Philippine Daily Inquirer
by Lito Zulueta
Young abstractionist show the resilience of the genre
THE YOUNG ABSTRACTIONIST Lindslee continues to show progress in his artmaking with his new show, “Finding Normal,” which closes today at the Goethe-Institut Manila (Adamson Centre, 121 L.P. Leviste St., Salcedo Village, Makati; tel. 8170978 or visit www.goethe.de/manila). His latest works in mixed media attempt to define normalcy with the rather predictable paradox that, of course, nothing’s truly or permanently normal.
Lindslee is himself the embodiment of that paradox. His full name is Lindsey James Alvarez Lee, which he has truncated to something like an abbreviation and an abstraction. Still a young artist in his late 20s, he has embraced abstraction in the manner of a devotee.
Although he is from Bacolod and has the gentle, endearing traits of the South, he’s very cosmopolitan in his artistic sensibilities. He seems to follow after “Sinoy” (Sino-Pinoy) artists, notably Ang Kiukok, who have experimented in one way or another with the abstract idiom despite a certain attachment to the representational. It is difficult to pigeonhole him, though.
The indeterminacy owes to the breadth of his subject matter, which, based on past shows, covers animals, “cause and effect,” and “SR,” which could be Social Realism (in abstraction!), or, since the works relate to living in the city with its congestion and cacophony, to “standing-room only.”
So it’s not surprising that he should take on the theme of normalcy—or interpretations thereof—in his new show. After such rather restless takes on existential aberrancy, an artist should settle down in the comforts of home and normalcy.
But one glimpse at the works and one immediately is shocked at a certain abnormality: The works have colors! Of course, the Lindslee we have come to know is the monochromatic fanatic who would rather explore shades of grey rather than check out the colors of the rainbow. So he is entirely out of character in this show.
Despite his abnormal color ventures, Lindslee stays normal and predictable in his romance with the palette. The strong colors he introduces to his canvas are red, black and white, with no apologies. The other colors—mocha, faded blue and his favorite gray—are true to form.
The new colors should connote either a new spring or a deepening autumn (or both) in the artist’s emotional life. “Mary Go Round” seems a cheerful title for the normally genial but restrained Lindslee. Who’s Mary? Is she Lindslee’s girlfriend or fling? Never mind.
The painting—a carousel of gray with a fulcrum-pole of black and, on the heart of the pole, a red spot—should make for an intriguing emotional guesswork. It’s a happy painting, and also ominously sad.
“Fire on My Tree House” has a huge square of pale sky-blue on its upper half, perhaps to connote the purity of childhood, with an invading red at left, a splatter of black near it, and a whip of white at the center of the blue field. Red may be the flame of desire and the black intrusion the emptiness of carnal pleasures.
Except for blue, roughly the same colors are observable in “Butterfly Effect,” except that the landscape is a craggy white with two frosty mocha pillars at the right; on these mocha planes can be seen smudges of black and red. Of course, the smudges represent the “butterfly effect,” tiny wings flapping that may cause an aberration in the atmosphere despite their sizes.
The last painting perhaps best represents the collection. In dealing with the butterfly effect, Lindslee seems to say that nothing’s ever normal. The flapping of a butterfly’s wings may represent a small change in an otherwise normal situation; but with recurrence and increasing intensity—such as Lindless’s rather obsessive and severe brushstrokes in this collection—the wings may yet cause a storm. It’s no wonder that the butterfly effect is part of chaos theory. Is Lindslee saying that the only normalcy possible is chaos?