Philippine E-Journals

Art and Boredom

Judy Freya Sibayan

Discipline: Art

 

Abstract:

Two years ago Lao Lianben, a leading painter in Philippine contemporary art exhibited his works at the Scapular Gallery Nomad a portable art gallery I wear daily. What was interesting about the event was Lao's confession of a condition menacing his art practice. He wondered whether there was something else he can do other than painting. Not believing what I had just heard, I asked if he meant to make some drastic formal changes in his paintings: two decades of exemplary toil of quiet, persistent, subtle lines, circles, points rendered neg-entropically in textured whites, blacks, greys, silver, hints of red and gold: "he knows only one art: that of theme and variations. On one side of the variations will be found ... his content, but on the side of the theme will be found the persistence of forms…”