dong Tallo ’ s Morning
Catch , Mariano Vidal ’ s Harvest , and Efren Enolva ’ s Panginabuhian ( Hanapbuhay ). Steeped in the customary subject , Tallo , Vidal , and Enolva views these familiar scenes always as a re-discovery , a freshening in every canvas , investing their works with the intensity of a lifetime ’ s looking .
Feeding Time by Ariel Caratao is a brisk , bristling radiance of light on the feathers of hungrily gawking geese , and the two young innocents agape at the wonder of these fowls .
Clint Normandia ’ s Sinulog Dancer catches his charming subject , in a moment of rest from the hectic festivities , tenderly embracing the iconic Santo Nino , who has dominion over the Queen City of the South .
Through the decades , acknowledged masters SYM Mendoza and Romulo Galicano have inspired younger generations of Cebuano artists . SYM ’ s elegantly fragmented still life of native fruits and vegetables , exuberant but disciplined , is a rearing up of that great art movement , Cubism . Galicano père takes up his son ’ s same subject , the old Oslob Church , once razed to the ground , but whose ashened ruins now rise gloriously in Galicano ’ s magisterial touch .
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