Jun & Elrine Vicaldo’s Sculptures Opens ArtisCorpus Gallery
For its opening exhibition, Artis Corpus Gallery in cooperation with Metrobank Foundation will feature SANDIWA: TAO’T KALIKASAN literally translated ONE SPIRIT: HUMANKIND AND NATURE by the father-daughter team, Jun and Elrine Vicaldo. Both are grand prize winners of art competitions, in the sculpture category, of the 2005 Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) and the 2008 Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE), respectively. A native of Sipocot, Camarines sur, Jun finished Fine Arts at UP Diliman and was a first prize winner of the Heritage Park Design Competition at Fort Bonifacio while daughter, Elrine, an architecture student, won the recent Metrobank competition at the age of 18.
The theme of the exhibition revolves around the central idea that all things are both physical and spiritual. People are body and spirit. So is Nature. The unifying factor which makes the whole of Creation one is indeed the term “Universe” itself. There is but one and only one essence that underlies everything that exists in the entire Universe. That essence is the Spirit. In Filipino, spirit is diwa. The artists Jun and Elrine Vicaldo stand by the principle that the Spirit of Man, the Spirit of Woman, the Spirit of Humankind, and the Spirit of Nature are all one and the same. The essence of everything that exists is the same Spirit. This exhibition celebrates that idea. It celebrates Man and Woman communing with Nature. It features Man and Woman in their lightest, as though floating in their own self-realized ethers. Man and Woman dance to celebrate abundance and bountiful harvests, gifts of the ever-providing Mother Nature.
The works in this exhibition are classical in basic thinking, as the personal orientation of the sculptor-father Jun Vicaldo demonstrates. Yet, the works carry a surprise twist, possibly owing to the youth and exposure of sculptor-daughter Elrine. The artists purposely infused influences of pop art, the manga, the cartoon, the graphic novel into their works. The seemingly ethnic and tribal human forms carry with them bought and found objects, transmuting them into contemporary pieces, with a touch of humor and lightheartedness.
Jun Vicaldo’s quasi-idealism shows in his treatment of the idea of “perfect” proportion, distorted in a manneristic fashion. His figures are lithe, rising above the mundane, many of which are in flight. Movement has always been the character of his human forms, whether in dance, as gymnasts, or simply as characters in endless motion. To the artist, movement is reflective of the freedom of the human spirit. Elrine’s fascination for superheroes transforms Jun’s basic forms into fleeting images of fantasy, of whimsicality, of sheer imagination beyond the mundane and the banal.
Both Jun and Elrine Vicaldo show us a different way of looking at life, again; this time, with a firm forward thrust into the twenty-first century, yet with a strong grasp of the past on which is anchored our cultural and personal foundations.
ArtisCorpus Gallery is a newly established art gallery which envisions Art being lived as part of everyone’s daily life. It is committed to promote works of art made by starting and established artists by way of exhibition and education. Its mission is to foster appreciation of the arts within the context of life itself.
