It was 20 years ago, today! CCP MESSAGE Almost twenty years ago, in 1996, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the Philippine Association of Printmakers (PAP) began a partnership thru the establishment of a printmaking workshop located at the Folk Arts Theater. The beginnings of this project, however, can be traced back to the early 1990s when Virgillio “Pandy” Aviado, then head of the CCP Coordinating Center for Visual Arts (CCVA) proposed a partnership with the French Government. Through the Embassy of France, CCP received a donation of lithographic machine and accessories. Grants to work with French printmakers were extended to PAP members Fil Delacruz and Benjie Torrado Cabrera. Having laid the groundwork, PAP and CCP deemed it necessary to set up a printmaking workshop with facilities and equipment accessible to PAP members, other artists and students who wish to learn the fine art of printmaking. The PAP workshop at the CCP Complex formally opened in 1996 during the terms of Baltazar Endriga as CCP President, Deanna Ongpin-Recto as CCP Artistic Director, and Fil Delacruz as PAP President. Since then, printmaking has been an integral part of the CCP visual arts programs. Recent endeavors include the PAP’s 50th anniversary exhibition (2010), fund-raising exhibitions with the CCP and PAP as beneficiaries, annual PAP exhibitions, summer workshops and lecture demonstrations by PAP members and foreign guest artists. As one of the highlights of the Center’s 45th anniversary, this print folio, dubbed 25@45, is a unique offering that underscores the Center’s continued partnership with the artist community and with the private sector. Funds raised from this project will assist in CCP’s various programs including those administered in different regions nationwide. This project brings together twenty-five artists who have contributed to the development of Philippine contemporary printmaking from the 1960s to the present. Collectively, the folio features three generations of our leading contemporary artists – PAP members and guest artists – as well as a sampling of printmaking techniques employed in each artist’s distinct styles. We are especially honored that Manuel Rodriguez, Sr., now 102 years old and hailed as the Father of Philippine printmaking, graces us with a re-strike of an early work. All the other artists were requested to create new works especially for this project. Renewed interest was sparked among the invited artists who have since moved on to other visual art forms to return to the graphic medium and take on its rigorous process once more. PAP offered assistance to edition plates by invited artists or opened the workshop facilities for their use. Featured artists include twelve PAP members and thirteen invited artists, namely: PAP Members Guest Artists 1. Virgillio Aviado 2. Fil Delacruz 3. Benjie Torrado Cabrera 4. Lenore R. S. Lim 5. Jess Flores 6. Noel El Farol 7. Ambie Abaño 8. Angelo Magno 9. Joey Cobcobo 10. Janos Delacruz 11. Jose Santos Ardavilla 12. Mars Bugaoan 13. Manuel Rodriguez Sr. 14. Arturo Luz 15. BenCab 16. Romulo Olazo 17. Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi 18. Brenda Fajardo 19. Imelda Cajipe-Endaya 20. Neil Doloricon 21. Jonathan Olazo 22. Pam Yan-Santos 23. Renan Ortiz 24. Wesley Valenzuela 25. Eugene Jarque The CCP extends its gratitude to all the artists who have contributed to this endeavor and especially to the Philippine Association of Printmakers for the guidance given to the CCP Visual Arts and Museum Division and assistance granted to guest artists for the realization of their respective works from plate to paper. To our patrons, we thank you for supporting this project and the future beneficiaries of the Center’s programs. RAUL M. SUNICO, PhD. CHRIS B. MILLADO President Vice-President and Artistic Director FOLIO NOTES 25@45 Print Folio represents the versatility of Filipino artists today in employing the wide range of printmaking methods. Intaglio is the general term for a graphic technique wherein design is incised or engraved into a material (often a metal plate). It adapts to a wide range of styles and effects a printmaker wishes to achieve, from the linear to the almost painterly. Images in a relief print are produced from the raised surfaces of a prepared block such as wood or linoleum sheet. In serigraphy, also known as silkscreen printing, ink is squeezed through a stencil mounted against a fine textile screen. It is this project’s aim to promote the practice of and appreciation for the graphic arts, an advocacy Manuel Rodriguez Sr. began. He introduced printmaking courses to three universities in the 1960s (University of Santo Tomas, Philippine Women’s University, and College of Holy Ghost, now College of the Holy Spirt) and founded the Philippine Association of Printmakers (PAP) in 1968. The roster of current PAP members includes the stalwarts in contemporary