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Cultural Confluence II

Ten artists from Cebu, Davao, Manila and France will converge this 28th of March in CULTURAL CONFLUENCE II, an art exhibit that aims to cross boundaries in terms of artistic expression and cultures.

First ran in Cebu City last year at the SM Art Center, the Davao Museum of History and Ethnography takes the challenge this year to bring together artists from different geographical locations and artistic traditions & leanings, to initiate fresh connections and foster new perceptions.

Featured artists are Lito Pepito, Arnel Villegas, Josie Tionko and Jurie Jaime from Davao; Cesar Duazo-Pepito and Darby Alcoseba from Cebu; Seb Chua, Armida Francisco and Louie Ignacio from Manila; and Rémy Rault from France.

The exhibit will run at the Davao Museum’s Don Antonio O. Floirendo Gallery until 28 May 2011. The Davao Museum of History and Ethnography is located in Insular Village Phase I, Lanang, Davao City. For inquiries, call (82)233-1734.

[Media Release]

Davao-based college band Eevee bagged the grand prize in this year’s NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool. The competition capped off its fifth successful year with a full concert featuring the lucky 13 NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool finalists, as well as some of the country’s best musical acts at the Ninoy Aquino Sports Stadium. Eevee, composed of Enzo Miguel Villegas (vocals and guitar), Paolo Raymundo Segura (lead guitar), Jerrick Adrian Sy (bass) and Craig John Neniel (drums), won the competition’s ₱250,000 cash prize, an exclusive record label deal with Sony Music Entertainment Philippines, and ₱150,000 worth of music equipment for the school they represent.

Representing the Philippine Women’s College of Davao, Eevee bested out 12 of the best college bands from across the country during the Finals night. This year’s finalist bands that performed at the Ninoy Aquino Sports Stadium this year are: Little School House (Ateneo de Cagayan – Xavier University), Eevee (Philippine Women’s College – Davao), Disco…Disco…Disco (St. Michael’s College – Iligan City), Lady Suzette (AMA – Tacloban), Sundae Special (Iloilo Doctors College), 3 Hours and 10 (University of the Visayas – Cebu), Iktuz (Colegio de San Juan De Letran Calamba – Calamba Laguna), Mixed Tape (Lyceum – St. Cabrini College of Allied Medicine – Batangas), In Descent (University of Perpetual Help Laguna – Binan Laguna), Nameless Heroes (Mapua Institute of Technology – Makati), Play (Polytechnic University of the Philippines – Quezon City), Soltera (AMA – International Institute of Technology – Cubao) and Project (Jose Rizal University).

“We are very overwhelmed with this victory. All the bands that were with us on our ‘journey to fame’ were really good and it was anybody’s game up until show time. We would like to thank NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool for this opportunity for us to realize our dreams as music superstars,” exclaimed Eevee’s frontman, Enzo Villegas.

The NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool finalists performed alongside some of the country’s best bands who served as the finalists’ mentors leading up to the Grand Finals Night. The young musicians got to interact, jam and perform alongside chart toppers like NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool Grand Prize Winners Hilera and Letter Day Story, 6CycleMind, Pedicab, Itchy Worms, Imago, Sugarfree, Taken By Cars, Urbandub, Spongecola, Paraluman, Callalily, Sandwich and Moonstar 88. Known dance group Philippine All Stars brought the audience to their feet with their performances. Another rare sight during the NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool Grand Finals Night was when all the vocalists from this year’s mentor bands banded together and shared the stage for one outstanding performance. “It didn’t feel like a competition at all during the Grand Finals Night. Yes, we were nervous but in the end the entire night became a celebration of how much the Filipino youth loves music. We’re really proud to be part of this experience — winning the Grand Prize was just the cherry on top of the delicious cake,” Villegas added.

“NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool’s fifth year has proven to be its most exciting so far. We not only found extraordinary talents this year — the competition has never been this close among the finalists. We’re very proud to see the progress all the finalists have made ever since we saw them during the Eliminations leg in October. Eevee, along with the other 12 finalists this year, have all shown that handa na silang sumikat with the lessons they gained from NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool. If anything, the talent we discovered with this year’s competition only proves that the Filipino youth are indeed ready to make a big splash in the music industry,” said Eileen Rose Bangcoro, NESTLÉ Philippines marketing promotions and events cluster head for NESCAFÉ.

