Courtesy of UNIVERS
ALT Philippines partners with multiconcept store UNIVERS to transform six Moreau Paris bags into works of art. We delve deeper into the practices of two artists who were invited to collaborate: Costantino Zicarelli and Johanna Helmuth.
Enter any of the UNIVERS retail spaces and you are bound to encounter a striking work of art. Most recently, new media artist Derek Tumala installed Garden of Others, glimmering plant forms made of dichroic film. An MM Yu drip painting hangs on the wall. And set on the floor is a James Clar spherical sculpture constructed out of 24 car headlights and LED, the artist’s commentary on energy use.
Highly discerning in its selection of art and keeping itself ever culturally aware, UNIVERS has come on board for the forthcoming ALT Philippines 2024. The show promises to be expansive and experiential, rolling out an exciting set of programs. Part of the agenda is a silent auction bidding out only six lots—six Moreau Paris Saint Tropez totes converted by six artists into unique functional art pieces.
In January 2023, Moreau Paris launched a monthly release of hand painted custom designs by its resident artists, each one a singular masterpiece. At ALT Philippines 2024, visitors have the rare chance of seeing and purchasing creations worked on by some of our own local artists, truly individualized and relevant to our sentiments, to our time and place in history. Vogue Philippines gets to know two of the artists, each with very different approaches in their work: painter and sculptor Johanna Helmuth and multidisciplinary artist Costantino Zicarelli.
Several years ago, Cos spent some time thinking about how he could combine doodles with his paintings to bring the intimacy of drawing to the more formal aspects of his work. His eureka moment came during a residency at Liverpool Hope University in 2018, a grant awarded to him at the 2017 Ateneo Art Awards. During his time at the university, his interest was most piqued in the carpentry department, where he was shown the process of laser etching onto stone. He etched the image of a serpent onto a slab of slate and took it home.
He first presented this piece in his solo show Years of Dust Will Build a Mountain (2019). The exhibit won him another grant from the 2019 Ateneo Art Awards, this time for a residency slated later this year at La Trobe Art University in Bendigo, Australia. Since then, Cos began laser etching doodles and scribbles onto the extended wooden frames of his paintings and onto flat glass panels “Doodles are very raw, but laser-etched, they look clean and finished. Its texture also brings the work closer to sculptural form,” he says. “They appear as material language speaking to itself.”
Cos’ first memory of drawing was at his kindergarten in Italy, where he spent his formative years. In 1984, he was born in Kuwait to an Italian father and a Filipina mother. They remained there for four years before moving to Italy for another five years; thereafter they permanently settled in the Philippines. Here they lived in Isabela, driving back and forth to Manila through long mountainous roads.
Coming from mixed ancestry, multilingual heritage and several migrations, Cos was led to investigate cultural identity. He researched American books on the Philippines from the early 1900s, discovering certain falsehoods and errors printed as facts. Cos also mines other archives, including the 1979 paper published by American scholar Charles Walton. In his 2023 solo show, Cos presented drawings of pixelated images manipulated from photographs found in such publications. The pixelations represent what Cos describes as “slow knowledge”—the analog dissemination of information before the digital age, but also the low-resolution effects resulting from slow internet connection. All these he considers to be earlier versions of fake news.
One of his inquiries is on the since-debunked reports from the early 1970s about the Stone Age tribe called the Tasadays, who perform invisibility spells and rituals that enable trees to shield them. In the 1987 film Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, screenwriter Jim Thomas took inspiration from the rumored cave-dwelling Tasadays. Cos writes, “The film is about extra-terrestrials lurking in the trees, hunting unsuspecting human prey. Thomas modeled his alien predators after the Tasaday—primitive yet advanced, magical yet tactical.”
By etching his drawings onto natural materials, Cos maintains a sense of primitiveness that pervades his body of work. He oft-references caves, mountains, and animist rituals. On a gallery wall, he drew an abstracted star using water soluble graphite. Too small to be a mural, it is closer to a cave drawing. “It’s an ephemeral work; it connects to the idea of erasing history,” he explains.
Spanning his oeuvre, Cos appears to be bridging an immense arc of time, from prehistory to the current ways technology can rewrite history. His etchings on a Moreau Paris tote serve yet another link across time, culture, and art. A French company founded in the 1700s by a family of exceptional trunk makers, who through the centuries maintained its brand’s superb craftsmanship, will for the first time be met with an intervention by an artist from our shores.
On the other hand, Johanna Helmuth had just returned from a four-month sojourn in the United States, where she has been spending plenty of time lately. Her last solo show Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky (2023) portrayed some of her adventures there, in characteristic surrealist mode. Lively brushwork and vibrant energy from the palette knife define her paintings, which often comment on social behavior and human relationships within domestic settings. To contrast these themes, Hanna employs subdued palettes in earthy shades of purples, greys, and greens, mainly for their calming effects.
At the time of this interview, Hanna was examining the pink Moreau Paris tote that she had selected from UNIVERS. She says, “I stuffed it with pillows to keep it upright, easier to paint on. I’ll be setting it atop a rotating table that I had customized with wheels. This is what I use while working on my sculptures, so that I can conveniently turn the piece around.”
This floral imagery is related to a solo show at West Gallery, Hereafter (2021), where presented a series of paintings and resin sculptures depicting flowers. Titled Eternal Flowers, the sculptural work was made with four layers of resin and paint, “so that the preserved flowers would look alive,” she explains. “If some subjects need more emphasis, I turn them into sculptures. It allows them to live in the space.”
On the tote’s coated canvas surface, Johanna paints vines and flowers to seemingly wrap around the bag. She tells us, “I want it to be a reminder that in any environment, there is growth, and that we continually grow and bloom at our own pace.”
All auction proceeds will benefit a charity chosen by UNIVERS. Curator and critic Carlomar Arcangel Daoana will be conducting tours every 3pm from February 22-25. ALT Philippines 2024 will be held at SMX 4 Mall of Asia Complex.
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