Kagay-anon artist holds 1st solo exhibit

KAGAY-ANON artist Michael Bacol has launched his very first solo exhibition entitled "Into the World of Innocence" at the Father Francisco R. Demetrio SJ Gallery of Museo de Oro in Xavier University.

The one month exhibit, which started last August 16 and will end in September, features a number of the artist's works centering on his favored subjects -- children, teddy bears, and doors. Bacol's take on these subjects are reflected in how he represented children's innocence in the midst of the current realities.

Bacol is a true-blooded Kagay-anon who graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines. However, he chose to try his hand at the visual arts and taught himself how to do art. He then used this skill to represent his takes on the current society's problems. Bacol has now become is one of the Cagayan de Oro’s most celebrated artists.

"I want to visualize how children are in our communities especially under the influence of war games in video games. Also I want to visualize the children who are exposed to war, and everything that is happening on our community right now," Bacol said.

Bacol's exhibit displays a combination of childhood's sweetness mixed with the realities of the Filipino society today. Using various mediums and art styles, Bacol presented children painted with the war, violence, poverty, and other problems in the our society today.

"I do not have children of my own and that is why I chose to paint children and my artworks are kind of like my own children," he explained.

Bacol painted the children which were inspired after the children he sees in his surrounding and then puts the Filipino societal problems in their background. Some of the children that can be seen in his artworks are the sons or daughters of his friends or relatives in his community in Barangay Consolacion.

The juxtaposition of childish innocence and reality's warfare can be clearly seen in his artworks as he adds the details of guns, bombs, war, and violence in the paintings of children. Some are handling guns and some can be seen as camouflages, while some are riding toy planes while evacuating form the chaos of the Marawi City siege.

Another of his interests also lie in teddy bears. In his exhibit, Bacol used various mediums such as ball pen and paint to present his teddy bear series. However, if one would look closely, it can be understood that there are images that are deeply etched with the teddy bears connecting to Bacol's main objective of representing innocence in Filipino modern society.

"One here is a teddy bear but if you would look he is holding a gun with a heart bullet coming out of it. In others ways, my other teddy bear works have that. I have many of them in the house and I used them as models for this," he said.

And to complete his exhibit, Bacol also displayed his door installation arts works. These mainly portray how he sees doors as portals. Interestingly, some of the doors that are displayed in his gallery actually came from households in his community in Consolacion.

"This one here, I bought from a house and this is where they actually have a pot session. I took the theme of the Tokhang in my door installations, you know, the 'toktok-hangyo' (knock and plead)," he said.

By the end of Bacol's exhibit, the general theme of how the realities of modern day society and the issues that we face have an impact most especially to the innocent Filipino children.

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