Aside from Bangcoro, the judges during the Grand Finals Night were Sony Music Entertainment Philippines’ Vic Valenciano and Jerrick Mina, Soupstar Entertainment’s Darwin Hernandez, and Soundcreation Studio’s Shinji Tanaka.

This year’s NESCAFÉ 3in1 Soundskool, with the theme “Huwag Na Magtago! Magparamdam Ka Na!” is supported by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Sony Music Entertainment Philippines, Paseo de Bahamas, Rudy Project, Boracay Scuba, Boracay Mandarin Island Hotel, Ix Chel, La Carmela de Boracay Resort Hotel and Parkmall in Mandaue City, Cebu.

For more details, log on to the NESCAFÉ 3n1 Soundskool site. View Eevee’s Facebook fan page as well!

[Media release & photos courtesy of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Manila]

(This is a contributed article by Phillip Somozo.)

This Davao-born visual artist frequently stepped upstage during his college years for consistently winning painting competitions. His stuttering childlike speech, incompatible with his towering 6-foot height, sometimes made people laugh. Today, Bienvenido Banez, Jr., towers all the more for achievements uncommon among Filipino artists.

Diagnosed with mild learning disability during childhood, Ben’s focus of attention has always been his art. Rightly so. In 2002, he won first place in the Asian Fellowship Painting Competition of the prestigious Vermont Studio Center, launched from Vermont, USA. Last year, in New York City, where he based himself after his Vermont fellowship, he was the only Filipino among the more than seventy international, surreal visual artists featured in the grandest-ever birth anniversary celebration of John Milton and what is considered as the greatest English poem, his Paradise Lost.

Earlier, in 2004, the president and executive director of Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn, while viewing Ben’s painting, commented to a fashion photographer that Banez is the “greatest living surrealist from the Philippines.” This comment from contemporary Surrealism’s prime mover, Terrance Lindall, himself the organizer of Milton’s biggest birthday bash, may have been trivially said. But today it is substantiated by yet another achievement in Banez’s career: his name, profile, and sample work are recently published in a German edition of “The International Encyclopedia of Fantastic, Surrealist, Symbolist, & Visionary Artists” or Lexikon Surreal for short. Thus, Bienvenido Bones Banez, again the only Filipino in the inventory, now appears along with Surrealism greats such as Salvador Dal&iaccute;, Ernst Fuchs, Keith Wigdor, and Jon Beinart, to name a few, in the same book.

666 Screaming by Ben Banez

In page 35 of Lexikon Surreal, Banez’s work, “666 Screaming,” appears in full color; while in page 44, his profile is printed in German. Translated into English, it reads:

BANEZ JR. BIENVENIDO BONES

(Davao City, Mindanao, Philippines, 1962-  ) Filipino visionary, male, lives and works in the USA. Studied in the Ford Academy of the Arts in Davao City, Island of Mindanao; associate professor in the Philippine Women’s College-Davao. 2002 winner in the Asian Fellowship Painting Competition of the Vermont Studio Center, Vermont, USA., and has lived since in the USA.

If greatness also means winning an international art fellowship, the admiration of a globally-distinguished art organizer, and being genus among a roster of historical figures and international achievers, then, this Mindanaoan artist has at least cut himself a slice of the surreal pie.

Banez’s art is an expression of fundamental belief in Evil having gained dominion over the Earth. Injustice, inequity, conflicts, wars, environmental destruction, human suffering–for him all these are manifestations of Satan’s rule–a perception ancient as the Judaeo-Christian doomsday prophets and feasted upon by the human mind ancient to modern.

What makes Banez a paradox among surrealists is his depiction of hellish conditions not as murky depths, but psychedelic sceneries where spectra of colors enthrall the viewer to a fantastic world only he could conceive. Figures–human, geometric or biomorphic curiosities–lose tactility and become translucent images and luminosities swirling, shimmering, or disintegrating in a world bereft of gravity.

