Grotesque is gorgeous with Leeroy New

With its shady lanes and tree-lined streets, Teacher's Village in Quezon City is a lovely place to live. The houses are mostly comfortable bungalows, perfect for laidback living. 

 

But inside one of the houses lies a fantastic collection of creatures—larger-than-life sculptures that melt, flow, and spill from their maker's consciousness into the space that is Leeroy New's studio. From outside the gate you can smell the fumes. The strong odor of paint and glue hangs in the air, and from time to time you might hear the buzz of a drill. This is where the 25-year-old sculptor spends most of his time. He lives on the second floor, but the first floor and garage serve as his work studio. "I try to stay in my studio as much as possible and get more work done, but it can't be helped, you have to go to meetings, buy materials," says New.

 

If you didn't know who he was, you couldn't tell from how he looks that he's actually an internationally-acclaimed artist. Although he prefers to sculpt, his work extends to production design for theater, television and film. Recently, he's also been collaborating with photographers like those from Everywhere We Shoot, and one of his rubber-cast tops has been immortalized in the cover art for Lady Gaga's "Marry the Night" single release.

 

"I try to be everywhere. Initially I was drawn to making sculpture because in a way it's more immediate physically with the audience, and I prefer them large-scale," says New, who traces his relationship with the form to playing with clay as a child.

 

"All kids have gone through that phase where they draw, they interpret their world through drawing and clay and whatever; for them it's a playful activity. In my case the intentions just evolved. I just became more complex, to a certain level. It never stopped. I can't really pinpoint a time where I decided that I want to do this, kasi ever since, the moment you started drawing and scribbling, I guess that's it. It just evolved into something else," says New.

 

Flair for drama

 

It's easy to spot a Leeroy New piece. Apart from his usual mixed media creations of plastic and industrial-based materials, he has a flair for drama, not just in terms of size but color, too. His works look like extraterrestrial beings, the stuff of vivid nightmares after reading science fiction. But he has a knack for turning scary into sexy, grotesque into gorgeous. His creatures are monstrous, but they come in playground colors. From afar they might look pretty, but up close they could make your skin crawl.

 

Like most artists, his sensibilities are informed by several things, including his childhood experiences. "Tawag ng parents ko sa akin, Addams Family. The whole family! For them, I was so weird," says New, who would draw pages and pages of different kinds of monsters. "Sobrang weird ‘yung mga hitsura. They didn't make sense. I loved horror and ‘yung mga aswang," shares New.

 

New's work has been mounted both in the Philippines and abroad—in 2009 at the Fukuoka Triennale in Japan, in 2008 at the Singapore Biennale, and at La Trobe Visual Art Center in Australia where he received a grant for an art residency as part of the 2009 Ateneo Art Award program. His work has also been featured in group and solo shows at the GSIS Museum, UP Vargas Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, the La Salle University Chapel, the Abueva gates at the University Avenue in the UP Diliman Campus, the Boston Gallery in Cubao, the Dumaguete Terracotta Biennale, Manila Contemporary, The Drawing Room, Art Informal, Orange Gallery in Bacolod, the Megamall Art Center, and Sputnik in Cubao X.

 

Although his work is frequently featured in galleries, he began by producing art as a reaction against galleries in general. "When I was a student, they give you a hard time to put up shows in the galleries. Parang inisip ko na hindi naman kailangan. So I did graffiti, I did outdoor installation. Kumbaga backdoor thing siya," says New. 

 

He still prefers to do large-scale installations, because these are directly experiential to the people who don't necessarily go to these galleries. "The whole idea is an intervention. Like, if you can't bring them to the gallery, you go out to them and disrupt their routine," says New, whose latest work "Psychopomp's Reef" is on exhibit at the BGC Offsite Gallery in Bonifacio Global City until February 18, 2012.

 

"This whole idea of public art, and transforming your immediate environment—it’s more of an active participation for me to transform the environment. It's my way of contributing and transforming my society," says New.

 

"That's what designers and artists are prone to do. They project their sensibilities onto whatever medium they choose...and you just hope that there's some sort of connect or affect that happens when you do a piece. Somehow they're drawn to an element of your work, maybe the craft aspect of it or the content. All I can wish for is that I do the works well enough that they find some sort of connection," he says. Exploring with materials

 

Although New's work has a recognizable look, he is always exploring with materials, depending on what he discovers. Frequent trips to Divisoria have earned him the privilege of being a favored suki. "May sarili na silang presyo para sa akin," says New, who buys kilos of toys, cable ties, flexible conduits, and other items that he finds for his work, mostly by accident. 

 

With these highly artificial materials, New creates sculptures that mimic nature—prickly urchins, itchy higads, creeping baletes and bursting bubbles. Impossible to ignore, his work gets plenty of attention, and this pleases New, whether the audience understands it or not. 

 

"Of course it's always a good feeling when people relate to the work even if they don't understand it. Like the balete, you can't really pin what it is, but a lot of students from Ateneo have blogged about it. They think it's really cool or whatever, it's like a coral growth, parang creature na nag-invade sa ano, ang dami nilang interpretations. If they relate to it that way, it's good, and the whole idea is it's nothing specific. That whole ambiguity is intentional, that it's not literally a balete," says New.

 

Just being in his studio is an experience. It's a mix of old works and works in progress, and you can just feel the energy bouncing off the walls. New is the type of artist who simply can't keep still. Right now he's in the middle of doing some fashion and some theater design at the same time.

 

"Medyo nakakabaliw din," he admits, but the only way he might take a break is if he runs out of money to buy materials, but that's unlikely given how busy he is. It's a vicious cycle, but that's a good thing, especially since New believes success is still a long way off.

 

"As long as you’re anxious I guess you still want to do a lot more things. You always have to exceed yourself. There's always something else you feel you have to do," he says. –KG/HS, GMA News

 

Leeroy New's "Psychopomp's Reef" is on view until February 18, 2012 at the BGC Offsite Gallery at 28th Street and 7th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Metro Manila. For inquiries, call Bonifacio Arts Foundation Inc. at (632) 8562870. Photos by Everywhere We Shoot