Leslie De Chavez 

Don't be a Stranger

Could he be the next Bencab? The graphic

artworks of Leslie de Chavez may be creating quiet ripples

in the capitals of Korea and China, but the 29-year-old

Filipino painter is, quite ironically, a virtual stranger in his

own land.

He is almost unknown In the Manila art scene,but that

may change.

Leslie de Chavez has produced an astounding body of

work, characterized by meticulous technique and a

thematic complexity surprising for someone who

isn’t quite 30 years old. He has a cult following in,

of all places, Korea, and is beginning to make a name

in Beijing, and has just gotten representation in

Switzerland. Yet, he has had relatively few exhibits here

at home, and only one solo exhibit in Manila.

Most of the art scene folks I talked to hadn’t heard

of him,

but one said “this guy might be the next Bencab.”

He hurried to add that he didn’t mean any offense to

either

Ben Cabrera, or Leslie himself by drawing a stylistic

comparison. He simply believes that Leslie may one day

reach Bencab’s level of success and critical acceptance.

The paintings themselves are striking, pithy,

impactful. De Chavez is a skilled draughtsman who has

chosen to present figures with slight but noticeable

distortions: the hands and heads are slightly larger than

life, the bodies tight and spare, the lighting ghoulish, the

colors just short of graphic novel starkness. He starts with

black canvases instead of white, truly a child of the

cathode ray tube. He makes dozens of sketches to

develop figures, and in them

one can see the evolving exaggerations of scale, and

perspective, the penultimate studies almost anime-like,

as if sketched from the perspective of a wide-angle

camera lens. There is no doubt at all that de Chavez is

of the digital era, his images informed by the refractions

of lenses, his technique of cutting and pasting evolved

from the grammar of the computer.

To describe his art as “social realism” is

probably to sell it a bit short, considering the

denouement of that genre. De Chavez is not a didactic

Marxist, arguably more of a humanist. Yet, it’s clearly

“message art” nonetheless. However, unlike the social

realists of a quarter century ago, he presents the image

for the interpretation of the viewer, without a fixed

(and often heavy-handed) symbolic meaning

à la roman à clef. Ironically, this is closer to the original

meaning of social realism, which, when it emerged as a

reaction to decorative art, romanticism and the

celebration

of beauty, was more akin to photojournalism than the

propaganda it became in the latter years of the 20th

century. De Chavez himself says, simply, that his paintings are about the effects of colonization.

Leslie de Chavez was born and raised in

Lucban, Quezon, where his father used to run a bicycle

shop. His parents were supportive of his art from an early

age. He started drawing in 2nd grade, when he saw his

neighbor drawing. By 3rd grade, he was working with the

airbrush his father used to paint bicycles, and by 4th

grade, he was silkscreening t-shirts. His first “fan” was

a neighborhood barber, who had stopped by the bike

shop, and saw one of his sketches. He advised Leslie’s

father to encourage the child, buy him some paints.

“The barber was a frustrated painter himself,” chuckles

Leslie, “he even told my father what brand of paints to

buy, and where to get them.” The brand was Maries,

oil paints made in China, and following the barber’s

advice, a bottle of linseed oil and some Chinese-made

brushes, and of course, a canvas. Thus equipped, the

young Leslie set up an easel and launched into it. His

first oil painting was a cubist depiction. He had no idea

what the linseed oil was for, so he mixed it in to see

what would happen. The paint got really shiny, which he

liked, so he mixed in a lot more. When the barber came

by again, he laughed. “Ang kintab naman!”, he said. Later

on, de Chavez and his father would make expeditions to

Manila to buy Grumbacher paints from the Enriquez Art

Supplies store on C.M. Recto. The first time they went,

the elder de Chavez was so unprepared for the price of

the paints—P250 per tube—they could only afford to buy

five tubes, consisting of the primary colors plus white and

black.

It should be explained that Lucban has quite

a thriving amateur art scene. It is the hometown of

Oscar Zalameda, who had his shining moment in the

60s and 70s as a member of the 2nd generation of

Filipino modernists, along with the likes of Bencab,

Antonio Austria, and Jaime de Guzman. Zalameda

himself may have faded from the national art scene,

but he is still somewhat revered in Lucban, inspiring a

host of copycat cubists who “do covers” of his rural

themes of fishermen, mother-and-childs, and of course,

the Pahiyas festival. There are sundry artists’ groups in

the municipality, including the Likhang Sining and

Banahaw Artists Group. By the time he was in high

school, de Chavez had joined 15 art competitions,

13 of which he won, and the other two in which he

placed second.

He graduated cum laude from the University of the

Philippines Fine Arts program in 1999. He had the basic

skills, but not the slightest idea of what to do with them.

“I could paint, but I had no clue what to paint,” he says.

