Pinggot
Zulueta was another struggling artist and newspaper
illustrator in the ’80s, a fresh graduate from the
University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts along
España. Among his batchmates were Federico Sievert and
Rowena Bancod, and together they looked up to their
upperclassman Jose Tence Ruiz, then already doing the art
work for Who magazine.
Zulueta cut his teeth doing spot illustrations for
Midweek magazine and later Abante, but soon
enough realized that the wages of an artist, even an
in-house one, were barely enough to keep body and soul
together, much less support a growing family.
As it happened, Pinggot was just another face among the
table of drinkers in such places as Wings on Quezon Ave.,
where along with fellow struggling artists Benjie Lontoc,
Ludwig Ilio and Roxlee he would hold forth until the wee
hours, exchanging stories and banter on the lighter side
of an absurd existence post-EDSA I revolution.
Then all of a sudden Pinggot was pounding the beat as
photographer for Diyaryo Filipino, and eventually
Manila Bulletin for which he still aims a mean
lens. Pinggot’s second one-man show – his first since 1985
– is ongoing at the RCBC Plaza Lobby in Makati until
today, entitled Asinta: Images and Imageries. Its
original title was Editoryal... Kuwentong Bayan,
until some mentors and advisers helped him think up a
catchier title.
Asinta is actually a dual project of Pinggot with
avant-garde performance poet Vim Nadera, a schoolmate at
UST who had first broached the idea to the
artist-photographer in 1997. The fruit of this
collaboration, aside from the images of digitally revised
artwork and photographs in the exhibit, is the
UST-published book Asinta launched during the
latest book fair, which features Nadera’ poems alongside
the digital illustrations.
Now Pinggot’s form of hybrid art and photography might
raise the hackles of purists from both sides, who may
subscribe to the not altogether indefensible idea that one
craft should not corrupt or impinge on the other.
Similar howls of protest may have greeted daring
experiments in other fields, such as when Bob Dylan first
picked up an electric guitar at the Newport Festival, or
when Miles Davis decided to dabble in electronics that
would give birth to the expanding school of fusion, both
in the ’60s.
But Pinggot is definitely no Dylan nor Miles, though his
melding of his art and photography in the thoroughly
postmodern gadget that is the computer may be just as
controversial as the uncompromising, in-your-face acts of
the masters that came before him.
For starters we have his digitally colored and reproduced
photos of a demolition in a squatters’ colony in
Intramuros, a child eating kamayan style in lahar-infested
Central Luzon, the May 1 siege of Malacañang in 2001, and
full-color reinventions of his editorial cartoons like the
activist in media and the dictator who feasts on his own
intestines.
"It’s good that I still kept the old artwork and
drawings," said Pinggot over beer and assorted pulutan
at the National Press Club, where the neon signs across
Jones Bridge and the Pasig River could perhaps be a future
subject of computer graphic meanderings.
As it happened, after Vim’s suggestion to gather together
his old work and "repackage" them in new and alternative
canvases, Pinggot was like an artist-photographer
possessed with the chance to revive his art.
A quick perusal of the photographic reproductions of the
enhanced illustrations and photos evokes mixed feelings of
dread and exhilaration, and makes one wonder what the
original looked like.
"Wasn’t it possible to place the digitally altered works
with the untouched one?" I asked the Tarlaqueño Pinggot.
It was of course possible, but time and cost constraints
came in, not to mention that Andy Warhol already did sort
of the same thing in a series of four panels in his
Campbell Soup series, Pinggot said.
Whatever way one looked at it, there was no denying that
here was something exciting to come out of the current art
scene, not the least reason for which an artist saw fit to
return to his craft, if only by way of the computer.
Granted, no new ground has been broken in Images and
Imageries, and to some the whole show may have a
juxtapositional touch of the wild with the antiseptic, but
maybe we should have a closer look at the actual canvases
at the RCBC before passing final judgment.
Meanwhile in Bicol, by the foot of Mount Mayon and very
near the Cagsawa Church ruins, there opened at the end of
August a new art gallery and performance venue called the
Ayuntamiento Art Project.
One of the regular exhibitors is Roxlee, who describes
Ayuntamiento thus: "It is an art venue with three
sections: the middle part which is the biggest section has
the panels for the paintings; the left wing as we call it
accommodates the sculptures; and the right wing is
well-suited for the musical and art performances, and
stage and poetry readings."
Among the artists on exhibit in Ayuntamiento are the Bicol-based
Gus Albor and Dante Perez, as well as Roxlee, who Pinggot
and I agreed should be recruited to perform at the NPC
during cultural night to regale the habitués with his
rendition of "Bulate ni kyuti- kyuti, puwedeng gawin
spaghetti."
