MANILA, Philippines?The greatest escape of an artist from the toils of everyday life is to see beauty in the unexpected. After Marcel Duchamp declared a urinal as a piece of art, creating art became pretty much a free for all. Writer Allan Kaprow wrote, ?Non-art is whatever has not yet been accepted as art but has caught an artist?s attention with that possibility in mind.?
One such artist is MM Yu, who finds beauty in the chaotic surroundings of Manila. Her award winning multi-faceted ?Thoughts Collected, Recollected,? she photographs everyday scenes and objects such as signs, laundry, piles of objects that look to her like art installations and even anything with the letters MM on them. To the artistically unplugged mind, these scenes mean nothing, but through the eyes of MM, she shows us the artistic tendencies of scrap piles and overgrown weeds.
After winning the Ateneo Art awards in 2006 for her collection of pictures, MM has participated in five international exhibitions, numerous group shows and highly successful solo exhibits in the country?s leading galleries. MM?s art is a refreshing contrast to the splatters of grays and browns on canvases themed with misery and destruction. Her oil paintings look like piles of candy and licorice twists and at a glance, give one a happy thought.
However, MM?s work?s in her series entitled ?Disquiet? for example portray the contrast of still beauty such as flowers or peaches on a twig with the chaotic patterns of the pendant image next to it. Strangely enough when the peaceful image of the flowers were left without paint drippings in their original state, MM found that the paintings were not selling as fast. Once she decided to splatter paint all over the painting, people suddenly became more interested. Disquiet indeed.
Her collaboration with Polkong Anading on several collages, is one of the most ingenious works I have seen in a long time. The two artists cut out pieces from a survey art book to create a new collage of their own. This is the height of the pop art mentality?giving new meaning to ?iconic? art. When the two finally finish up all the pictures in the book, they hope to send it back to the publisher, in the hopes that they will publish a book with all the cutouts.
MM?s eye for pattern and repetition reflect the beauty in simplicity. Her technical skill alone of arranging colors in paint drippings takes time and coordination to get the perfect mix of colors blending in to one another. Her installation called ?Blots? for example is simple and is pleasing to the eye. While many think that art is complicated and is always infused with meaning, it is refreshing to see an art such as MM?s. Her art does not offend anyone with gore or political slogans or social commentary. In fact her creative process is one of the hardest things to do; to find beauty in everything. Through MM?s work, the viewer?s eyes are now open to that possibility.
