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拍品專文
Alfredo Esquillo is an acclaimed and multi-award winning contemporary painter hailing from the Philippines. Esquillo graduated in fine art with a major in painting from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila in 1993, and rapidly established himself amongst his peers well known names such as Elmer Borlongan, Mark Justiniani,and Jos John Santos III as an artistic force to be reckoned with. Coming to maturity during a time of social and political unrest during the 1990s, Esquillo's art keenly reveals the latent influences which have irrevocably shaped his worldview and fostered an intimate aesthetic of social realism tempered by deeply personal concerns. Religiosity is a key theme within Esquillo's oeuvre, as the artist engages, interrogates, and often struggles with the staunch Catholic faith of his native country.
Painted in 2013, Coming of the Plagues invokes Esquillo's recurring concerns of religious and existential exploration. This work is a continuation of the subject matter evoked in Esquillo's collaborative exhibition with Renato Habulan, Semblance/Presence at the National University of Singapore Museum in 2012. Within this show, Esquillo and Habulan took as their focus the self-proclaimed local prophet Mang Lauro, a curious figure who inhabits the Plaza Miranda in front of the Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo City, goading worshippers with apocalyptic prophecies. Mang Lauro is an archetype for every oracular saint of the faithful, occupying that liminal space between the role of holy mystic and crazed eccentric.
Within Coming of the Plagues, Esquillo depicts the earthquake foretold by Mang Lauro, itself a subtle symbol for the crumbling of faith and the fall of man or in this case, woman, evoking Eve's tumble from the Garden of Eden though the naked female figure precipitating from the heavens in a hail of brass angels. The title of the work is reminiscent of the biblical Plague of Egypt but instead of a physical affliction, Esquillo's swarm of locusts is cast in metaphorical form: that of religious doubt which causes the leveling of faith, but also gives rise to the possibility of rebirth and cleansing. Simultaneously he portrays this crisis as affecting both genders in equal ways - women are shamed by being cast out naked from heavenly grace while men, Atlas-like, have to the bear the burden of their shattered universe. Esquillo often inserts poignant self-portraits within his compositions. Here the crouched men with shaven heads and bared backs are multiple emanations of the artists personal identity, drawing parallels to his perceived state of emotional and spiritual embattlement against the wrath of his God, bowed under the weight of Catholic guilt.
A significant motif within Coming of the Plagues is the heavenly finger pointed in accusation at the Eve-figure as she falls. This draws to mind Michelangelo's magnum opus in the Sistine Chapel, The Creation of Adam , where God conveys the spark of life with a single touch. However here, the godly finger impels the rain of rubble and destruction, and appears to warn that what can be given can also be taken back. Within the confessional works of Alfredo Esquillo, there is little reciprocity between God and Man, only humility and chastisement. The tension then is not within God and Man, but the constant dichotomy within the self and an individual perspective of how one stands or falls in the face of ones faith.
Painted in 2013, Coming of the Plagues invokes Esquillo's recurring concerns of religious and existential exploration. This work is a continuation of the subject matter evoked in Esquillo's collaborative exhibition with Renato Habulan, Semblance/Presence at the National University of Singapore Museum in 2012. Within this show, Esquillo and Habulan took as their focus the self-proclaimed local prophet Mang Lauro, a curious figure who inhabits the Plaza Miranda in front of the Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo City, goading worshippers with apocalyptic prophecies. Mang Lauro is an archetype for every oracular saint of the faithful, occupying that liminal space between the role of holy mystic and crazed eccentric.
Within Coming of the Plagues, Esquillo depicts the earthquake foretold by Mang Lauro, itself a subtle symbol for the crumbling of faith and the fall of man or in this case, woman, evoking Eve's tumble from the Garden of Eden though the naked female figure precipitating from the heavens in a hail of brass angels. The title of the work is reminiscent of the biblical Plague of Egypt but instead of a physical affliction, Esquillo's swarm of locusts is cast in metaphorical form: that of religious doubt which causes the leveling of faith, but also gives rise to the possibility of rebirth and cleansing. Simultaneously he portrays this crisis as affecting both genders in equal ways - women are shamed by being cast out naked from heavenly grace while men, Atlas-like, have to the bear the burden of their shattered universe. Esquillo often inserts poignant self-portraits within his compositions. Here the crouched men with shaven heads and bared backs are multiple emanations of the artists personal identity, drawing parallels to his perceived state of emotional and spiritual embattlement against the wrath of his God, bowed under the weight of Catholic guilt.
A significant motif within Coming of the Plagues is the heavenly finger pointed in accusation at the Eve-figure as she falls. This draws to mind Michelangelo's magnum opus in the Sistine Chapel, The Creation of Adam , where God conveys the spark of life with a single touch. However here, the godly finger impels the rain of rubble and destruction, and appears to warn that what can be given can also be taken back. Within the confessional works of Alfredo Esquillo, there is little reciprocity between God and Man, only humility and chastisement. The tension then is not within God and Man, but the constant dichotomy within the self and an individual perspective of how one stands or falls in the face of ones faith.