Marvelous colors, resembling those of jewelry and precious stones, at closer look turn out to be cellular infections, acid-chemical concentrates, or spreading volcanic lava, eating up human figures, corrupting techno systems, and contaminating the cosmos–the artist’s vision perhaps of bio-chemical warfare and natural catastrophe combined to destroy the Establishment. Neonlike brushstrokes snake through his canvases–flowing traffic that at certain points entangle on some physical perversion and gets jammed on a plexus of human agony nestled on infernal flame.

Esthetically mesmerizing the colors are in a Banez canvas, the perverted figures and miserable faces of humankind are as morbid and offensive to good taste. Apparently, the artist schemes to capture the viewer with wonder; then, in succeeding moments, pounces on his cognitive faculties with horrors of the wages of sin. This rare Banez visual irony fits well with Surrealism as originally defined by spokesperson Andre Breton: Beauty must be convulsive. In this context, Banez earned his ticket to the theater of the absurd where Hieronymus Bosch and company once sat and dreamed.

It is notable that Banez, despite his psychedelic colors, is not and was never a drug abuser. His recent works indicate he has evolved from common representational surrealism into unique abstract surrealism as his figures and images lose physical and material volume, reduced to their astral constituency–something that only the very rare eye of contemplation could see. It is said only 2% of the world’s total population could see with contemplation’s eye.

His abstraction of surrealism is a direction not commonly trodden by surrealists down history. This is the future that Banez should look forward to, to discover new horizons where he as Man is created not to languish in murky infernal depths, but to fulfill his vivid godly inheritance. It does not set him apart from his fellow Filipinos but pulls them up as artists universal as any other race.

Lexikon Surreal is authored by Gerhard Habarta. Measuring 9 x 6.75 inches, it is printed hardcover, with ribbon. It contains 1,122 artist biographies from 69 countries in 464 pages, with 950 black-and-white and 458 color reproductions.

Fellow Dabawenyos!

Let’s all support the efforts of a group of Davao artists & musicians in their selfless move to help the victims of Typhoon Ondoy. This Sunday, 4 October 2009, there will be a free concert, “Tabang Dabaw”, to be held at TABOAN, Matina Town Square, from 6:00 PM.

Some of the artists who will perform at Tabang Dabaw are: the Alconera Project with Rochelle Venuti, J&J Band featuring Chad Borja, Ahbet Padilla & Rikki Torres of Studio Onnie, IVplay, 8mile, Baby Boomers, Check It Out, and many others. There will be about 15 bands 30+ bands and artists who will be entertaining us this Sunday.

(Click to see image)

Please bring donations to help alleviate the unfortunate condition our brothers and sisters in Luzon are now in. Donations — clothes, footwear, medicine, bottled water, canned goods, cash — will be accepted at the concert by the organizing committee. All the donations will be brought to Manila via Solid Shipping Lines, c/o the Philippine National Red Cross. For bank drafts, please make cheques out to Philippine National Red Cross.

There will also be limited-edition Tabang Dabaw shirts that will be sold at the concert. Grab one (or two) for ₱300 each. Proceeds will go to the victims of Ondoy.

Let’s all chip in and share! See you @ Taboan this Sunday!

Thanks to Ahbet & Rochelle for letting me know about this worthwhile event. And thanks to Louie Solitaria for sharing the Tabang Dabaw graphics which he designed.

(This is a contributed article by Phillip Somozo, the 2nd of a 3-part series. Click here for Part 1.)

Davao Surreal Artist features in New York Exhibit celebrating John Milton and Paradise Lost

Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo* were the first Filipino visual artists to achieve international recognition by virtue of their winning gold and silver medals, respectively, in international painting competitions in 19th century Europe, during years when Modernism was still swelling as a wave to eventually sweep the world. Luna, especially, did it as a form of propaganda disclosing imperialist Spain’s unjust treatment of its then colony, Las Islas Filipinas. Unknown to these two Philippine art icons, a trail of artist followers would form behind them a century later, in terms of desiring to be recognized internationally, this time as a way out of the difficult artist condition (whose condition is easy anyway?) in the Philippines. As result, a number of contemporary pinoy painters are now represented by established galleries in some of the world’s art centers. Whether they are financially better off now and happier is, of course, another question.

