Added Aug 3, 2006
Durement appuyé sur mon droiteyé. Mon centre cède. Impossible de manoeuvrer. Situation excellente. J'attaque.
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch
It is said that defeat makes a person more philosophical, and setbacks pave the way for a better understanding of all things, especially one’s outlook towards life. Courage can be found either foolishly through drink and a loaded weapon, or wisely through enlightened revelation arising out of cathartic disaster. For Cebu-based abstractionist Dennis “Sio” Montera, confronting his fears is part of the process in eliciting a more sublime and expressive experience in achieving aesthetic harmony and compositional reinvigoration. Using the unforgiving medium of asphalt tar along with acrylic media and paint since 2004, Montera elicits mysterious, meditative, and sometimes dramatic vistas of either monochrome or multi-colored panels that constantly focuses on his ability to use biographical and deeply personal experiences as source materiel for exploring ever-transforming—but always surprisingly consistent—abstracts.
In his current series titled SakripiSIO, Montera focuses on the uniquely Filipino understanding of sacrifice as both a hermeneutic process, as well as an epistemic totality that webs the individual, society, metaphysics and material existence together into a dialectic and redemptive experience. As a member of UP Cebu College Fine Arts faculty, and a UP alumnus from high school to graduate school, Montera has deeply imbibed the university’s notion of personal sacrifice to serve the greater good of the nation that is symbolized by UP’s preeminent statue, The Oblation. However, tacking closer to his recent life experiences, Montera also flags his recent struggles to balance social responsibility and personal fulfilment through the degree of gestural expression in his current work. Content with Failure 1-2 typifies this doubled search for both inner personal peace and outer compositional success by playing with three layers of color, white, ochre, and black, the last either dripped in fine lines over the underpaint; or else deftly brushed on like calligraphic ink strokes on ancient rice paper, forcing one to follow the energy of the idea and its fruition through the acceptance of things that cannot be changed (in Montera’s case, his need to constantly travel to further his art career, leaving behind family and his sick mother; or else encountering “frenemies” in the artworld). Crossing Bridges as We Come to Them almost figuratively illustrates in black, brown, and white the dilemma awaiting every strategic decision we make, and every promise we might break. Perhaps this aversion to personal pain is aptly illustrated in Do Not Promise Anyone Anything, a black rhomboid that juts across the white picture plane like a door that can only be entered with trepidation.
As a Cebuano living in an obsessively Catholic culture, Montera also shows the pathos of asking for forgiveness as a means of redemption through Confession, a trio of black and white figures swimming in a red field redolent of the fear of death. Fear is My Substance goes to the heart of the matter, as the picture plane of red, yellow, black and white patches becomes overwhelmed by a tsunami of blue—perhaps Montera’s reflection of the recent Sendai disaster, or maybe the reflection of his own oncoming fears. From Wounds to Wisdom perhaps signifies the beginning of acceptance and the willingness to move on, a large mass of black and white floating amidst a peach field. Another panel that speaks of chaos and the need for resolution is Disorderly Universe, where large raindrops of blue checker and nearly overwhelm black and white. This resolution of fear as color can be seen in the two panels Montera dedicates to his recent journey to Holland. As Frigid as the Rotterdam treats the icy winter of the North as a field of blue where life, rising in defiance from below, constitutes black, ochre, and orange. I am Not Amsterdam expands upon the “life” colors of ochre, orange, red, and black as an eclectic tapestry that privileges life rather than surrenders it. The resolution to confront fear thus reminds one of the famous Litany of Fear, recited in Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
This acceptance of the fate of others opens up the realization of life’s fragility, and the preciousness of one’s time set against the eternity of the universe. Life Half Spent works on this theme melodiously, the pentimenti-like strokes indicating both an acceptance of fate, and a redoubling of effort to achieve everything in the last half-life. Anger and Rage, as reflected on the degree of gestural energy in the painting, is recognized but held in check by control and balance, the elements that makes an otherwise chaotic life liveable. The realization of discord and random incident as part and parcel of existence is also seen in Old Sins Cast Long Shadows, a monochrome cataloguing of errors that must be confronted, and corrected. Patience is Power shows the path towards enlightenment, when broad strokes of white start to overwhelm black, and point the way to fulfilment. Place of Solace perhaps shows the site where sacrifice is met with acceptance, its green patches indicate nature and life. Indeed, throughout SakripiSIO, Sio Montera continues to show us why there is a need to defy the inevitability of death, betrayal, and destruction, not by raging against the dying light, but by silently reassessing how to give illumination to the remaining time that we have.