Beauty has so often been associated with female pulchritude that it has been the lodestone of artists since time immemorial. This is true for the Bacolod-born artist P. J. Jalandoni, who recently exhibited at Britania Art Projects in Cubao. His show clearly revolves around the concept of feminine beauty, but he approaches it in a unique way. This he does by associating woman with the textile designs she wears. This is not, however, in the sense of displaying the designs like a fashion model, but in an entirely different way.
Jalandoni envisages his women as figures embedded with different designs sourced from various cultures, traditional and contemporary, Eastern and Western. This establishes women as human beings existing within culture and within the terms of that culture. The women themselves are rarely depicted in full figures, which is a thing of note. Often, they are only shown with their torsos in midsection. Their fabrics are swathed around their figures or are units of costume fashioned into clothes. Yet the artist does avoid bringing his subjects into the context of models for fashionistas, for his intention is not to create for glossy fashion magazines, but to identify the beauty of women with the beauty of textiles.
The artist has an entirely different way of doing this. Unlike the usual approach, textiles do not only enhance women’s beauty as designed clothes, but the designs themselves go beyond the function of clothes for they are stamped on the very skin. Thus, quite often, the designs of the clothes, whether printed, embroidered or stamped, continue onto the surrounding skin, such as the arms and the neck and face, thus creating a media interface between the texture of clothes and the texture of skin. The artist, however, does not make much of this difference, it suffices that the prints flow smoothly from one area to another. But in this interaction between design and female skin, the artist adds a few indicators or humanizing clues outside this relationship. They may be the hair in different styles or the mouth in definite expressions. The hair and face may have an air of androgynous stubbornness; in others the hair is styled back into a sleek bun. These assert the humanity, as well as individual character, of the figure, though incomplete.
What the artist valorizes are the cloth designs and their variety and the exquisite inventions used in association with the female form. Thus, the female figure also plays an important part in the many ways, poses, stances and gestures in which she displays the printed cloth—the positions of arms and hands, in coordination with particular features such as the lips and hair, along with certain accessories. It would seem that the torso and limbs are there mainly for displaying the cloth. But, as for the designs and prints, the artist does not merely delineate them following the principles of design, but he most sharply and skillfully embeds or marks them in the skin, as though there were no substantial difference between cloth and skin. The designs continue from neck and shoulder to the cheeks, covering the ears and the temples. He uses colors sparingly and lightly, mostly monochromatic, for the prints or their backgrounds, thus adding to the sumptuous effect of his art.
The human subjects of the artist are of a wide range, young or women in their prime, as well as of different implied personalities. But, interestingly, he goes beyond the unitary figure and daringly extends it to two-figure compositions, as in Double Sunrise, where two Caucasian heads facing opposite sides are blended with a floral lace-like design binding them.
Intricate batik designs, for example, are painted or stamped on cloth. Jalandoni exactly mimics this process of production but he does it on skin. His style of execution is not only limning but embedding or stamping, bring with it all the modalities of color, tone and line in an amazing manner. The female figure is veritably swathed in design; clothes and body become an integral whole, a composition of flowers and leaves of all kinds from different cultures and interpretations, sourced from the interminable beauty of nature.
Another important source of Jalandoni’s art is that of tattoos. And this is particularly close to his art because it is design applied to the skin. Again, tattoo covers an infinite range of designs, both cultural and distinctively individual. Jalandoni virtually alludes to this process, painful and bloody, but ultimately edifying because it displays well-loved symbols and icons, by the sense of the designs being embedded into the skin. Tattoos originate in indigenous cultures but have spread to other contemporary contexts.
In these sumptuous paintings are there perhaps some indications of human emotions. Often, the women seem laden by motifs and designs that are superimposed on their body. Or do they emanate from the skin, like strange and beautiful exudations that stem from a deep fount of beauty? Or are they superimposed by the artist’s will, following hidden vein-lodes on the surface of the skin? But in one painting, entitled Life Without Comedy, a young woman is shown, head covered by her arms in a position that suggests loss of optimism or hope, her hair somewhat disheveled, the numerous designs crawling down her arms and hands, as though she were not aware of them at all or she did not care, simply allowing the designs to cover her body at their will.
P. J. Jalandoni’s art raises many interpretations. Unproblematically, it may intend to fuse woman’s pulchritude with sumptuous design, mainly of Eastern tendencies. Or does it show the contrast between human skin as naturally integral to the body, or the skin as a visual art medium, not unlike the surface of a canvas? Or does it show, perhaps, the hidden opposition between the living, breathing human body and the designs of man’s invention applied on it? Likewise, his art may incidentally tell us of the relationship of a human being and the clothes and designs he wears. Do they reveal a hidden life to human individual and cultural identity? P. J. Jalandoni’s art is ready to face all these questions.
