ARNDT Catalogue Manila

ZEAN CABANGIS
A ruin can generate so much feeling of mystery. It can be the
object of deep speculation. What is its history? How did it arrive
at such a fate? What will be its future? Such are the questions
that preoccupy Zean Cabangis, one of the youngest artists in
this show. His recent ongoing series of work was strung together
from encounters with old, abandoned houses he chanced upon
during his bicycle excursions in the mountains of the Sierra
Madre. These are houses that have been left abandoned, their
roofs caved in, walls left unfinished, and floors are overgrown
with weeds. But they are nothing more than interruptions on
the landscape—reminders of dreams that have been stunted
by financial difficulty, natural catastrophe or changes in family
circumstances.
One does not have to drive far out of the city to see such houses.
They can even be seen within gated middle class subdivisions
where properties are left abandoned and decaying as their
owners find lives in other, more prosperous shores. Cabangis
attempts to reclaim these structures’ dignity by piecing together
parts of their selves, almost brick by brick.
These works recall Fernando Amorsolo’s paintings of a Manila
destroyed by the Second World War. Flattened by bombs and
fire, they show buildings bereft of human presence and whose
glory and purpose have turned to ash.
Curator Brian Dillon in a recent show for Tate Britain showed
that ruin lust has captured the attention of artists for centuries
and that this interest continues up until today. Ruins possess
latent, quiet beauty but also portend of something uncertain, if
not ominous. They may suggest the coming of a new life out of
the rubble, but likewise reminds us of our vulnerability to the
sudden turns of fortune.