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Editor’s note: After an extended hiatus, Alice Guillermo
resumes her column which will now come out every other
Wednesday beginning today.
THE
latest project of Jose Tence Ruiz touches on the revival
of the Kotillion through a suite of paintings on show at
the Art Informal Gallery in Greenhills. Possibly
inspired by rumors of a recent cotillion ball held in
the halls of the Palace no less, but to which access was
strictly denied the media, the artist eagerly seized on
the courtly dance as the subject of his works. For Tence
Ruiz, an artist immensely skilled in creating figures
obsessively articulated in all their particularizing
detail, the subject emerged serendipitously in all its
rich possibilities.
In
France where it originated, the kotillion
(original: cotillion), derived from the 17th century
royal court dances, denoted high breeding and was the
consummate display of haute society. In the Philippines,
its performance likewise represented the quintessence of
social privilege before and after the war, especially in
the wealthy towns of Pampanga in Central Luzon and in
the Visayas, the land of the sugar barons. Its
choreography displayed measured circling movements to
ensure maximum display of the ladies’ elegant ballgowns,
including an elaborate hooped skirt, precious
accessories and a towering headdress that pulled the
head backward in a regal pose.
KOTILLION: OCEAN OF
VIRTUALITY 2 ,
Jose Tence Ruiz, oil on canvas, 72”x48”, 2008
There
are at least four kotillion figures in the show.
The figure of Kotillion 1: Sinking in the Sea of the
Virtual touches on the theme of weather and the
natural and man-made cataclysms brought about by global
warming interspersed with motifs of modern military
technology. A contradiction exists between the expanse
of blue water engulfing human structures and the
floating female figure, with her sly and commanding
gaze, appareled in an intricate web of petrified
mangrove vines and roots. There is in the ecosystem an
excess of water and, at the same time, a drying up of
vegetation into sere and tough brambles. With one hand,
she brandishes a closed umbrella, but the manner in
which she thrusts it in the air and makes a gesture as
though to pull a trigger, transforms it into a rifle.
With the other hand, she holds up an electric fan with a
propeller like that of a helicopter which seems to be
connected to a mobile phone doubling as a remote control
device. A ship sinks in the sea, endangered structures
are sucked in the water, while the fast-moving and
ominous red and blue sky is rent with explosions. The
real is transformed into the virtual in the startling
imagery but it takes only a stray clue to revert back to
reality.
KOTILLION IN ECRU: A RISING
TIDE OF VIRTUALITY ,
Jose Tence Ruiz, oil on canvas, 122 cm x154 cm, 2008.
In the
figure of Kotillion 3: Carnage Drowns in an Ocean of
Virtuality, the gory spree is suggested by the piles
of rib cages disgorged by a slaughterhouse, a motif that
first appeared in the artist’s Katay series in
the 1980s. The large rib cage from a drawn and quartered
beast was the principal signifier in paintings like
Mga Ninong ni Neneng (The Godfathers of Neneng),
which showed a lithe stripper emerging from a rotting
carcass, symbol of the decaying system, onto a bar
table. There, too, was Galman, the fall guy for the
Aquino assassination, regurgitated from the depths of
the system. Likewise, a semi-abstract work explored the
cavernous belly of the monstrous beast.
Recalling origins, the lady’s ballgown in Kotillion 3
is made up of overlapping rib cages systematically
hacked open in the abattoir from sacrificial beasts with
gory drippings and exudations—a brutal reversal of the
delicate chantilly laces of the traditional dance
costume. Her grisly coiffure sports a single curving
rib, the whole pompadour connected to a chipped
washbasin to serve the continual need to cleanse her
hands from gore and guilt. Her other hand grasps a large
banana stalk ringed by clumps of fruit like so many
avidly grasping fingers topped by a fancy heart.
KOTILLION 3: CARNAGE DROWNS
IN AN OCEAN OF VIRTUALITY ,
Jose Tence Ruiz, oil on canvas, 122 cm x 184cm, 2008.
The two
paintings numbered 1 and 3 share the same color scheme
with their upper third section as a red sky with blue
and white explosions. Now, the other two Kotillion
paintings are composed and titled differently:
Blu-Skreen Kotillion and Kotillion in Ecru: The
Rising Tide of Virtuality. Here, the ladies are
poised on the ground, the lower third of the visual
field, littered with sundry debris. What is noteworthy,
however, is that the figures are situated against a
background of light blue or ecru, like a thin
transparent film lending a neutral tone without affect,
suitable in simulating the invisible screen of
virtuality. In this new approach to color in these
particular paintings of the series, the many alarms of
the present—such as the executions in broad daylight,
the abductions and disappearances—are all drowned,
melted away, or neutralized by a cold indifference
fittingly embodied in the recent version of the
kotillion as a ritualistic dance of the Undead, as
Dracula would have it.
In
Blu-Skreen Kotillion, the female figure shows off
the skewered head of a bird-man decorated with a bow,
while the other hand gingerly holds a squawking chicken.
She sashays in her repulsive costume made of spidery
odds and ends and machine parts from a veritable
junk-heap emitting whines and screeches at every turn.
Kotillion in Ecru: The Rising Tide of Virtuality
is a veritable clanking machine rigged in technological
waste and obsolete machine parts stolen from a mad
scientist’s laboratory while at work in a mechanical
female Frankenstein. The fan that the female figure
holds in her gnarled and decrepit hand is a suit of
sharp-cutting metal blades. Shiny gleaming parts are
juxtaposed with velvety soot-black substances in a
malevolent junkheap.
While
the images are compellingly vivid, the abstract and
neutral character of the titles serves a mediating
function vis-à-vis the disquieting images that signify
universal catastrophe.
The four
Kotillion ladies in all their bizarre splendor are shown
standing full-length in a self-conscious pose, their
eyes at times turned away and aloof, or other times
engaging the viewer with a concupiscent and wily
expression. The dramatic tonal rendering of the figures
and costumes makes for a powerful, almost
three-dimensional quality, of projection and recession,
of surface and depth, establishing palpable distance
between the One, the lady’s own self, and the Other, the
viewer. As presented separately, they do achieve an
unusual iconic quality, lusty predatory deities that
ironically dwell in an etherized zone of virtual
reality. Despite their air of perfect indifference, they
do not possess the cool serenity of the classical
goddesses or the harmonious air of the Graces. Instead,
their faces possess an underlying harshness while their
hands are warped with covetousness and cruelty. In their
strange, irresistible seduction, they produce a contrary
alienating effect by their grotesque presences even as
they stand as conundrums of our time. |
