|
property
of transparency that lends glass its distinctive allure. Likewise,
as wood has its veins, glass has its "cords" or pouring lines
which form wavelike strands within the cullet and which leave
their traces after a long period of settling and cooling.
In the same way as veins of wood, the cords guide the sculptor
in cutting and shaping the forms. But on the whole, the creative
process involves bringing into play the reflective and refractive
properties of the medium in a complex interaction with the
setting, natural or man-made. For glass sculpture which possesses
its own formal dynamics holds a dual relationship with the
environment. On one hand, it passively reflects the myriad
features of the surroundings, even as the images that glide
or float upon its surface are continually modified by the
changing conditions of the light through the day and the seasons.
But on the other hand, the intervention of the sculptor breaks
up the flow of reflected images by various refractive and
multiplying strategies through which he creates multiple perspectives
of interior spaces that reverberate within the transparent
form.
It is
to be noted that Ramon Orlina (b. 1944, Manila) developed
his particular approach and technique on his own. The majority
of glass artists in the United States and Europe work with
hot glass which involves blowing the molten substance into
shape in a blazing furnace. In the tradition of Murano in
Italy, the refined technique of glassblowing produces exquisite
multi-hued vases and receptacles. However, some artists, while
working within this tradition, create sculptural form out
of the layering and texturing of elements in striking configurations.
Then, too, there are the glass artists who use cold casting
or molding processes to create sculptural form, such as the
Czech glass artists in Bratislava.
In mid-1975
when Orlina first became active as an artist working in the
glass medium, his work was divided between paintings on plate
glass of which he had two exhibits and glass mural installations,
such as Arcanum at the Manila Hotel. While these gave him
immense artistic satisfaction, he decided to go fully into
carved glass sculpture starting with his 1980 one-man show,
Prismatic Glass Sculpture at the City Gallery in Manila. To
be sure, this show was a unique and fascinating experience,
being the first of its kind using glass as a three-dimensional
medium. Basically, his art involves a reductive process of
direct carving on the raw, irregularly shaped blocks in green
tones because of the high silica content of the industrial
material. But unlike sculptors of wood or stone, he does not
work on the material with a chisel: instead, he uses grinding
tools and abrasive powders to give it shape, as in jade sculpture.
Orlina obtains his cullets from the industrial residues of
Republic Glass, a company which produces sheet glass and with
which he enjoys a special arrangement.
It was
in his 1980 show that he came to grasp the principles of making
carved glass sculpture. Here the pieces, guided by the principle
of faceting, were marked by a freshness and classical simplicity
in their clear emerald green hues reflecting the light and
tonal patterns of the environment. Cubist in form, they played
on the interaction of geometric volumes in varying relationships
to each other, with each work to be viewed from all angles
and with generally no fixed base.
At the
same time, Orlina's architectural training was put to use
in a number of commissioned works in which sculpture was integrated
into an architectural context. The first of these, completed
in 1983, consisted of four glass works installed in the Greenbelt
Lagoon Chapel in Ayala, Makati: the Dove of Peace, 8 meters
high, made of concrete and glass portals; the Mudras Cross,
a sculpture 10 meters high made of concrete and glass; a Tabernacle
Altar made of glass and narra wood, and God the Father, a
plexiglass dome ceiling 5 meters in diameter. Also drawing
from his structural expertise was a unique metal sculpture,
Wings of Victory (1986) made of 671 meter-length birds done
for the 8-storey atrium of the Wisma Atrias in Orchard Road
in Singapore. Another work in Singapore is Fertile Crescent
(1986), five meters high, consisting of four meters of sculpted
glass and stainless steel, installed at the Marina Park of
the Singapore Indoor Stadium. Ten years later, in 1996, Orlina
would be commissioned by the Singapore Museum of Art to set
up a window installation, Quintessence, a work 3m 90 cm x
2m 10cm (13, x 7,) made of a myriad glass facets with a superimposed
curvilinear design in bronze, the entire work in the form
of a pointed arch framed by a bronze lining. The clear blue-green
facets of glass at varying angles to each other produce a
brilliant prismatic effect unified by the dynamic swirling
design. As a glass work which doubles as a window, its tones
are continually modified by the changing light of the outdoors
during the day and the by the light of the suspended chandeliers
of the hall in the evening.
The decade
of the 1980s saw the full flourishing of Orlina's art enriched
by travels to international centers of glass art. The first
of these was a study grant and tour of glass studios from
the Czech Ministry of Culture in the course of which he visited
the ateliers of the well-known glass artists Libensky, Hlava,
and Soukup. This marked his first occasion to meet fellow
glass artists in their own country, especially since Czechoslovakia
has a long tradition of glass art. Their collegial encouragement
and support inspired Orlina to bring out the full potential
of his art. In the United States, Orlina went on an observation
tour of Steuben Glass in Corning, New York and met with Dale
Chihuly, associated with the Museum of International Glass
in Tacoma. Although Orlina has maintained his own individual
approach, he has been in touch through the years with these
centers of glass art through tour programs, exhibitions, and
international competitions.
