{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":61636,"auction_id":209,"set_id":242,"lot_number":"58","artist":"Lao Lianben (b. 1948)","title":"Zen Afternoon","starting_price":2400000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower left and verso)\ndated 2019 (verso)","medium":"acrylic, charcoal gel","size":"48\" x 48\" (122 cm x 122 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private collection, Manila","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"One would be hard-pressed to discuss the works of Lao Lianben without noting the multitude of Buddhist inspirations that permeate his oeuvre like fingerprints. Themes of spirituality, meditation, and mysticism run throughout the artist’s body of work, the constant tension between the visible and invisible evident even in his deceptively abstract canvas. His profound understanding of Oriental philosophy, particularly Zen Buddhism, lends to nuanced conversations that elevate intuition and belief. <br/><br/> However, that is not to say that Lao is an artist disconnected from reality. From his usage of found objects and indigenous materials in assemblages in the 1960s, he had also touched upon materiality and the modern world, as he did in this 2019 Zen Afternoon. <br/><br/> Unlike his normally blank canvases, Zen Afternoon is filled with hundreds and thousands of dots similar to that of television static. In the middle of the canvas is a lineup of various begging bowls and vessels, almost blending into the background itself. <br/><br/> In a rare 2023 email interview with Lala Singian-Serzo, as published in Lifestyle.INQ, Lao divulged about his early years and his artistic journey, including a childhood spent living in a small house with his mother, his grandparents, and his six siblings. Coincidentally, it was also a time when television was beginning to boom in the Philippines. Though it may be highly unlikely that the Lianbens have a television themselves, it is a cultural phenomenon that would slowly take over the Philippines in a few decades, and one that would have been familiar to the viewers of Zen Afternoon, several decades after the television was rendered absolute in every Filipino household. <br/><br/> Zen Afternoon portrays Lao at his most conversational. By juxtaposing traditional techniques and modern technology, Lao creates a bridge connecting the past and the present, and thus, he opens the floodgates, so to speak, about the spectacle of spirituality. He gives just enough to entice his viewers into a moment of silence but never the answer itself, preferring to let his audience reach the conclusion themselves in whatever way they deem appropriate. <br/><br/> “[I]n general, the motifs of my paintings are recurring imagery,” he said in that same interview. “Sometimes they come in full force that I am able to come up with a whole theme for a collection. They are always there, waiting for my eyes to think about them again and use them in my next painting.” <br/><br/> In Lao’s works, whether he utilizes abstraction or representative art, it is the tranquility of stillness that he comes back to time and time again. He is unafraid of the quiet — instead, he basks in it, and he invites his viewers to do the same. <br/><br/> “In Lao’s paintings, discreet silence turns eloquent. His paintings speak to you, but only after you approach them in silence. It would help then if you stole into the exhibition room at an odd hour of the day,” the exhibition catalog of Passion and Compassion: The Lao Lianben Collection of Dr. Leovino Ma. Garcia writes. “To truly appreciate Lao’s silence then, one has to be blessed with the patience to pay attention for a long time and the perseverance to listen for even a longer time. Only then, perhaps, can one finally hear the paintings [...] imploring you: ‘You must change your life!'” (Hannah Andrea Valiente)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":7000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":7000000,"userBid":34,"isPaid":0,"userId":34,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":24980,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":8411200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":68643,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/58.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":68893,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/58a.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":68892,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/58b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":68891,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/58c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":68890,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/58d.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":57,"next":59,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}