KINKY TRIBAL DISCO

GALLERY:
B.A.R.

OPENING:
Saturday, April 6, 2013, 4 to 8 pm


EXHIBITION DATA:
April 6 to May 25, 2013

KINKY TRIBAL DISCO flirts with elements of the exotic in order to present a negotiation between the global and the local, the familiar with the new, and the instant with the universal.  By integrating a contemporary aesthetic with traditional form the exhibition stresses on cultural eclecticism - a defining condition of this information age with worldwide social and economic networks.  Hence, the challenge of the exhibit is acknowledging native impressions while not being subsumed by universal standards.  Consequently, the opposite is also problematized: to avoid stressing fundamental ideals that are immersed in misguided social education, which prevents progressive thinking and new material developments.  Both are critical considerations pondered in this exhibition as a way of reframing social representation and various expressions of autonomy amidst a world of exuberant change.

The selected works are at the forefront of contemporary art production consistent with global orientation.  Despite of which, the works represent local subjectivity by exploring signs and tropes that are naturally available within the culture.  Through the translation of local attitudes in light of global standards, a common language is thus arrived that can communicate essential attitudes encompassing the moment.  This process creates an affinity between universal and singular subjects where one can find traditional patterns flowing within the syntax of the modern, in as much as the modern being permeated with endemic consciousness.  This is the creative tension found within the works.  Therefore the works presented do not begin with a quasi-belief on some originating identity, which would then make the works mere static illustrations of theory.  But rather, the possibilities offered by this multi-networked reality function as the catalyst within the curatorial experiment of the exhibition, producing a new hybrid expression that doesn't actually belong to the past or the present but point towards the immediate future.

"Kinky Tribal Disco" is a multi-media exhibition that features painting, photography, and installation looking at native expression as a catalyst for innovation and reflection.  Eschewing conceptual clichés, the works apply humour in the exploration of self-conscious identity, while stylistic primitivism is brandished as a reflexive foil against formal conventionality.  “Kinky Tribal Disco” is an awareness of the essential through unorthodox means. 

Poklong Anading

While searching for minor narratives within a world of larger social relations, Poklong Anading begins with the most modest of origins in both subject matter and material design which through a process of deconstruction reveals systems of behavior and thought immanent with cultural, historical, and personal signification.  Through the simple abstraction of found household rags (“trapo”), and its tacit psychological basis ofthe domestic,  he applies the same design on the nails of various participants, integrating in the interdisciplinary process painting, conceptual, performance, photography and new media, installation, and relational aesthetics to create signs of subjectivity, points of social commentary, empowerment and community building through conversation and acknowledgement, in short, social production by way of artistic intervention.  Anading’s unconventional social realism produces an abstraction that is enthralling in its myriad form as well as engaging in the way it provokes critical thought.   A product of the University of the Philippines, Poklong Anading is a CCP Thirteen Artist Awardee in 2006, and a two-time recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards from 2006 and 2008. He has participated in numerous prestigious exhibitions such as the Gwangju Biennale, Sharjah Biennale, Jakarta Biennale, and recently he was invited to the exhibition "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.  Anading is part of the exhibition "No Country" a survey of contemporary South East Asian Art in the Guggenheim Museum New York 2013.

Yason Banal

Playing on various screens of power, beauty, fashion, and individuality, Yason Banal creates a portrait of a young artist as the nexus of various desires social and private, being simultaneous cultural product, producer, and production part.  Banal appropriates indigenous textiles complementing them with haute couture designs, as both aesthetic codes laden with cultural agendas, in order to create a contemporary representation and subjectivity that blends the global with the local while pointing to larger social issues.  Banal obtained a BA in Film at the University of the Philippines, an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College-University of London.  He has exhibited locally and internationally, most recently at the Shanghai Biennale, Queens Museum of Art in New York, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. He is faculty at the University of the Philippines and runs the studio-space Sonja Bath.