Thus,
on a highly optimistic note, he came up with his Naesa Series
in 1988 which opened at the Lopez Museum Gallery in Manila
and subsequently toured Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. The two
major series, Naesa (ASEAN spelled backwards) Series, and
the subsequent Ningning (Filipino word for "sparkle") were
inspired by familial themes such as motherhood and the bringing
up of his two young daughters. Thus, in celebration of the
human form, his sculptures, formerly cubistic, became softly
rounded and mellifluous, sensuous and erotic, in the female
torsos and breasts. But while the medium for this imagery
is glass, there is nothing that suggests the fragile and brittle,
but all is smooth and seamless, of eminent plasticity and
tactile appeal. Here the artist fully exploited the transparency
of the material by introducing inner chambers and passages
that go beyond the surface treatments of shaping, faceting,
and polishing. Likewise, Orlina counterposes transparency
with translucency in the contrast of textures, clear and frosted,
in order to enhance the sparkling allure of the freshly-minted
forms.
He would
further pursue this preoccupation with light in glass sculpture
in the 1991 show Forms of Light at the National Museum in
Singapore. And in these works in which light becomes the subject
itself, there is a greater abstraction and dematerialization
of form in the fluid interplay of the transparent medium and
space. His explorations in the medium would soon garner him
a prize as finalist in the Fifth International Exhibition
of Glass Kanazawa '92 in Japan held in Ishikawa, Japan. His
entry Lyra (1991) in emerald green possesses a classical purity
in its vertical undulating rhythms within an upwardly expanding
curvilinear form that suggests the body of a lyre. The oval
aperture in the center of the form allows space and, impliedly,
sound to circulate within and around the glass form.
Also in
the same year, in 1992, he would win another award as finalist
at the International Triennial Competition of Sculpture in
Osaka. It is to be particularly noted that the Osaka Triennale
did not call for works in glass exclusively but for all sculptural
media. Thus, Orlina's work was commended not only for his
handling of the glass medium per se but for its general artistic
merit. Here his entry, Phases of the Moon, is an elegant work
in green glass with blue tones. Narrow at the base, it is
vertical in orientation, with an asymmetrical projection on
one side and a heart-like formation at the top. What lends
it a distinctive quality is a tunnel beginning low and branching
out into two sections that sinuously curve across the glass
body. In the upper section is a circular aperture providing
a view of the cross-section of the internal structure which
at that juncture links up with the environing space.
Ramon
Orlina held a major show, A Touch of Glass, at the Grand Hyatt
in Hongkong in 1993. Already an established artist in carved
glass, he was able to access a wider range of materials. While
he still mainly works in green cullets from his original source,
this show found him branching out into other kinds of glass:
black glass and lead crystal in vibrant colors supplied by
the famed Swarovski of Austria. Enthralled by the crystalline
hues, Orlina produced as many as twenty-nine pieces for this
particular show, nearly half of that number in Swarovski crystal.
According to him, lead crystal is easier to cut because it
is denser than glass but more difficult to polish, whereas
glass requires greater care in cutting because of its brittleness.
The sculptures of these series are abstract forms, often with
figurative allusions, as their titles, such as Multivision
Nude, Red Madonna, Aphrodite, Feminine Mystique, suggest.
He elaborates upon the biomorphic imagery of the Naesa and
Ningning Series inspired by the female figure as it continually
changes and unfolds, revealing the play of inner and outer,
concave and convex elements in a harmonious whole.
At the same
time, the artist is keenly attuned to the forms of nature in
their dynamism and diversity, as in Song of the Sea, Lunar Optics,
and Labyrinth. But what particularly strikes the viewer in the
new works is an increasingly structural approach which goes
beyond rhythmic or contrapuntal designs and contrasting devices.
For now Orlina handles form with an immense flexibility, seemingly
reinventing the very nature of the vitreous medium, so that
at times he seems to turn it inside out like a malleable substance
as he produces ripples, passages, and interconnecting steps
within the transparent form in which exterior and interior are
simultaneously visible. Indeed, some works call to mind the
intriguing illusionism of Escher. In addition, the use of colored
lead crystal in deep indigo blue, ruby red, or warm amber, lends
the forms a gravity that makes for more stable and more precisely
articulated forms in their structural complexity.
Up to
the present, Orlina considers his participation in international
competitions as a way of keeping his art on par with rigorous
international standards and of testing his mettle with the
world's foremost sculptors not only in glass but in all media.
Although he finds this a great challenge, Orlina's personality
is such that he attains his objectives with an affable ease
and nary a strident note. In 1994, his entry Pegasus won another
international award, this time as Finalist of the Suntory
Prize, on the theme of Challenges of Form. Like the Osaka
Triennale, the Suntory Prize covers all sculptural media.
Pegasus, alluding to the winged horse of classical mythology,
is a full-bodied work. Its equine allusion lies in the strongly
rising figure, curving out on both sides, with vertical rhythms
for the flowing mane and a cantilevered section for the powerful
head. The integral wholeness of the sculptural figure is particularly
admirable, although in this case the work is mainly based
on the carving and shaping of the external form.
|
