Several things tie together the works of Tats Manahan and Lisa de Leon-Zayco for their duo show “Waxing Wonders, Fragmented Thoughts” at J Studio Gallery during Art Fair’s 10 Days of Art.
They’ve known each other several years, working together on the Negros Museum reopening in Bacolod in 2022, where, for the “Unbowed Carabao” figure fronting the museum, Lisa covered Rafael Paderna’s sculpture in mosaic tiles telling the story of sugarcane. For her part, Tats curated the exhibit, having them paint the walls in maroon and yellow, the color of Carlota sugarcane (“the stuff they throw away!”) and positioning the discarded stalks ikebana-like décor around the museum entrance.
Another thing in common: they both explore decorative art techniques in their current show. Tats uses a wax-resist method for her paintings, while Lisa adopts mosaic and kintsugi methods to build up her pieces.
The result for Tats is almost like stained glass: figures encased in white wax outlines that let pure pigments shine through. Lisa embraces the idea of mosaic salvaging of broken pieces and the Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with gold seams as her inspiration.
Side by side, you might be surprised by the visual overlap at times, even if none was intended. Tats mostly works in Metro Manila, while Lisa is based in Bacolod. They shared photos before the show. “One thing that struck me was, we're doing two things that are out of the ordinary: mosaic and wax are not the usual,” says Lisa. “But our colors were jibing somehow.”
Fifty years ago, De Leon-Zayco was entranced by a mosaic table her uncle had made. Then life happened: she studied interior design at UP, got married early, had four kids. It wasn’t until half a century later that she started creating her own mosaic art. She is self-taught. “I somehow learned how to break the tile in such a way that it becomes like a brush stroke.” The pieces are built up from layers of tiles into figurative and semi-abstract forms. “For me, the hardware store is my supermarket,” she says. “I would buy tiles in bulk,” then smash them up with artistic care.
Like Tats, Lisa was interested in kintsugi, the Japanese method of repairing broken ceramics with silver, gold and platinum paint lines. “That’s such a personal thing with me,” says Lisa, who was hit by tragedy in recent years when her son died of cancer in Canada. “I see beauty beyond what is broken. Maybe it’s about the brokenness and putting it together.”
Manahan, meanwhile, is president of the Alice Reyes Dance Philippines board (she was also co-founder of Centro Flamenco, the Makati-based company where my wife dances); she’s also a fervent supporter of art restoration and preservation, and a Philippine STAR writer. Her technique was inspired by Jackson Pollock, who explored wax resist before moving on to “drip” paintings, as well as Alfonso Ossorio. While heading the restoration of St. Joseph the Worker Church in Victorias, she recalls hearing “this story about when Ossorio was working on the church there—he’d been a good friend of Pollock’s in the US. So he had nothing to do at night at the church, and he would doodle with wax, paint with it.” Those 300 wax paintings eventually became a book in France, and “that’s how Ossorio got famous, for those doodles.” In addition to outlining in wax (“I have a lot of wax around my house”), Tats crushes and applies pure pigments, for brighter colors shining through; she also outlines some of her paintings with black Chinese ink, another technique she studied.
There’s another thing that ties their work together: a feeling of movement. “When you crush and apply pigments to the panel, there's another color that comes out,” says Tats. She calls these “sudden accidents.” The wax is translucent when you’re working with it, so “you don't see what you're doing. It keeps your mind moving while you're painting, so shapes appear.”
“I think what binds us together is a flow in our pieces,” says Lisa. “There's movement in the art pieces of Tats. And in my mosaics, in every corner, it's a different flow that you see. That's what I really wanted to create in mosaic.”
In both their approaches, one finds a search for hidden impressions: meaning excavated or summoned up from the surfaces.
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“Waxing Wonders, Fragmented Thoughts” runs at J Studio Gallery, 2241 Chino Roces, La Fuerza Plaza Gate 1, Makati City from Feb. 13 to 23 during Art Fair’s “10 Days of Art.”
