GALLERY

1


But are the international and regional auction houses driving up prices by Filipino contemporary artists, creating distortion and fostering speculation and commercialism?

 A LARGE painting by Filipino contemporary artist Ronald Ventura was the star of the Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings auction last April 4 in Hong Kong, selling for HK$8,420,000, or P46.9 million, after fierce bidding.

Works by other young Filipino contemporary artists such as Jon Jaylo and Andres Barrioquinto also sold well.

Ventura’s painting, “Grayground,” is a graphite, oil and acrylic piece on canvas, measuring 60 inches by 155 and three-fourth inches, or nearly four meters long.

The painting, which has been described as “provocative,” combines hyperrealism and graffiti and shows in dynamic fashion horses in violent and bloody dishabille, apparently in the midst of a raging battle. All around them are gothic images that seem to underscore the brutality of war. Save for the lances, scarlet with blood, it appears, the entire canvas is in monochromatic gray.

But the Sotheby’s catalogue describes the work as a commentary on art:

“(T)he existential mash-up of hyperrealism and graffiti confronts viewers on how art should be. Two powerful forces—a multitude, to be precise—represented by horses in mid-stride, go into opposite directions, leaving a big gray empty lot of possibilities where nothing is real and everything is permitted. What could those forces be? Is the chasm and the void lying in between still art? Therein lies the mystery for the viewers, all in Ronald Ventura’s nihilistic playground.”

According to Mok Kim Chuan, Sotheby’s head of Southeast Asian paintings, bidding opened at HK$300,000 with 15 bidders battling it out. After around 50 furious bids, “Grayground” eventually sold at an “astonishing” US$1.1 million, which was over 24 times its original “high” estimate, to a phone bidder.

The winning bid was the highest for Sotheby’s Contemporary Southeast Asian Painting auction.

(The previous record was achieved in October 2008 when I Nyoman Masriadi’s “The Man from Bantul [The Final Round]” sold for HK$7,820,000/US$1,000,725).

Ventura’s feat appears to confirm not only his status as the biggest-selling Filipino among “new painters,” but of Philippine contemporary art as the darling of art auction in the region.

Last June, in the Christie’s Southeast Asian auction in Hong Kong, Geraldine Javier’s oil-on-canvas, “Ella Amo’ Apasionadamente y Fue Correspondida (For She Loved Fiercely, And She Is Well Loved),” was bidded out for HK$1,460,000, 10 times more than the original low estimate.

The biggest seller in the entire auction was “Snake Dancer” (1977), by Indonesian master Hendra Gunawan (1918-1983), selling for HK$16,340,000 ($2.094 million), or more than seven times its high estimate.

Jaylo, Barrioquinto

Born in 1973, Ventura took up Painting at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Santo Tomas. Last November, his “Natural Lies” (2010), was sold by Sotheby’s for HK$2.2 million (US$326,000), nine times its original estimate.

In the last Sotheby’s auction, also doing well was another young Filipino artist, Jaylo, whose “A Song for Alice” fetched HK$275,000 (original estimate was HK$60,000).

Also doing well was Barrioquinto (born 1975), Ventura’s former schoolmate at UST. Barrioquinto’s “Arms around Your Love,” an acrylic-and-oil piece, features one of the artist’s celebrated reinventions of the portrait genre.

Other Filipino artists whose works were sold at the auction include Ronald Caringal, Lynard Paras, Kiko Escora, Janet Balbarona, Rodel Tapaya, Marina Cruz, Arturo Sanchez, Nona Garcia, Danilo E. Dalena, MM Yu, Wawi Navarroza and the late Onib Olmedo.

Sotheby’s Hong Kong said April 4’s was its highest-ever result for an auction of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian Art. Total sales were HK$108 million ($13.8 million), which was triple the house’s presale estimate of HK$36 million ($4.6 million).

But with both Sotheby’s and Christie’s having a field day in auctioning off works by new Southeast Asian artists, and with regional auction houses rising and making great business, there are fears that an artificial market is being created that may undermine the Philippine art market itself.

Because artists such as Ventura and Javier are now making brave, bold—and new—works especially for the auction houses abroad, where they get astronomical prices, there has been anxiety whether Philippine art lovers and collectors, especially those just starting their collections, could afford the works of emerging artists.

The high prices for the works of the young artists in auctions appear to create distortions, unnecessarily inflating their prices. In other words, young Filipino artists achieving global renown and global prices for their works have made their art unaffordable to fellow Filipinos, save, of course, for the big bidders and the big players. Philippine art may reap the wages of globalization.

That, perhaps, is the gray area of Ventura’s “Grayground”: The chasm left by the interplay and competition in the global art market may mean the sheer vacuity of art for art’s sake, that is, art-for-the-auction-market’s sake.

So when the dust settles after Philippine art war-horses such as Ventura’s and Javier’s fabulous works have long left to be stashed in some rich art collector’s hoard or some tony museum’s anthology, the gnawing void that will be left is the nihilism of the global art world.

When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com for your retirement and real estate needs.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer