MANILA, Philippines ? Lao?s ?Moon Magic? (1982, acrylic and burlap on board, 152.5 x 178 cm.) fetched over P1.6 million in the recent Christie?s art auction in Hong Kong on May 24.

Upon hearing the news, a young enthusiastic admirer of Lao blurted out that now there would be even more imitators of Lao. His remark provoked this reflection on matter, time and Lao.

At first sight, a painting by Lao Lianben manifests itself by the presence of all colors if it is black, or by the absence of all colors if it is white. One wonders if it is not also marked by the absence of time and by a sense of emptiness.

If one is not careful, one may pose the wrong question: With this love for the void, is this still a Filipino painting?

Upon deeper contemplation, the viewer who takes time not to consume but to really experience, in the strong sense of being taken out, to be touched by what is tangibly real, soon becomes aware that time is palpably felt in Lao?s painting. Of course, this time is not the time strictly and mechanically measured by the minutes or hours of the clock.

Time here is the lived time that patiently transforms matter, the time that French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar referred to as ?the mighty sculptor.? It is that time which bares and discloses the essential.

Peeling away the traces of the inessential, time here caresses objects, giving them the sheen of things handled with exquisite care and loving devotion. In this way, time transforms everyday objects into extraordinary artifacts.

Concrete examples may be a santo treasured by a collector like Jimmy Laya, or even a bulul kept by Floy Quintos, or a primitive bangko espied in Sta. Fe that one must absolutely own.

By a certain paradox, Lao imitates or, better still, intimates this time that wears away things ever so slowly by his creative gestures that are swift and spontaneous. But these spontaneous gestures that lovingly call forth one another can only be arrived at by painstaking rehearsals that align the mind, heart and hand of the artist.

Like the practice of Chinese calligraphy, this is brought about by hard work which soon becomes play. Lao?s creative gesture, which infuses into the simplicity of matter the sublimity and elegance of his spirit, is his very signature that gives a distinctive stamp to his works.
Lao is not only in his work. His work is himself. One remembers Rembrandt?s remark that every painting is a portrait of its maker. Lao Lianben, like all artists of integrity, can therefore be neither copied nor imitated.

In this way, Lao Lianben?the quintessential artist?becomes most creative, most free when he submits himself to a time beyond our time; when he explores a world other than our world, when he risks and abandons himself to a source, a void whose fullness he already is steeped in and which he can only approximately express in silence and humility.

This may be Lao?s timely lesson for us.

Comments are welcome at lgarcia@ateneo.edu