Mix-Up Gallery a space for Kapampangan visual artists

Mix-Up Gallery in Angeles City, Pampanga. Photo: Ruston Banal

The feeling that visual arts is monopolized by a contemporary power structure that sees the center of art in the country as Manila is what drove a group of Kapampangans create a gallery space for Kapampangan visual artists active in Central Luzon.

The creation of Mix-Up Gallery, a small space in the Angeles City Library Building, was spearheaded by Ronnie Tayag of the Angeles City Arts Council and Angeles City Tourism Office Chairman Richard Daenos.

For Tayag, a gallery legitimizes art, as art works need spaces where they can be shown to viewers to reaffirm the aesthetics or meanings they convey where selling takes place.

"I believe that the art of the Kapampangan artists needs to be seen, to be shouted out as a unique movement that has its own way of expressing ideas and idealism," he said.

"With a gallery space that shows Kapampangan artists' works, we can create our own culture of conceptualizing, patronizing, media mileage, selling and contributing to the dynamics of Philippine art, without trying to squeeze ourselves into the complex situation of art in Manila," he added.

The Mix-Up Gallery—a space 20 feet by 20 feet in area, with movable panel boards on which to mount paintings—is not a new concept. The name was used for a series of exhibitions in Angeles City in the 1970s by the Pampangan Arts Guild (PAG), of which Tayag was one of the founding members.

The PAG, a legitimate art guild acknowledged by the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts, was formed as a reaction and response to the prevailing social conditions of the Marcos Regime and proliferation of American culture, especially in light of Angeles City's having been an abode for US soldiers. According to Kapampangan historian and linguist Mike Pangilinan, PAG was formed "amidst the social unrest, cultural ambiguity and spiritual apathy of that time, a group of artists from various backgrounds banded together in Angeles City to rediscover their Kapampangan Self and all its artistic expressions."

The Mix-Up Gallery is currently supported by the local government but Tayag is looking into its becoming fully independent in terms of maintenance and funding, with plans to open it to promote, exhibit and sell the work of active visual artists starting this summer. "We will be accepting applications from Central Luzon artists where we will conduct a meeting on their proposed theme and will focus more deeply on one-man shows," he said.

"[W]e want the artists in the region to look at this as a main space to show their work that can equate other galleries here and abroad," Tayag added. A website that will serve as a catalogue of the artworks for easy online viewing will also be created.

A number of Kapampangan artists have helped shape Philippine art history, and in some cases even revolutionized it. There was Galo B. Ocampo, one of the the post-war "Triumvirate" who—along with Victorio Edades and Carlos "Botong" Francisco—helped usher in the age of Philippine Modern Art. His famous work is the "Brown Madonna"(1938), an apparent anti-classical approach that goes against the conventional representation of Mary as Caucasian. Ocampo was from Sta. Rita, Pampanga.

Another famous modern art painter from Pampanga was "transparent cubism" master Vicente Manansala, who hailed from Macabebe. In the current art scene, there is sculptor Toym Imao, whose mother is from Sto. Tomas; UK-based artist Pio Abad, whose mother is from Lubao; and Asia's premiere ecclesiastical sculptor, Willy Layug who is based in Betis. For Tayag, given the big contributions of the Kapampangans to the visual arts, it is high time for there to be an abode where above anything else, the Kapampangan artist is the highlight. — BM, GMA News

Mix-Up Gallery is on the second floor of the Angeles City Library Building, beside Museo Ning Angeles.