Fresh from his incisive one-man show at Ilomoca’s Hulot Gallery, Antipas “Biboy” Delotavo comes to the Bencab Museum this October with 10 new paintings.
His latest outing is titled, rather cheekily, Objet D’Art. Delotavo’s innate painterly skills re-affirm one’s belief in human observation and mimesis, especially when the inventory of art making is currently contaminated with the handy pastiche that clever but untalented individuals derive from Artificial Intelligence apps and pilfered databases. He calls his latest works still lifes. They might also be about stilled lives, fellow humans reduced to being objects.
Many of those who train in the Arts and Art Theory are drilled in the difference between Subject and Object. With this input, Humanities assert that art is an exercise in elevating sensibility and not downgrading status based on material condition.
Delotavo attests that his works display elements of the bodegon, and yet somewhere central to each work is a person, possibly the Subject, but also, possibly, reduced to an Object, cast in a materialist vortex where persons without power or influence matter less than the latest designer furniture, hi-tech appliance or device, the most effective firearm, or even the trendiest outfit or fashion accessory.
There is a distinct pushback in these works, but this pushback has been Delotavo’s vocabulary for the last four or so decades. In the spirit of parody, he uses French titles, possibly to hint at the false sophistication of parvenu classes whose basic regard or lack of it for fellow humans betrays their social aspirations as conceit and not deep culture. It is a continuously evolving endeavor in Social Realism’s efforts to maintain relevance half a century after it kicked off.
Objet D’Art is on view is on view at BenCab Museum’s Gallery Indigo from Oct. 14 to Nov. 26.
BenCab Museum is on Km. 6 Asin Road, Tuba, Metro Baguio. Open Tuesday to Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m and closed Mondays.
For more details, call (074) 442-7165 or mobile 0920-530-1954 and 0917-320-1347; email [email protected]; or visit www.bencabmuseum.org. – Press release
