Painting is syncopation: Lontoc at Tago Jazz

No longer a well-kept secret in the art world are the paintings of Benjie Lontoc Jr., who presently is putting together a suite of recent works, mostly acrylic or oil pastel. Working title is “The View from Distant Reality,” an exhibit to run for the next weeks at Tago Jazz Cafe in Quezon City, starting fourth Friday of the merry mixed-up month of May, alongside an album launch by Show Me Your Kung Fu in a program collectively titled “Windows.”

How to introduce the guy, who looks nondescript enough? You might have seen his work before, at Blind Tiger at turn of the century, or before that in Today newspaper or Midweek magazine, if you happen to leaf through their pages particularly in the editorials or literary section. His medium pen and ink, lifeblood of the editorial cartoonist, else the occasional woodcut or print, for variance.

To say that he was breaking into his style early would be understatement, because here was a hand sure of what it was doing, however at first glance tentatively, that the viewer never worried whether the artist was right or lefthanded, even ambidextrous. Trivia maybe not so trivial: in 1981 Lontoc won the grand prize for painting from the Art Association of the Philippines, same prize given to the late Maningning Miclat 11 years later, another time another place, trouble in a different paradise. That alone should make him something of a survivor, and any work of his a potential collectible.

Let’s hear from the artist himself, via SMS: “It’s hard to imagine life without art. Creativity is where my happiness lies. My early heroes were Alfredo Alcala, Nestor Redondo, Francisco Coching, Alex Nino. They were my early access to visual art. It makes my childhood fantasy complete…”

Then from Blind Tiger it was off to Norway and the northern lights upon being petitioned by his then partner who worked in a nursing home, though the painter himself was with the kitchen staff of a hotel, almost like Anthony Bourdain. He stayed for a couple of decades, in the process learning the Nordic language.

“I worked in the kitchen of a five-star hotel in the heart of Oslo. During my spare time I draw and take pictures on the street of Oslo. I have a one-man show and participated in group shows and was a member of Norwegian professional artists.”

There were the occasional vacation leaves home, including one in 2009 where he exhibited some of his Oslo works at Mag:net Katipunan, under the auspices of Iloilo-based Rock Drilon and which hosted random poetry readings, nights of the spoken word.

He recalls not being too impressed with Amorsolo, which he said “looked old” and could not relate to. “Since we are baby boomers the culture of the sixties, the psychedelia era affected my consciousness very much especially the music and drugs…” Clearly it had a transcending effect.

Years passed and he found himself walking inside UP campus to visit a friend, Handel’s Water Music playing on his Walkman. “I can’t explain my feelings then, it was heavenly high without drugs and experiencing it also on painting and reading books…”

Right about the time of the pandemic he decided to settle back in the homeland, Manila was beckoning, and soon enough he held a one-man show at Oarhouse Manila, owned by his former colleague at News Day newspaper, the photographer Ben Razon, titled “Inksistentialismo” in 2022. Again mostly in black and white with a cohort of photographs depicting Oslo street life, it was as if the artist had come full circle. Or had he?

“I was heavily influenced by European art especially Expressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism. They were very progressive and advanced during their time. Dalena, Chabet, Bogie (Tence Ruiz), Aviado, Charlie Co are among my favorites in the local scene,” the painter says via text.

Well this should give us fair inkling of what Tago Jazz has in store for the viewer, or listener for that matter, a great majority of them in living color if not Sensurround, the painter run riot in an art supplies store yet with an inherent restraint and discipline, as if mindful of not letting the kung fu cat out of the bag too soon.

The jazz bar gig follows his two-man show earlier this summer with fellow long-time exile from the newsroom, Jose Tence Ruiz, “Bilibid ng Malalaya” at Kaida Contemporary along Kamias, where the brothers in arms again confounded the critics and gallery habitues with their colorfully jarring renditions and commentary of present Filipino society, civil or otherwise.