To make ends meet, he worked as a graphic designer

for a few years, particularly for the Ayala Museum. “I was

literally a starving artist,” says de Chavez. “I enjoyed

graphic design, but it was a job, not a means of

self-expression.” He may not realize it, but the job did

hone many of his skills, particularly composition, color

sense and presentation. Three things about his paintings

are clearly influenced by graphic design: his signature,

which is a graceful logo, his digital approach, and his

occasional use of oddly-shaped canvases.

It was at the Ayala Museum that he met Bobi Valenzuela,

whom he credits as the major influence in his art.

“Bobi was a great mentor. He taught me to search

my soul, to focus on my real interests, to realize what

affects me most. He lent me dozens of books, about art

history, theory, criticism, and most importantly Philippine

history.” Valenzuela was working at Boston Gallery at the

time, and was acknowledged as an authority on

up-and-coming talents.

By 2001, de Chavez was inspired enough to produce a

suite of 10 paintings, which he showed to Valenzuela.

Valenzuela looked at them, nodded, and said,

“Good, pero practice pa lang iyan. Now you will paint for

real.” Valenzuela left Boston Gallery for Kulay Diwa that

year, and in 2002 curated a show called

“Recent Works 1,” featuring 17 artists, including

de Chavez.

The seminal painting he did for that exhibition is

“Angkas,” a depiction of teenagers on a motorcycle.

It was a startling piece of social commentary that has

set the pattern for his work. “At that time, naging uso itong

mga cheap Chinese-made motorcycles and scooters

sa Lucban,” he recounts, “actually parang plague.

All the kids had to have one. They cost very little,

may financing pa nga, pero naging sanhi ng

napakaraming aksidente—lalo na mga pagbubuntis.

” The scooters made Lucban’s teenagers highly mobile,

allowing them to escape from the orbit of their parents,

thus unraveling the intimate nuclear family social fabric

of the society. Undoubtedly, they also affected his father’s

bicycle business. The painting met the approval of

Valenzuela, and attracted some notice.

This led to Bahid, de Chavez’s first, and to date, only

solo exhibit in the Philippines, held at Kulay Diwa in 2003.

It was not just a painting exhibit, but a full-on multimedia

installation which he slaved on for almost a year, filling

all of Kulay Diwa’s three galleries with dozens of works.

To raise money for materials, he joined the Metrobank

Young Painters annual contest, and placed second.

De Chavez is a skilled draughtsman who has

chosen to present figures with slight but

noticeable

distortions: the hands and heads are slightly larger

 than life, the bodies tight and spare, the lighting

ghoulish, the colors just short of graphic novel

starkness.

Bahid included video installation, photographs and

drawings, in addition to the paintings. This exhibit was

the next turning point in de Chavez’s career. Although

he didn’t sell a single painting at the exhibit itself, he

attracted more notice, in particular a positive review

from Manila critic Alice Guillermo. As a result of the

works he did, he was able to get a year-long residency

in Seoul, Korea in 2005, the IASK Goyang Art Studio,

 Asian Artists Fellowship Program. The later sale of

two of the paintings paid for his airline ticket.

“In a way, naging hit ang works ko sa Korea,

” says de Chavez. “The Koreans are very nationalistic,

and they empathized with my depictions of the Filipino

cultural struggle.” At the same time, they found the

technique very unusual, the colors very different.

They did question these things. “‘Why don’t you change

the skin color,’ they asked me. ‘Aren’t your paintings too

cynical?’ But they understood where I was coming from.

” After the IASK fellowship, he got another one, the

Neo-Emerging Artists Residency, Dangsan Studio.

De Chavez is today represented by the Korean gallery

Arario in Seoul, Beijing and New York.

“Artists today are lucky, there are more collectors,”

he says. He is now preparing for an October exhibition in Zurich, where he is represented by Avanthay Contemporary

Art Gallery. He hopes to have another solo exhibit in

Manila in 2010, but his lack of recognition here doesn’t

bother him much.

His father still makes his canvases and stretchers,

and his mom and siblings help out. “Kasama sila,

all the way,” he says, proudly. It takes him two to three

weeks to produce a painting, working long days,

sketching, drawing, mixing, cutting and pasting.

He will often scan his sketches and try out compositions

and effects on his graphic design software. He makes

particular efforts drawing hands and feet. “That’s the

measure of skill I learned in UP, hands and feet.

One of the exams was, take a piece of paper, crumple

it into a ball with your hand, and draw your hand holding

the ball of paper. Well-drawn hands and feet are how

artists show off, in a way.”

For the meantime, he maintains his tiny apartment/studio

in Mandaluyong, creating mini-residencies by lending it

out as a base for fellow artists starting out.

“Leslie is a very generous person,” says one friend.

“The moment he met even a small amount of success,

he immediately began finding ways to help other artists.

But the lesson he tries to transmit is that no amount of

help, or talent, replaces hard work. He worked hard to

get where he is. Talent is something. But hard work is

the most important.”