Artist Teresita Mapua narrates how the idea for the “Rurok” art exhibit came during a group lunch: “While the waiter was taking orders, I looked out to the rooftops of the house across Waco’s Cafe. I asked Mang Ato [Renato Habulan] what the Tagalog word was for the highest point on the roof.  After a few tentative words, Mang Ato said, ‘Rurok!’”

The multiple uses of the word “rurok” from the figurative to the literal enabled the guild members to come up with myriad interpretations of the theme. Rough pencil sketches and watercolor studies explored vantage points of different heights, progressing to final pieces in oil, stoneware, and mixed media.

The artworks fall into two extremes: age as apex and heights as zenith. In the former, Fanny Blanco, Mel Cabriana, Aina Valencia, and Abby Yao take youth as a point of departure. Their oil paintings revolve around livelihood, education, and play inspired by their own childhood, or those of their children and grandchildren. Conversely, Lita Gelano finds in elderly Filipinos the summit of experience and the culmination of a life lived well despite pain and suffering, rounding out the value of wisdom and innocence as peaks that marks one’s lifetime.

Thomas Daquioag, Obi Mapua, Helen Mirasol,  Peter Sutcliffe, Stella Torres, and Molly Yap offer various vantage points from which to view the heights of “Rurok.” Thomas Daquioag’s superheroes appear to lament the urban scapes of a billboard state; Mirasol depicts structures associated with spirituality; Sutcliffe looks at water and stone, culminating in “ice cream in excelsis”; Torres observes birds on a wire; architect Mapua professes his fascination for historic airplanes; and Yap plays with the Chinese characters for wedded bliss.

Still on the notion of height, Tess Mapua and Hadrian Mendoza tackle their subjects by experimenting with textures and the third dimension in their use of mixed media and stoneware, respectively. Mapua’s concept of the storm and its all-seeing eye provide elemental constrast to the Mendoza’s use of fire in creating his pieces.

Bridging the two overarching themes, Rubee Alcantara successfully skims these two notions of “rurok” in the exhibit by alternately approaching childhood and the sky.

Rurok runs until March 14 at the Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City. For more information, please call Britania Art Projects at (+632) 387 6373 or (+63917) 807 0327.

Photo credit: Vincent Paul Yao

See more photos here