{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":55629,"auction_id":107,"set_id":141,"lot_number":"118","artist":"Onib Olmedo (1937 - 1996)","title":"Sendong","starting_price":400000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1988 (lower right)","medium":"mixed media on foam board","size":"28\" x 22\" (71 cm x 56 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Ms. Gisella Olmedo-Araneta\nconfirming the authenticity of this lot.\n","provenance":"PROVENANCE\nPrivate collection, USA","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"

Onib Olmedo’s soul portraits are perhaps one of the artist’s most known works. It is his crème de la crème, a fascinating introspection to the human being’s tumultuous inner self. Through his portraitures, Onib creates a space where one’s physical appearance gives way to show the spirit within through his indiscriminate distortion.

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This 1988 portrait shows Onib’s mastery of his craft. With his deliberately distorted skull, the man turns his gaze upwards, as though in prayer or perhaps in contempt. Onib’s short but calculated strokes give off a dreamlike appearance – not the hazy dream of a child safe in bed but the slow realization that what is starting is a nightmare.

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Onib’s figurative expressionism is the perfect tool with which to probe this subject – his distortion emphasizes (and does not distract from) the anguish he is portraying. They haunt the canvas, and by extension, the viewer.

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“[They are…] more like wraiths and orphans from a gray limbo, or ghosts of past guilt come to haunt our fitful sleep,” Alice Guillermo writes in Onib Olmedo: Dimensions of Depth. With this piece, the viewer cannot help but be intrigued by the figure Onib portrays. His desolation is palpable but the source of it is not, and thus one may project their own problems onto him, creating a connection that is integral to the understanding of Onib’s work.

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“To the solitary face, the artist provides no social background, only a neutral, dense, and softly-textured darkness,” Guillermo adds. “And herein lies the incipience horror: we do not merely confront a human likeness presented to our view; the image itself becomes transformed into a mirror where one sees and ultimately recognizes oneself.”

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Indeed, Onib’s true appeal lies not in his distortion but in what that distortion implies. We see ourselves in this man gazing upwards, half in prayer and half in mockery as he faces whatever life may give him. This man, then, becomes an image we are intimately familiar with and a face we see in the mirror every day – distorted not on the outside but on the inside as we weather the current that is life. (Hannah Valiente)

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