Bienvenido Bones Banez is a surrealist artist from Davao City who is not after monetary rewards in his artistic pursuits, but is definitely happier since he based himself in New York because he is experiencing acceptance and recognition of his talent. Now, he is posed to enter the portals of art history as the only Filipino invited to exhibit work in what is projected to be the grandest-ever celebration honoring the blind man-turned-literary immortal John Milton and his classic masterpiece, Paradise Lost. Banez’s participation is more significant in that of the more than 60 visual artists from all over the world, who will display work, he is one of only three who are distinguished as featured.

In his emailed letter to this writer, WAH Center President and Executive Director Terrance Lindall announced that Bienvenido Bones Banez has been named a "Featured Artist" in the Paradise Lost show in September 27-November 2, 2008, at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn, NYC, USA, along with two other outstanding artists, Kris Kuksi and Rich Buckler. Terrance said of Ben (Banez’s nickname):

"I know of no artist whose work so sincerely expresses his heart felt belief and knowledge that we live in a Satanic time. Ben calls this his ‘666 World.’ He sees humans as possessing the ability to make a Paradise on Earth and yet devoting their energies for wealth, power, and self gratification at the expense of their fellow beings. It is a contradiction to pursue selfish interests for one’s own satisfaction by creating misery for one’s neighbor. No lasting satisfaction can ultimately come from it. Ben is right in that Satan surely has the world in his clutches while encouraging nations and individuals to dominate one another for wealth and resources. Until another Jesus or Ghandi appears to lead us to the light, we are in dark times and dire straits. One should look deeply into Ben’s paintings to see what we have become and are becoming in this ‘666 World’. True poets and artists must be called upon to sound the alarm. Ben has answered the call!

“He paints as if he is plugged into a wall socket and the energy that pours forth through his brain and fingertips to the canvas comes out in pulses of scintillating colors,” adds Lindall.

Kris Kuksi is one of the most highly regarded artists in the contemporary surreal/visionary movement. His work is in the collection of Chris Weitz, Director of the movie, The Golden Compass, based upon Philip Pullman’s book and grounded in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Richard “Rich” Buckler is an American comic book artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics’ The Fantastic Four in the mid-1970s. He will be producing a portrait of John Milton for the 21st century, unveiling of which will be at the Costume Ball.

Of the participating performing artists, Polish surrealist fashion designer Olek, herself a stunning beauty, will be of particular interest to beholders of the absurdly beautiful as she unravels her latest unique creation with her company of models parading, preening and posing throughout all three floors of the exhibit venue during the ball (see sample photo of her 2003 debut also at WAH Center). Another is playwright/musician/composer Peter Dizozza, described as an “incredibly unique talent,” who will present his musical mystery play “Paradise Found!”

Other performing artists are scheduled intermittently to grace the celebration all the way to November 2: the jazz bar-favorite JC Hopkins Biggish Swing Band; Yana Schnitzler with Human Kinetics Movement Arts – a “mesmerizing”, interactive, cutting-edge dance group; a band of musicians led by Arthur Kirmss dressed in 17th century costume belting out Baroque tunes; and poet S. David as tour guide.

The historical exhibit includes Miltonia; a handwritten Torah scroll of the Book of Genesis — approximately 300 to 400 years old, original copies of Paradise Lost; old woodcuts and engravings; and Royal British memorabilia.

Entrance ticket to the ball is very affordable at $40 for art and entertainment that could go into the annals of history.

* Simon Flores y de la Rosa was reported by the Ayala Museum as having won silver award in the Philadelphia Universal Exposition in 1876, several years earlier than Luna and Hidalgo earned their medals; thus, accordingly, should be credited as the first Filipino artist to receive international recognition.

(Watch out for the concluding Third Part of this series after the grand costume ball in September 28!)