Lot 13: Nona Garcia b. 1978 , Dialogue oil on canvas

oil on canvas

213.5 by 152.5cm.; 84 by 60in. (2)

PROPERTY OF AN ASIAN COLLECTOR
In 2000 Nona Garcia won a Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN (Association of Southeast?Asian Nations) Art Award in Singapore with See-Saw, a bold diptych of a photo realistic object wrapped in a cloth bundle, paired with its x-rayed image revealing a chainsaw within. The work earned her the top prize for that year. One of the most acclaimed young Filipino artists in the world today, Garcia is also a prominent figure in the renaissance of contemporary art in the Philippines. Her work is characterized by an adherence to photo-realistic depiction while drawing its impetus from an imaginative abstraction of its subject. Garcia's works since then have continued to explore the relationship between the detached, objective photorealistic documentation of objects, places and people, and the often passionate, complex feelings of the artist for her various subjects. In her Ambient Stills series (2002) for example, Garcia depicts the bare, monochromatic interiors of an abandoned hospital that was once owned by her family. In the 1960s Vija Celmins began producing photorealistic canvases of familiar, houseold objects. But the practice, of presenting detached, commonplace and photorealistic images of disquieting realities was of course pioneered by Gerhard Richter in the 1980s. Appropriated by Garcia, it provides a powerful counterpoint to the spectacle, symbolism and fantasy in some aspects of popular culture in the Philippines. Betty (1988), Richter's groundbreaking portrait of his daughter painted with the back of her head to the viewer, first articulated this sense of visually capturing someone so important to the artist with the detachment of a photograph, which records an image without any emotion. Thai artist Natee Utarit has also been fascinated with Richter's practice, and his group of Mother paintings, part of his Appearance and Reality series (1998), depict several versions of the back of his mother. Garcia's Dialogue continues this lineage, with a two-panel work of the backs of her parents. This time she presents this concept in large scale, unlike her predecessors who worked with smaller canvases. The size, reminiscent of Chuck Close's portraits, clearly articulates the works as grandiose objects in their own right, adding another layer of meaning to them, paradoxically turning these faceless impersonal portraits into ostentatious icons. As its title suggests, Nona Garcia's Dialogue is composed of two parts, each conscious and contemplative of the presence of the other. It also forms a collective portrait of its subjects--in this case, the artist's parents. Not a diptych in that the two canvasses are not bound together by any hinge, they are nonetheless linked. With only the backs of their upper torsos and heads available to view, the relationship is not assumed through the usual signifiers: the recognition of a face, the width of a smile, the interlocking of hands. Instead the marriage between the two figures is hinted at through its formalist aspects-- the orientation of their poses, the symmetry of their shapes and memory-laden monochrome. And, though both are never independent from each other, they may however be separated.