As a cardinal rule, critics must
never set directions for artists, though it is their
human failing to point out passages that they perceive
to be a dead-end. This failing, to my mind, throws
the entire artmaking process out of whack. But as
sometimes happens, this strategy of consultation
may result in felicitous ends. Just to cite an example:
Andy Warhol, desperate for a subject to paint, sought
the advice of his dealer, who then asked the artist
what it was that he desired most in the world. Warhol’s
quick response was: Money! And that’s how
Warhol painted his photo screen series of American
dollar bills.
Actually, the problem does not
reside in an artist’s ability to work in both
figurative and abstract idioms. The problem occurs
when one becomes merely an artifice and a conceit
of the other. The resultant works endure the failure
of a disharmonious whole. This makes one wonder:
could there not be a happy juxtaposition –
where the figure is not merely a truncated subject,
and the abstract passages not to be dismissed as
a superfluous brushwork.
In two successive shows at the Mag:net Gallery and
the Galeria Duemila, Veneracion shows ample proof
that he has successfully merged a human image and
abstraction. In the sweet communion of a dreamy,
enigmatic narrative, the artist constructed a harmonic
blending of floating images, much like flashes of
intuition, in the manner of, say, the great American
artist Jasper Johns, whose works (in particular,
the crosshatching paintings) incorporated such mystifying
images as skulls and insects. Complex relations
(which must be fathomed intuitively or analytically)
occur in such works, and as in the works of Veneracion,
the choice of iconography is always personal, its
emotional signification sometimes known only to
the artist.
Veneracion claims to harness dream images, thought
reflections, philosophical puzzles, existential
riddles, memory impressions, musical passage and
weather changes – quite a battery of aesthetic
stimuli. Many of his works validate these contemplative
acts. ‘Mang Juan’ and ‘Vincent’,
for instance, are dream portraits of two revered
artists, surely inspiring lodestars for any aspiring
Filipino artist. The great Luna is shown seated
with a brush and palette in hand, frame in the background.
A goat grazes in a pasture of thickly brushed acrylic
pigment, any section of which could pass for an
abstract painting. The Van Gogh portrait is a figuration
from the tragic painter’s self-portrait, with
subtle appropriations from the bowl shape of those
famous sunflowers. What predominates, however, are
the counterbalancing brushstrokes that flay the
pictorial space with smears and dripping splatters
of watery acrylics.
