Visual artist Joe Bautista stands in a corner of the exhibition space with his arms locked and smile wide. Easy as the mid-afternoon sun in slippers and shorts, he takes a few steps forward to check on one of his paintings, then proceeds to inspect another, showing no trace of jitters for someone days away from opening his first solo exhibition in 25 years.
Bautista, 68, was a decorated conceptual installation artist in the 1970s. He was part of Shop 6, an art group led by Roberto Chabet, who was hailed as the father of Philippine conceptual art. Bautista was also a recipient of the Thirteen Artist Awards from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) in 1972, as he espoused the practice that gave idea precedence over form that provoked thought and, in one instance, the country’s first lady.
“I was invited to do a group show in the CCP in 1979, and I told then CCP Director Ray Albano that I was going to do my bubong inside the gallery,” recalled Bautista.
The artist put up a full-scale model using rusty corrugated steel. The president’s wife, Imelda Marcos, attended the exhibit’s opening and was displeased with the sociopolitical undertones of Bautista’s work.
“Kinabukasan, after the opening, wala na ’yung show,” the artist said. “Pero ibig sabihin, napansin niya ’yung gawa ko. ’Yun nga lang, kasabay ko sa exhibit sila [Napoleon] Abueva at Allan Cosio. Nag-sorry ako sa kanila kasi they were masters, tapos ako, pinakabata.”
Marcos’s indignation notwithstanding, Bautista’s career progressed as he participated in the Festival Contemporary Asian Art Show in Fukuoka, Japan, and worked as a set designer in the CCP in the 1980s. In 1994, however, he mounted a solo exhibition that proved to be his last before stepping out of the local arts scene. He focused on a T-shirt business with his wife.
But during his time away from the art circuit, the artist in Bautista never really stopped creating.
He mostly did collages, using combinations of drawings, magazine cutouts, plastics—any material he can get his hands on. As the years passed, a desire to return to the arts grew stronger, culminating with a conversation with his friend and fellow artist, Gus Albor.
Albor introduced Bautista to Silvana Ancelotti-Diaz, founder of Galleria Duemila, the longest-running commercial gallery in the Philippines, established in 1975. Impressed with the returning artist, Diaz decided to include Bautista’s works in the gallery’s booth at Art Fair Philippines last year and this year. She also granted Bautista a solo exhibition at the gallery, which opened recently and is on view until December 28.
Titled Vertical and Horizontal Dreams, the year-ending show of Galleria Duemila is also Bautista’s comeback exhibition, featuring works unlike anything he did in the past.
“I was known as a conceptual installation artist. What I did was all concept: an interaction between the artist and the art. Now I want to paint,” Bautista said. “I want to create something that people can actually put on their walls.”
Presented in the show are 26 works of “blueprint abstractions,” or paintings inspired by an architect’s floor plan replete with geometric forms and bold colors.
Bautista admits he’s a frustrated architect but he has continued to follow the industry, particularly its superstars. He’s fascinated with the futurism of Zaha Hadid, the daring creativity of Santiago Calatrava and the deconstructivism of Frank Gehry.
The one person whose style resonates with Bautista the most, however, is Japanese architect Tadao Ando. He raves about the simplicity, the massiveness and the rawness of the self-taught master’s design principles, which focuses on lines, shadows and texture.
Bautista interprets in the show the concepts of Ando using geometric and organic forms. For one, he has incorporated in a number of pieces painted aluminum L-bars that represent pathways in the canvas blueprint, down to enclosing high walls. He has also created works that are inspired and titled after Ando’s signature structures, such as the Chichu Art Museum in Japan.
Bautista pieces his works together as much as he paints them, both in concept and execution. He makes sure that each element in his abstractions, though visually disjointed, are actually connected in one form or another.
In Stage for Dreams, for example, a splatter of black paint trespasses the orange pop below, which then connects to black grid under it, leading to a purple section that shares a white line with the adjacent vertical section. The concept is applied in most of the pieces, where the play is in minute details.
Bautista combines three disciplines in his paintings. First, the works are oriented like posters, informed by his advertising background. Second, the calculation of the elements are inspired by his fascination with architecture. Last, the colors and overall aesthetic stem from his artistic sense.
“There’s a connectivity between A and B,” Bautista said. “Like in architecture, you cannot build a structure without studying the topography of the landscape. The same applies here, there must be connectivity.”