ALL artists are expected to be excellent in their chosen medium. Yet few artists would actually cross boundaries and genres to test their limits. One contemporary artist is up to the challenge. Michael Cacnio, one of the country?s finest brass sculptors today, is exhibiting paintings and some unusual sculptures in ?Eclectic.?

Cacnio has made a reputation of being the sculptor of everyday Filipino scenes, depicting children in traditional games and ordinary folk in their workaday world.

From his well-received exhibitions in New York and Brussels in 2007, and his marked participation in the anchor show of the Philippine Art Trek in Singapore last June, Cacnio has continued to be prolific with a critical eye for anything that besets his fellow Filipino, and his works remain mute witnesses to Filipino follies and failures.

After all, Cacnio, being a fine arts graduate in a state university, could not think otherwise. Art is always in the service of people?s emancipation, and whatever it is that makes brass materials malleable after the pounding and delicate contortion is just part and parcel of his vision of humanity. Cacnio believes that our country, like the brass or the canvas he is handling, is a work in progress, worth the time and investment he is willing to pay.

Cultural window

In the painting ?Tanaw,? Cacnio depicts a casement window with a small lizard relief crawling on the frame. For Filipino windows are not just meant for ventilation and lighting: It is also a space where they can see through to their neighbors and communicate with them. This is the reason our word for window is not just ?bintana,? derived from the Spanish word meant to allude only to the wind, but also ?durungawan? from the root word ?dungaw? or ?tanaw.? It is where we are able to see our neighbors, deal with and talk to them. In the traditional harana or serenade, the window is where the woman listens to her serenader, where she accepts romantic professions.

Cacnio is definitely aware of such cultural association, cognizant that windows are our social space, the very frame that shape our vision of the world and the community we live in.

The reason why Cacnio can actually cross to other disciplines and art forms is because, whether in painting or sculpture, he knows that he has something to tell and in the final accounting, the message always outweighs the form or the medium.

The artist in Cacnio or the artist in all of us will always be treading on the thin line that cuts between our job and responsibility, between the reality of our oppression and the reality of our liberation, and between our vocation and our work.

Like the image of a man in a balancing act in ?Subok,? Cacnio deftly prods us to move on, encourages us to dream and work to improve our lives.

?Eclectic? runs until Dec. 7 at 1/Of GALLERY, 2/L Shops at Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Call 9013152.