“Unang Mugna”

CEBU, Philippines — Artworks by a new crop of Cebuano talents headlined Portrait Artists Society of the Philippines Inc.’s (PASPI) featured show for the month of June.

Titled “Unang Mugna” and displayed at the Rizal Memorial Library and Museum, the exhibit was more than a debut show for the organization’s new roster of members and affiliates, as its curatorial leanings also symbolized new strides which the group aims to take moving onward – steps that adhere to tradition without turning away from contemporary conventions.

Like PASPI exhibits of the past, landscapes and renderings of everyday life in Cebu dominated the show’s showcased works, just as life-in-the-countryside-scenes and still lifes did their part in completing the exhibit’s curatorial scope.

What made “Unang Mugna” different from past PASPI exhibits was that it presented modernist-themed artworks next to figurative renderings – a positioning which drew the spotlight on the intricacies that encompass surrealist, suprematist and neo-expressionist works.

Guided by the detail-rich techniques that are characteristic of portraiture and figurative styles, the show’s non-representational works framed a different side to the organization’s creative partiality, grooving how unbounded artists who paint from real life can be.

Like athletes who spend most of their time walking with ankle weights, “Unang Mugna’s” exhibiting talents showed what they can do without “training equipment” – towards narratives and tableaus that captivate their creative sights and visions.

In a way, the show harped on one of the creative field’s age-old rule of thumb –that “an artist has to know all the rules first so he’ll know which ones to break to reach his creative goals.”