Untethered artists (in uncharted waters)

Among the galleries presenting at this year’s Art Fair Philippines, Galeria Paloma promises to mix things up—specifically, tossing musicians and artists into uncharted waters, working in mediums they’ve never attempted before, with a wide range of collaborations on canvas and in digital form.

The show is called “Un|Tethered,” and it clearly leans into the notion that artists are not limited to one medium of creative expression. There’s a striking mixture of digital collaboration and original sounds added on as layers over original artworks.

Take husband-and-wife team Martin Honasan and Barbie Almalbis. Honasan, known for his layered mixed-media projects shown at CCP and Ayala Museum ArtistSpace, pairs with multi-awarded music icon Almalbis. For their collaboration, they’ve created animated augmented-reality layers, set to Almalbis’ original music. Honasan began with line sketches which progress to line portraits, slowly fading as the underlying painting asserts itself, “like watching a song get to the chorus, the stanzas beginning slowly, leading up to the bridge, tying it all together,” says Galeria Paloma’s Mia Rocha-Lauchengco. The digital superimposition brings out the best of both artists in a digital work titled “Rehoboth” (referring to a Biblical well).

And while most people know National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab for his pop and orchestral works, he’s recently taken a side journey into painting: his extreme-close-up masked self-portraits (“Eyefies”) are matched with overlaid messages and content from Cryptoartph co-founder Jopet Arias: a vivid impression, to say the least.

Then there’s Wolfgang singer Basti Artadi, whose rock journey has led him to visual art, where, in two raw mixed-media pieces—“Plagiarize” and “Inspire”—he dissects the subject of stolen Pinoy music (specifically, the Eheads’). “It got me thinking about the ways we consume our music, how we see our musical heroes, and, to an extent, how we consume art in general,” says the rock singer. A third piece—a blast of rock iconography called “Idolize”—is paired with Artadi’s own digital overlays, including original music.

The idea wasn’t simply to take fishes out of water; it was to capture what floats to the surface. Some of the digital manipulations show a more learned hand than others. But the common connection was a willingness to go outside comfort zones. Says gallery co-director Kimberly Rocha-Delgado, “For ‘Un|Tethered,’ well-known artists, revered in painting, sculpture and music, venture into the digital realm for the first time, with a keen ability to innovate and adapt… transcending the traditional boundaries.”