Physically Present Mentally Absent

What do you want from art? This is the kind of question that rattles inside the mind of Philippines contemporary artist Lindslee on a regular basis. He is sick of dead art that just decorates walls or repeats what one already knows. Right at the beginning, the activity of painting, for Lindslee, was one of filling his canvases with fields of colour and abstract forms, but he was not content to work within the history of art, and within a tradition which may already have said everything he has to say. Adding to his constant sense of disquiet, were the ways in which authority in its various forms had made the rules that artists must adhere by and that the market was the latest dictator of these rules. These days, however, Lindslee has stopped worrying about taste and moved on to develop works that interrogate, challenge and initiate discussion for its viewer.

Lindslee’s latest solo exhibition Physically Present Mentally Absent at Taksu Gallery in Singapore explores the human condition and discusses ideas about contemporary art, myth, beauty, the nature of “Filippino Art”, and the challenges of being an artist in his society. Near the entrance, a grotesque female nude sculpture dominates Bird on the Head (2018), her gritty roughness, burly proportions and strident pose are juxtaposed with the woman’s beautifying face mask and a taxidermy bird sitting on her head. At once feminine and masculine, whimsical and savage, passive and hostile, the muse takes a leaf out of the 1958 novelty song by David Seville. “I’m just sittin’ in a vacant lot with a bird sittin’ on my head. Wicked, wicked, cruel, cruel world. What have you done to me?”, croons the full-size buxom sculpture made of clay and poly-fiber materials. Lindslee expresses life’s dualities in the human form, which is present in the many portraits and self-portraits produced throughout the last decade of his career.

In One Way or Another (2018), a diptych painting, the artist’s play with positive and negative space – on a bed of beautiful blooming flowers in close-up – is interspersed with cut-out, stark blow-ups of these words “EVER WHAT” and “WHAT EVER”. Grappling with snobbish and meaningless art, a line of poetry (according to Lindslee) seems fitting to get rid of these conventions, everything nice and right, this spirit and aesthetics of Dada prevailing in his painting. In fact, his uncanny sense of satire, irony and experimentation underscores much of his work strongly rooted in concepts, abstraction, and Dada sensibilities. Lindslee conveys, through the ingenuity of art’s language, a playful disbelief in institutional structures, and how storytelling or the mythic is central, to communicating or constructing an experience.

It is apparent that Lindslee would like to resist the tremendous pressure placed on artists to produce decorative pieces for opulent restaurants and hotels. For example, Small Things (2018) and Hypnotized (2018) are visceral encounters, two large diamonds glittering in the intricate folds, his use of pure bright colours evoking intense light, and setting off a heady sense of excitement. Spotting the label ‘hype’, the latter of these circular, oil paintings beckons us to come forward, seducing us with its beauty, status, taste, etc, beneath those flashing neon lights and eye candy that razzle-dazzle on modest canvas boards. Did Lindslee paint them in a spirit of bitterness? There is no evidence, instead, each diamond painting speaks to us of the ‘human condition’ and which makes them powerful images.

Another work (presented in an installation format) that is simple and complex at the same time, comprises two sculptures You Can’t Teach Old Tricks to New Dogs (2018) and Grease Man (2018), and a painting Our Daily Bread (2018). Away from the glitz of today’s art world, Lindslee brings to us stories and situations in Philippines: a forlorn, squatting figure and a homeless dog began a humble life in common, watching street life go by. Looking up from the lowly posture of the Grease Man, one then sees a giant slice of bread painting peering out from the wall, which bears the flashing word ‘SOLVED’ in bold typeface. Lindslee has infused conceptual art’s playful language with real-life seriousness and promoted our daily bread to the status of artworks. In addition, the artist examines the utopian impulse behind society and the capitalist art system; he makes art that asks difficult questions about the conditions we live with and the potential we have had to change them.

His position on the periphery has made him as tough as his paintings and sculptures. Nevertheless, a taste for jokes, tongue-in-cheek wit and sensitive humour characterises Lindslee’s work and makes for much of its enjoyment. For example, in Isolated (2018), a self-styled ‘living sculpture’, he makes fun of the attitude, the language of gestures, the lifestyle of an artist, as well as the influence of his own job on his mood, his views on people and things. Lindslee, himself crowned and disguised by an empty canvas, grasping brushes and tubes of paint in hands, is beginning the process of putting together a painting. Holed up in his own studio, devoid of the presence of people, he makes himself invisible, working only when he wishes, and keeping aloof from the rat race. But could he really keep away? Using humour and irony, this diminutive, self-portrait sculpture faces off again with another painting titled Grand Scheme (2018), the latter featuring a black and white checkered racing flag which partially camouflages an artist oppressed with work.

So, is it all work and no play? What is it to live in contemporary time, in the here and now? In PH Pastime (2018), the artist reflects on how to represent this contemporaneity, how he can make sense of it, and how he can live it. Two seemingly opposite activities, basketball and attending church, are “synthesized” in this poly-fiber and acrylic based artwork comprising sixteen basketballs arranged in the form of a cross. After all, basketball was more of a pastime for young, energetic, sturdy men, while participating in church was more of an armchair activity for women and the elderly, to meditate and reflect. But this is Lindslee’s refreshing take on contemporary living in the Philippines, and as well his encouraging viewers to think differently and embrace new possibilities.

The exhibition Physically Present Mentally Absent celebrates a dedicated, playful artist who experiments with human hair and taxidermy, in his work spanning painting, sculpture and installation, from the absurd to the philosophical. He used glass, cement, plant, LED light, soil and live fish to create a head submerged in a tank swimming with fresh water flora and fauna. He stuck to the walls hands sculptures holding out roller brushes, connected large globs of paint sticking out from the canvas to IV bottles filled with coloured liquids. On his creative process, Lindslee says, “Making art is energy, from developing the concept or idea to inventing devices of handling, processing, adding form and colour, right through the outcome – all signs of the artist’s active presence. It is all about exerting oneself physically and mentally to convey energy in art”. Nevertheless, his own subject matter taken from everyday life, including his contacts with peoples and cultures, are all as vital and what, in the same way, gives energy, beauty and humour to his art.

by Christine Han