printmaking who have, like Rodriguez Sr., continued to promote the medium through their innovative works and through teaching. Since his first encounter with printmaking as a young student in Ateneo in the early 1960s, Virgillio “Pandy” Aviado continues to be among the most prolific in the graphic arts, particularly intaglio techniques, and in other visual art forms. Like his mentor, Mang Maning, Aviado has taken on a vocation to promote printmaking in his capacity as teacher and in past art manager positions at the CCP and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). In the 1960s, he was also instrumental in leading his contemporaries to printmaking by doing editions for the likes of Roberto Chabet, Jose Joya, Ding Roces and Arturo Luz. Fil Delacruz gained critical acclaim for the series of mezzotint and lithograph prints that depict the mystery and bounty of nature and Philippine traditional peoples. Benjie Torrado Cabrera, Jess Flores, and Lenore R.S. Lim explore the pictorial qualities achieved through etching combined with other intaglio processes. Torrado Cabrera has even crossed the boundaries to create sculptural works in glass and acrylic panels and boxed objects enriched with etched and incised elements. Similarly Noell El Farol, current PAP President, applies intaglio and planographic methods in non-conventional formats such as book art and objects. The relief method of woodcut is the medium of choice for Ambie Abaño translated onto different surfaces (paper and fabric) and configured in wall-bound or in-the-round forms. The success of PAP today can also be gauged through the achievements of its new members who have taken on the same passion and creative explorations in the craft. These include Angelo Magno, Joey Cobcobo, Janos Delacruz, Chong Ardavilla and Mars Bugaoan. The content and logistics of this project was conceived with the assistance of past and present PAP officers and – Noell El Farol, Benjie Torrado Cabrera, and Ambie Abaño. Guest artists, in particular, were determined by their individual contribution to printmaking whether in the past or in their current practice. This was with the hope of engaging them once more in the graphic medium. National Artists Arturo Luz and BenCab created intaglio prints within the 1970s and 1980s – the former with his abstract intaglio and collagraph, the latter with his series of etchings in the Larawan series and Boxed Objects series. For this folio, they used their distinct subjects in painting – linear landscapes and Sabel, respectively. This time images are first rendered on zinc plate and printed with the assistance of Pandy Aviado and Benjie Torrado Cabrera, respectively. Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya and Brenda Fajardo, all known for their prints in the 1970s, revisit the graphic arts. Now based in Limieux, France, Gelvezon-Tequi captures a rustic scene from her home through the tedious intaglio processes of etching and aquatint. Fajardo and Cajipe-Endaya return to intaglio printmaking as means to express concern for the environment and the plight of women with the assistance of Benjie Cabrera and Ambie Abaño, respectively. Romulo Olazo, another artist who made waves with his experimentation in printmaking in the 1970s, chose to work on serigraph, a technique that eventually led him to that distinct painting style known in his Diaphanous Series. His son, Jonathan similarly revisits relief printing, the medium employed for the series of rubbercut works presented in his first solo exhibition held at the CCP in 1984. Although Pam Yan-Santos has always used stenciled elements in paintings, her contribution in this folio marks her return to serigraphy after a decade. The subject also reflects her experience as a young mother revealing her graphic approach in teaching her sons how to tell time. Neil Doloricon and Renan Ortiz, both active members of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP), use the graphic medium to document everyday realities in the rural and urban settings. Doloricon’s sharp and bold lines underscore the farmers’ daily toil and Ortiz’ fine line etching captures the wrinkled and weathered face of an informal settler in the city forced to relocate. Parallel to his series of mixed media assemblages, Eugene Jarque’s print reiterates the process of constructing with linear precision. Wesley Valenzuela “collects” archival images of people and objects and translates into a screen print composition. Considering the variety of styles and artistic leanings each artist represents, the 25@45 Print Folio is a unique representation of some of today’s masters, mid-career, and upcoming artists. Conceived without a specific theme in mind, the Folio is thus a collective of the possibilities in visual expression that may be achieved through printmaking. MVT Herrera September 2014
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 01:24:46 +0000