Kiamko’s walk of art

You’re in for a long conversation when you talk to  Cebuano painter Boy Kiamko. The artist, who is also a former radio commentator and newpaper columnist, is impatient with his ideas. It seems he always has the general public in mind in his every undertaking and he wastes no time to reach them, whether he wears the hat of a journalist, a political analyst or a painter.

Still, it is as an artist that Cebuanos have known Kiamko. Perhaps, this has to do with his efforts to bring art closer to the masses. For years now, he has been conducting workshops, sketching sessions and exhibits in public places like parks and shopping malls. These initiatives he calls “Art Walk,” an apt title for a personal strategy to bring art to the attention of the pedestrian.

As a student given to long walks, I remember once stopping by Kiamko’s colorful mural on the firewall of the Rizal Memorial Library. Executed in his trademark cubism, the work showed a slice of life in Cebu City, with jeepneys and people and the Magellan’s Cross at the center. Or that was how I remembered it, for unfortunately the mural was later erased.

So a major work by one of Cebu’s pioneering modernists was destroyed. What was once an attention-getter for passers-by along Jones Avenue was turned into a drab, white-washed wall. It adds once again to our cases of lost artistic heritage due to disrespect and sheer ignorance. I was even surprised that they dared do it to an artist who is also a prominent opinion maker. Even more alarming was the lack of support for Kiamko’s protests from his artist peers. Or perhaps, like me, most were not aware when the authorities erased the mural without prior consultation.

Perhaps this has only strengthened Kiamko’s resolve to educate the public even more about the importance of art. Recently, he turned Art Walk into a Multiply site, featuring not just his own but works by other Cebuano artists. Thus, Art Walk becomes a virtual tour of the Cebuano art scene. No longer limited to pedestrians, the online gallery invites “walk-in” viewers from around the globe to view the works and, hopefully, buy. Now that’s an artist who walks the talk.

Last Oct. 8, Kiamko opens his 23rd solo exhibition titled “B/W Medium” at the Sacred Heart Parish Alternative Contemporary Art Studio. Curated by artist-priest Jason Dy, SJ, the works feature a selection of  black and white paintings and a couple of metal sculptures. Twenty three solo exhibitions give you an idea of how prolific is the artist. But this show is his first black and white show.

“I chose to probe why black is beautiful,” Kiamko said in his exhibit statement. “There is proof that black can’t stand alone without light. Black is the structure and white is the highlight.”

Kiamko tends to be pedagogical in his conversations, but his works command sober meditation. True to the spirit of cubism, the artist chooses form over content. Or like Picasso and Braque, he tends to turn form into content.

And so there is nothing explicitly narrative in the choice of subject matter. He abstracts guitars, jeepneys, birds and human figures for the sheer enjoyment of making them an occasion for him to play with lines, colors, textures, and shapes. He invites viewers to simply share this pleasure and not to think so much of stories connected with them.

But in this recent show, Kiamko shows a fondness for images of Christ and the mother and child. His pointillist portrait of Christ almost obscured in chiaroscuro recalls, according to Fr. Jason, St. John of the Cross’s poem, “Dark Night of the Soul,” which uses night as a metaphor for the great void from which God may speak.

Such is the mystical paradox of black and white. Black is the result of all the colors mixed together. And a prism held against the white light, reveals a rainbow of colors. The presence or absence of color parallels the primordial question of being and non-being.

In this sense, Kiamko’s works invite more than just meditation of form. Perhaps, inspired by the venue (a church garage turned gallery) of this  show, the artist turns to the Formless as the ultimate content. And what better way to suggest that than with the depth and intrinsic solemnity of black and white.