Manila Bulletin
by Yonina Chan
An artist’s exploration into perception and art
FOR those who have followed this young artist’s career, especially in the busier moments of last year, it is perhaps not such a surprise to see where he has taken his paintings now, in this return of sorts from the long, necessary break away from the busyness and exhausting redundancy of his world.
In this solo exhibit–his eighth since his first solo exhibit held out of the country in 2002–Lindslee James Alvarez Lee continues on his marked path. In almost shy, fragmented attempts to put to words the course of things that led him thus far, Lindslee traces his childhood perceptions of his craft, to his expanded perceptions that came with exposure to painting abroad, to the jolt from last year’s hurricane of exhibits and consequent commissions, to his current trend of thought translated into his works.
“Pinapaganda ko ang mga bagay-bagay nung bata ako,” Lindslee says, when talking about his childhood attempts. There, he recalls, art seemed to be a purer thing—it was play uninhibited by the rules and influences that come to us as adults. While of course, rules and influences have made their own way (like it or not) into his sensibilities, such thought and desire for purity is still evident in Lindslee’s process to this day. In his own artist’s statement, he puts forth his belief that “Art per se is a product of instinct,” also that, as he creates “through the spontaneous movement of my body, / as fuelled by my blood,” he is like “a child subconsciously making a figure out of nothing.”
It is this desire for a certain innocence that underscores his constant efforts to not be influenced by other works, but rather to be influenced by the purest well of emotions and the experience of and with the people around him.
Several of Lindslee’s paintings have reverberated with a certain chaos and forcefulness, volatility and strong, telling emotion, while always maintaining a level of uncertainty in their otherwise seemingly bold, definitive statements.
Of his more recent history, art critic Cid Reyes chronicles and remarks best on Lindslee’s not unfamiliar story of prodigious success in the art scene, written in a piece for his 2005 exhibit Black and Transparent: “To have such searching spotlight on an artist is to place him on a high-wire act, with an audience watching out for the heart-stopping stylistic leaps, as it were, forcing the artist to take calculated risks in order to generate the expected applause. But clearly Lindslee has his head secured on his shoulder, treading his own direction towards an aesthetic and emotional maturity.”
And quite surely enough, it is no strange coincidence that Lindslee stopped working after last year. Disliking to have to repeat the pattern his works (often the bane of otherwise well-paying commissioned projects), Lindslee wanted to be able to do work for himself and continue to grow and experiment with his aesthetic. And perhaps, some will say, true to form, almost a year later what has come out of this hiatus is an originally unplanned show, product more, perhaps, of some good fortune and the slow, deliberate work Lindslee has been able to do for himself without any pressures.
Finding Normal is the product of Lindslee’s attempts to “let it all out,” as well as his nature to deconstruct terms and assumptions often tossed around loosely in the world of art. Finding Normal considers the importance of finding what is normal to the individual, since “normal” is almost a contradiction of itself. Extended to art, it is a question of what is considered “normal” in paintings, and in art in general as well. Where most young artists have endeavored to make statements, Lindslee is putting forth questions: more ambiguously, for example, in Livingroom Disaster, where he remarks on “art” as created (whether by famous painters or relative unknowns) for fitting into the interior of a room. Others are more straightforward: Deceiving Reality, One-Sided Painter, or Pushing Fakers.
The decided difference in this current exhibit, however, is in Lindslee’s shift back to a more traditional (though still not completely traditional) acrylic and oil medium. From his previous more experimental works, it comes as a surprise, though the bold, free strokes in his larger painting would seem to justify this sudden break, as easily powerful expression in the simplicity of the medium make space for layers of questions that need to be asked and offered up to for the world to see.
Finding Normal runs until October 24 at the new Goethe-Institut Manila located at the 5th Floor Adamson Center, 121 Leviste St., Salcedo Village, Makati City.