MANILA, Philippines - Romulo Galicano and Patis Tesoro are joining forces for a six-week exhibit to celebrate ?the bearing and elegance of the Filipino.?

?Postura,? featuring 62 portraits by Galicano and some 28 Filipiniana clothes and 19 doll tableaux by Tesoro, will open on June 19 at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila on Roxas Boulevard (tel. 8125034). The project is a collaborative effort of the Met and Finale Art Gallery. It will run until Aug. 30.

?Postura? is a nod to the Filipino?s carriage when posing for his/her portrait, when ?being in your Sunday best isn?t good enough. You have to be in your Filipino dress,? notes co-organizer Ramon Villegas at the press preview. Thus, the coming together of ?the people who represent the best in portraiture in the 21st century and the best in Filipino wear in the same period in our country.?

Tesoro explains that ?Postura? isn?t a retrospective but vignettes of a lifetime of work by two individuals celebrating Filipino art, lifestyle and traditions.

All the 28 clothes to be shown were borrowed from her clients such as Tingting Cojuangco and Ado Escudero. For the first time, she?s also presenting a doll rendition of the Virgin Mary in an 18th-century Filipino dress.

Of the 62 Galicanos, 14 pieces are being shown for the first time. Five of them have his models wearing Tesoro?s designs.

In time for school

The exhibit is timed for the resumption of classes in schools when there?s an increase in museum foot traffic, says Met director Eric Zerrudo.

He hopes museum visitors would appreciate the ?creativity and values? that go into the works of Galicano and Tesoro. ?Mabusisi [very detailed],? he says.

Ninay, Tesoro?s collectors? dolls, for instance, are painstakingly hand-painted, the clothes cut and embroidered to size. (When Tesoro launched Ninay a few years ago, it was Galicano who taught her workers how to paint the faces of the dolls.)

Tesoro, who dressed a group of Filipino actors who competed at the recent film festival in Cannes, says many young women are now also opting for a Filipiniana dress to wear to their wedding.

?In this time of economic upheaval, where do we go [but] invest in our people? If you invest in a wedding gown with some work done, you?re investing in our people,? she says. ?In globalization, Filipinos are realizing that you have to have uniqueness... This show is proof that Filipinos can do traditional work and can also be cutting-edge.?

Immortal portrait

?If you pose for a portrait, you?re immortalizing an image,? Villegas says. ?But a portrait is not a look at the past, but [putting aside] something for the future.?

Galicano, who won over 1,000 entries in the 2005 tilt of the Portrait Society of America, will be showing new works based on old black-and-white photographs he had collected from antiques shops. All feature his new signature, two to four colored vertical lines (one of which is beveled) drawn across the canvas. He started using the marking in 2004. No other realist painter of note uses the same signature, he says.

?I?m using an old subject matter that?s been used by the masters like Amorsolo,? he explains. ?Without the lines, I would just be a copycat. I added them to make my work contemporary? I?m not trying to bring back the past. The use of an old subject matter is a perpetual challenge to the contemporary world of painting.?

Galicano says there?s no shortage of Filipinos who want to sit for their portrait, even in this age of digital photography. But he laments that some patrons seem to have a confused understanding of what a portrait is and want a, well, ?Photoshopped? portrait.

?If you commission a portrait, it?s of the understanding that it shall resemble you,? he says. ?[But the artist] may seek qualities of the subject to put on record which he wouldn?t want to compromise on canvas. Those may not necessarily agree with the way the patron sees himself in the mirror? A photographic likeness is only one kind of portrait and is by no means the only kind.?

Situations like this, he adds, puts the portraitist in a bind between his need for money and his principle. ?Some compromise their work. That?s what I want to correct. If you?re not happy, you don?t have to pay me. There have been many incidents. And I say to them, ?Do you want your hand to look like that of a mannequin???