Carlo Ricafort

Carlo Ricafort’s paintings emerge from the abstraction of memory, forming multi-layered contrasts of splashy color, jangly lines, obscure anthropomorphic shapes and other figurative elements into things inchoate of their nature, producing a pattern of consciousness identifiable as primal in origin yet expressed with a stylistic verve that is born only with the new.  His composition is non-linear, floating, spontaneous, free-associative, voodoo rhythmic - a continuous cacophonous droning ostensibly performed to unleash primeval energy – turning painting into a ritual, linking a millennia of practice to the current rush of the times.  Ricafort’s manner of painting echoes western style expressionism dabbled with notions of primitivism, not so much as giving license to aesthetic naiveté, but is a self-conscious take on what primitivism could be at this point in time, presenting a post-modern cynicism of all things pure, yet acknowledging the inescapable ties with its own self, acquiescing to make the personal over the philosophical, and to accentuate subjectivity over civility.  Born in Quezon City, Philippines, San Francisco based artist Carlo Ricafort received his B.F.A. in Pictorial Arts from San José State University and has exhibited at numerous galleries and cultural spaces in the United States, Mexico, France, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Catalina Africa

For Catalina Africa painting is removed as well from its tired convention of illustration, into an expedition of territoriality pushing the medium into boundaries non-painterly: painting as material exorcism applied with minimalist abandon, thick and heavy, sculptural, pensive, ceremonial and symbolic, transformative, interdisciplinary, nomadic, mixed with contrasting elements to produce the magical, always on the hunt for the new that generates an alternative consciousness, giving art a sensuous experience and a constant source of mental nourishment.  A product of the University of the Philippines, Africa lives and works in Manila, and has been active in showing with various galleries around the area.  She is an emerging young talent that redefines the way we look at art by way of painting, sculpture, collage and other mixed media to produce ambivalent configurations that unsettle the familiar.

Catalina Africa and Maria Jeona Zoleta

Separated immediately from the common crowd, three figures hover about the pictorial foreground putting them on their own plane of reality that contrasts distinctly from everyday life within the local church plaza.  Their actions seeming to defy convention, miming esoteric gestures of a code meant to be ritualistic and shared within a closed circle.  Shiny rectangular material covers the skin of the two figures, acting not only as protective clothing but also as reflective shields to shun the gaze of those who are uninitiated: it is only exotic if you don’t know.  Such minor ritual alters the weight of official culture to the point of critique, of a judgment of values, power structures, and rights to freedom, which every creative act demands to define identity.  Maria Jeona Zoleta and Catalina Africa are constant collaborators that push the limits of art’s acceptability into realms that explore sexuality, aesthetic taste, and formal invention.

Valeria Cavestany

Drifting between fantasy and reality, nightmare and dream, Valeria Cavestany’s painting unmoors impressions of a fixed universe ruled by reason, faith, or progress, all weighed by the rounded mass tethered to the ghostly figure that haunts the picture:  vulgar, crude, primitive, and horrific, falling outside the pale of history, a portrait of a savage nature that desires release from false promises toward a celebration of the senses, a Dionysian disco-bacchanalia, and an affront to rational judgements, for a critique of all values.  Valeria Cavestany has been exhibiting extensively in local galleries and abroad.  She was born in Barcelona, Spain of a Catalan father and Filipino mother.  She studied textile design in Barcelona’s School of Textile Design. In the 80’s she came to the Philippines in search of her roots and chose to make Manila her home.

Pow Martinez

In his painting “The Shire”, Pow Martinez collides the colorful world of Pop with the existential edge of Expressionism using his trademark abstract blobs, patterned shards, acid swabs, and nervy strokes to trouble the ubiquitous coconut palms – those symbols of blissful pleasure and playful adventure that an exotic tropical island should have – planted across the field of his painting adding anxiety to an otherwise colorful paradise.  Without loss of irony, “The Shire” makes a reference to the land where the benevolent Hobbits dwell in J. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.  Martinez is an emerging young painter who has shown in various galleries in Manila, and has exhibited internationally from Germany, France, United States, Thailand, and in the Philippines.  Besides his painting work, Martinez also experiments with sound art and is an accomplished musician.