Lamberto Acyatan
Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
Let’ s go back to the river analogy. Memory and emotion intertwine like water molecules that take ephemeral shapes. The bluntness or non-sharpness represents a non-final state. It is an attempt to capture fluidity. Again, that may sound paradoxical but what is not?
A songwriter would find my style as something familiar. Like you know the chords and possible melodies to combine. These are the basic tools and materials. The words are like the colors that you mix and match to arrive at something pleasant or disturbing- depending on what you wish to convey. Along the way, a muse takes over and I let go. Sometimes I wrestle with the muse with my pre-conceived notions and arrive at a happy compromise. Choosing my subjects depends on certain events or emotional experiences that beg my consciousness to take form on the material plane. For commissioned work, I play around the client’ s desired result or some specific objects to appear. I can be pliant like my materials.
I explore and enjoy the unfamiliar. If I simply followed the footsteps of the artists in my hometown, I would have been known as another woodcarver. Of course, it’ s not a bad thing but I thought that there must be something beyond wood for me. Epoxy may have been exploited by other artists but maybe not in the way that I do- especially in large scales that I got recognized for by the art community. I consider myself as an ordinary man and epoxy as an ordinary material but something extraordinary can be achieved with patience and imagination.
Surreal Mindanao is my tribute to my adoptive home that is rich with ancient tales and cultural beliefs that 300 years of Spanish rule, 50 years of American