theSpace at ArtInformal

Salvador Joel Alonday

Salvador Joel Alonday received his bachelor's degree from the College of Music and Fine Arts, PWU, in 1985. Thereafter, he taught art and design fundamentals and theories for 5 years while practicing his profession as an industrial designer. It was during this time that he became a member of the art group Hulo; churning out mixed media works, installations and sculptures done in wood, cast resin and papier mache or "taka". He later abandoned his design profession and made a commitment to sculpture with his first solo exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1994; featuring assemblages with carvings in wood and cast concrete and resin. He has since exhibited his works at the National Museum, Metropolitan Museum and prominent galleries in the Philippines and in some major cities of South East Asia and Japan. He is one of the founders of Art Informal where he continues to explore forms, materials and processes with his fellow students of Sculpture.

In 2008, he was awarded the Metrobank Prize for Achievement in Sculpture (MPAS), a special recognition for consistently creating a body of work that exemplifies excellence and dedicated craftmanship.

In connection with the MPAS, he lectured to over 500 students of art.

He continues to teach sculpture at Art Informal.

RECASTING THE ICONS
By
Myra de Leon-Go

Business Mirror, March 12, 2007

At the SM Megamall Art Center is an exhibit featuring the recent works of the distinguished affiliate artists of the Silangan Foundation for the Arts, Culture and Ecology.

Included is sculptor Salvador Joel Alonday, a lifetime away from his phallic mortar and pestle days. Anyone who has been resurrected with Alonday's "Lazarus" (2000) and lived through the torments of "Benedict" (2005) will be even more astonished, since Alonday's five works on exhibit are even more thought-provoking renditions of the icons in your mind or from history.

For icons recast are Alonday's signature works, his passionate love for literature and history resonating in "Lilith", for one. Culled from unbibilical legends and rabbinical writings, Lilith is the borrowed modern symbol of oppressed womanhood. In Jewish folklore, she was also called the "Howling One," a winged succubus. In cold cast marble, Alonday portrays "Lilith" as half conceived, with feline features and defanged. The best part: she casts a shadow of the cross.

Alonday is more than a handful in "Maestro", his rendition of Juan Luna cast in concrete and resin laminate. If you have followed the Alien saga, Maestro seems to recall the much evolved creature from its simple pestle-lusong beginnings of early Alonday. Though one can also revisit Dr. Perlie Rose Baluyut's Crimes of Fiction in Philippine Art History to form an art lover's historical background, it is a cynical but familiar rub with the Filipino painter, blown out of proportion by another master of these times. Is Luna crouched or is he emerging? Prick or teacher? Some caped crusader, inscrutable, deadly? Alonday's works are not for the unthinking!

The world needs a new Icarus, but Alonday's version arises from the Icarian Sea, sprung from corals, and Hercules is nowhere in sight. "Never did like the ending", Alonday says wryly. His Icarus of cold cast marble grows feathers before your eyes, a face emerging, completing itself. Discard what you know and hold that thought.

The fourth work included, Simoun, is Jose Rizal to you and me - with tendrils. Looking unfinished, the cold cast marble work can be compared to a hanging question. For Alonday is like that, always the teacher, asking his viewers silent questions in his works, never complacent, ever critical.

But the fifth, "Molde Belo", is where Salvador Alonday exceeds all expectations. Contrived as a mask, it hides the face in relief within, emerging only for the one who can see as Alonday sees. Exquisite!

Icons are for the ordinary mind, but Alonday states that his art is not for the ordinary in all of us but for that which can struggle to make sense of it all. He continues to revel in the quandary, in the eternals that the mind is beset with: uncompleted breaths, of women casting shadows of redemption, of masters who rise from their hazy histories. Alonday does not provide answers. He trusts you to find your own - in his art.