Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. — Stella Adler
After a middling year of gap since the “Handumanan” exhibit, Reyes is back with his 18th solo show named “Al Fresco” opening on the 3rd of February 2018.
Green is most significant and essential tinge to the artist-critic Cid Reyes. In green he finds the solace that pacifies his spirit. Being the color of his alma mater, green for Cid is affectionately brimmed. He has assembled a set of inspirational quotations as a verbal tableau in the place where he spent some of the happiest years of his youth. Resembling Tom Jones, he has this ability to crystallize a sense of emotional solidity affirming affectionate relationship with nature. As a nature-lover, green is where Cid finds the most comfort –that spurred him to create the misty apparitions of his spray paintings.
Cid Reyes is one of the prominent art critics, curator, and scholar in the Philippines. He, who has, through the decades, created a substantial body of works in the two disciplines, has held 17 solo exhibitions. He is the recipient of the 2015 Most Outstanding Kapampangan Award in the field of arts and in 1978. He also won the Art Criticism Award of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP). For two consecutive years 2001-2002, he was voted Art Critic of the Year by Art Manila Quarterly. In 2003, he was elevated to Hall of Fame for Art Criticism.
As a prolific writer, he has written numerous art reviews, interviews, and exhibition notes. He has authored and co-authored over 40 art books. “Conversations on Philippine Art” published in 1989 by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) authored by Reyes includes interviews with several Philippine National Artists for the Arts including sculptor Napoleon Abueva and painters Arturo Luz, Manansala, Edades, Joya, Kiukok, Legaspi, H.R. Ocampo and BenCab (with Krip Yuson), and J. Elizalde Navarro. He also wrote the longest-running weekly art column, spanning a decade (from 1994-2004), “Gallery-Hopping” in TODAY. This is on top of his day job as executive director and vice president of Ace Saatchi.
Cid Reyes studied at De La Salle University and a scholarship from the Italian government, he had the opportunity to study painting at the Accademia di Belli Arti in Rome. After mastering his painting journey, he studied art history at the City Lit Institute in London. Cid was already writing occasional art reviews this time and he knew he could not be a critic if he didn’t know art history.
According to some reporters, he is an engaging conversationalist. But more than the remarks about art and artists and writing about art, Cid himself is an art. Back then, many don’t know he is a painter as well. He started exhibiting his works at the age of 23 during the free-spirit days of 1969. Cid first showed his suite of works done in acrylic at Print – a gallery by Joy T. Dayrit at the Makati Commercial Center. His lyrical abstract-expressionist works were addressed by Alfredo Roces as “highly promising if somewhat unsure in parts.” He also capped Cid in having more confidence in the idiom which with time and a lot of mileage may mature and flower. The artist calls the works shown at Print his “gestural, bravura works.”
He exhibited at the Solidaridad Galleries in Malate the following year enthused by the sell-out of his first show. His works then were more Oriental, predominantly black-and-white as he was prompted by calligraphic strokes. Two years later, he mounted “Chroma,” a collection of geometric Mondrian-like paintings on hardwood (using automotive lacquer), at the Hyatt. It was the zenith of Imelda Marcos and she bought half of the works that shocked Reyes.
Cid’s adopted hometown in Negros Occidental is the inspiration of his work “Handumanan” that means “offering.” In the 12 works (mixed media on paper) on view, he gave tribute to three Filipino abstract artists: H. R. Ocampo, Jose Joya and Lee Aguinaldo whose works opened his eyes to a Philippine type of abstraction, “vitalized by Western influences but imbued with an indigenous feeling for shape and color.”
Welcoming the year 2018, Cid has again divulged his love of painting. He did not fail to amaze the art-enthusiasts in his newest and 18th solo exhibit “Al Fresco.” The phrase is derived from the Italian term meaning “outdoors” or “in the fresh,” pertaining as well to the wet plaster used in the creation of medieval and Renaissance frescoes. Inevitably alluding to the subject of nature, with its scenes of lush tropical vegetation and colorful floral images, Reyes, essentially an abstractionist, observes in these recent works nature’s dark and destructive force unleashed in its perpetual visitation of monsoon rains, summer droughts, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. His show was held from February 3 to 17 at the Saturday Group Gallery. Indeed, another iconic works about nature was brought to Philippine Art history.
Al Fresco: Unfolding the Beauty of Abstractionism
Sources:
Galarpe, K. (2008). Cid Reyes: The art critic goes back to painting. Retrieved on march 15, 2018 from https://karengalarpe.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/cid-reyes-the-art-critic-goes-back-to-painting/
Philippine Daily Inquirer. (2015, December 18). Art critic Cid Reyes awarded. Retrieved on March 15, 2018 from http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/217691/art-critic-cid-reyes-awarded/
Philippine Daily Inquirer. (2018, January 29). Cid Reyes’ ‘Al Fresco’ graces Saturday Group Gallery. Retrieved on March 15, 2018 from http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/285342/cid-reyes-al-fresco-graces-saturday-group-gallery/
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