Manila (CNN Philippines Life) — Awkward is a good word to describe the art of painter R.M. De Leon. Not the lanky, clumsy, milquetoast sort of awkward but the kind that is playfully disjointed, edgy, and laidback with effortless conviction. Abstraction in art is, after all, awkward, as put by writer Ringo Bunoan in a feature about De Leon’s works in Art Fair Philippines. Bunoan describes the characters in the paintings of De Leon — who is also a Thirteen Artists awardee — as “stand-ins for the awkward state of abstraction and representation.”
Here, Bunoan talks about Disney characters, appropriated by means of skillful chopping and screwing by De Leon, to create allusions to pop culture or odes to one of his most admired contemporary artists, Paul McCarthy, who also specialized in “discombobulating and mix matching disentangled Disney characters and reassembling them anew.”
When it comes to fashion sense, De Leon is no less than a rebel — “We know shoes should be in pairs, but who says one cannot be white while the other is red?” he said once in a profile feature. This reckless approach and bias toward caprice only made it natural for the artist to cross paths and eventually collaborate with Hoodwink, a clothing brand also known for not playing by the rules. It’s almost as if the artist’s Mickey Mouses got together with the fashion brand’s Comme des Garçons hearts in a weird friendship.
In a match made in post-pop art heaven, Jappy Gonzalez — the founder of Hoodwink and Homme et Femme (H&F) retail stores — offered De Leon the opportunity to execute a window display on the former’s storefront. The artist then created an installation entitled “That’s Never Just All, Folks,” a play on the Looney Tunes ending slogan, and “a multi-paneled mishmash of cartoon chaos and optimism” that seeks to deconstruct the grand explosion summing up the toon characters’ bomb-wielding antics in order to show an almost surreal view of what happens on the other side of the ACME smoke. It’s a playful and tongue-in-cheek mix of Looney Tunes and Disney elements, with the center panel revealing what only vaguely seems to be the mangled anthropomorphic limbs of Disney characters Pete and Goofy.
De Leon first treated the project as a challenge because “it felt like a dare coming from [Jappy] to be as edgy as one can and be creatively playful,” he says. But he is nevertheless grateful, both for the collaboration, as well as being able to get such an opportunity alongside 11 years of teaching art, at the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde’s School of Design. “It is such a privilege to be given the opportunity to be oneself creatively.”
This drive to stay true to one’s quirks and whimsies is something that Hoodwink understands and has encouraged in the collaboration. As De Leon puts it, making art manifests a “celebration of life” — both in terms of chores and passion, which in the artist’s case, translate to a synergy between his teaching and his private art practice.
“It can get very tiring at the end of the day, but it’s a real treat and a privilege to be allowed to be independently creative and get the attention for it,” he says. “You play, you pay”; you can do art, but it’s never just all that.
