What excites Ambagan is his penchant for impermanence in these mass-based sites he frequents to. More than 99 channels in a cable television, the streets scenes changes from the last time he was there. The streets resist order, closure and even still moments.
To further feel this urge to document the raging pulse of these city dwellers, with an open mind and a digital camera in tow, Ambagan, felt it natural to photograph these locations which always had heavy concentration of scoundrels, thugs, rogues, and urban denizens generations after generations. His mission was to document the sign of the times not only “with warts and all” but to detail “even the warts and all.” Whether he violated his subjects who don’t know they are being photographed, with the prevalent art practice using in hyper realist mode, its use for painting from photographs has been a long and ongoing debate. Although nobody told him, it wasn’t an easy time every time, as he would be scolded, laughed at lampooned, however a few were delighted.
With the help of modern technology, he unloads the images at home, which he will use as reference in painting and eventually distorting. Like the digital camera, the computer is another tool as to how he would want the image to look like. With a few tweaking and conscious manipulation using the mouse, the image serves as his guide for the actual painting to commence. Whether the spontaneous process is legal, he rises above the controversy in the quality of his execution. Like the paint brush, the camera his palette knife are all part of the multi-media act.
From photographing to the imaging in the computer down to the choice of material for painting, Ambagan is painstakingly meticulous. Even the choice of burlap (peanut sack) more than canvas is commendable as he desires to achieve the texture and the rawness of his subjects. How he adores roughness by his thick smears of paint in disjointed vivacity is very much evident on the pieces. He likes the images to move in a grace-like manner while he busily sketches them futher. He also wants to follow the lines and curves wherever it leads him adding more lines and colors could be a possibility.
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You have to admit there are some pockets in the city where the concentration of the people is just too unbearable -- Quiapo, Monumento, and Kapasigan to name a few. Either for deep religiosity, sheer commerce or mere plain wandering (and wondering) around its streets, it is here that you come across some of the most anarchic and unaccommodating people as subjects. These are spaces your mother constantly nags you not to traverse. In fact, for the most sensitive in us, these may be altars of your darkest fears. Filth, theft, or badly designed billboards on neglected historical landmarks, all abound on them. Like a short kindergarten field trip, all that you need -- and not need to know -- in our country are all here. Like the MMDA-inspired aqua and fuchsia signage that served as invites for this show, one is alerted not to trespass or as translated to nakamamatay.
It was while walking in these same sordid streets, among the nameless throng, that Ricky V. Ambagan deeply reflected on his own individuality as to his directions as an artist. Collectively entitled, Mga Langgam Sa Syudad, these fresh fifteen oil on burlap paintings are the result of that walk and intension for Ambagan’s first solo exhibition. In a country where the arts get little attention outside the art gallery system, discriminating collectors and in the midst of artists who only understand themselves, Ambagan wanted to “capture a moment or freeze an instance” in the lives of this multitude whom he believes will not ever to see his artworks. If they don’t see the show then they will be his show. In honoring them he is the one being honored.
The allegory in which our desperate people in the city to being compared to a mass of ants first come about in the piece entitled Unahan. Here all is not positive with ants as Ambagan is referring to them as people have their own kind of “sweetness” to thrive upon – money, fame, lust – and Manila is one big sugar-coated mecca that they all troop to. Despite their hardworking and patient nature, however once you disturb these ants with their preoccupation with sweetness, they immediately bite back even if it will be like suicide.
The Filipino dream is plain and simple -- to go to Manila to work in order to buy a land in their hometown to retire to. In Luwas, where the ant-like virtues in many of us are attracted in the “sweetness” that is Manila. Notice how people in this painting may band together but are alienated from one another. Everybody seems to be too preoccupied on where to find a more decent job or get the next meal. Or simply how to survive the day. Despite being overcrowded, Ambagan paints you hope as evident in the vast clear clouds in between vendors and buyers.
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