A Set of Two Sunsets

In the hands of emerging young painter Buen Calubayan, a landscape isn't just a landscape: It is a continuing search for the self, a natural step forward on the never-ending quest for meaning. A Set of Two Sunsets (Lot 301) is a brooding Impressionist diptych: two views of a fiery dusk from a sapphire sky, splashing daubs of red across the empty land below. The work refines Calubayan's research on landscapes, which began in 2008, and reflects his deepening interest in "the traditional and simple function" of painting. He plays with geometrical perspectives, vanishing points, and frames of reference elements used by artists to construct landscapes since the Renaissance. Calubayan paints the same scene from different angles, lending a cinematographic effect to the viewing experience. Seen together, the two canvases convey movement. We stay still; Calubayan shifts the scene for us. On a metaphorical level, the diptych uses the illusion of the vanishing point the same mind trick that makes us believe that railroad tracks recede into the horizon to illustrate that there is no "point" to anything. Parallel lines will never meet. We can walk alongside these lines for all eternity, only to find out that there is no intersection. For Calubayan, what matters is that we walked at all and came to realize that there is no end.
A Set of Two Sunsets reinvigorates the study of landscape painting, a genre often overlooked by contemporary practice. The scarlet and azure diptych captivates and enthralls. In Calubayan's sunset, one rediscovers enduring mysteries that make life worthwhile.