{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":39594,"auction_id":58,"set_id":86,"lot_number":"206","artist":"Elmer Borlonga (b.1967)","title":"Vulcanizing Shop","starting_price":1000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 2000 (lower right)","medium":null,"size":"60” x 36” (152 cm x 91 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Leon Gallery wishes to thank Mr. Elmer Borlongan for confirming the authenticity of this lot.","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"In the 1980s and 1990s, Elmer Borlongan explored the paradoxes of urban life and emotional isolation, and constant themes  in his works ranged from universal social injustices to isolated situations of psychic torment.  Borlongan developed a distinct  take on Filipino expressionism, a tradition stamped by the oeuvre of Onib Olmedo, Jaime de Guzman, and Danilo Dalena and  to a great extent influenced the social realist aesthetic that fired up the protest art of the 1970s and 1980s. \nThe turmoil and repression going on in the social and political life of the country was mirrored in Borlongan’s work of the time. Again and again, among his paintings are found dreary scenes done in a narrow, gloomy range of hues and tones, dominated  by dark areas featuring desperate, skid row individuals.  Even his home cum studio in Nueve de Pebrero, Mandaluyong, was  located not far from a famous institution for society’s “dispossessed,” a “Goya-esque” parallel universe for the malaise of the  characters which inhabited his canvases.  In 2002, he and his artist wife Plet Bolipata moved out of Mandaluyong and settled  far from the madding crowd.\nThose many people who have followed Borlongan’s works before and after 2002 have noticed a number of striking differences. When he was still based in the metropolis, his paintings mirrored urban blight, peopled with the masses trying to eke out  a paltry living, and the colors were full of melancholy.\n \n“The colors I used then were mostly earth tones and grays including Payne’s Gray, which is a stormy gray that changes color  when you mix it with black or white,” said Borlongan tells the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a February 16, 2014 article.\n \nOnce he and Plet moved to Zambales, however, he began drawing more rural scenes: vendors carrying a basin of freshly caught fish, a family seated in what looks like a fabric boat.\nHis colors were also brighter.  He couldn’t help it because, in the province, colors seem more saturated, more alive. Yet there are still instances wherein, in spite of the sea of change in his outlook, Borlongan still made occasional forays into the circumstances of laborers and the like, alongside his more sedate pictures of everyday life.\n \nCritic Lisa Ito wrote: \"In terms of style and subject matter, the transition from Manila to Zambales is evident to those who are familiar with his earlier works. There are subtle shifts… as well as lighter tonal changes in his palette and the freeing up of  background space compared to his earlier works.\"\n \nIn this work from 2000, Borlongan visually captures a towering example of an idle flaneur: a hardy worker taking a break from  the day’s work.  The unstinting light of the sky, almost fluorescent, is softened by tell-tale clouds, illuminating the image of a  laborer with a mallet, standing atop the dark pile of rubber tires.  There is no hint of the angst of toil in the standing figure.  The posture recalls those nude Greco-Roman Gods of antiquity, what with the weight of his body shifted to one leg.  A casual apotheosis of the modern day, brown-skinned god of labor (slacks and all) if there ever was one","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Elmer Borlongan</strong> (b.1967)<br /><em>Vulcanizing Shop</em><br />signed and dated 2000 (lower right)<br />oil on canvas<br />60&rdquo; x 36&rdquo; (152 cm x 91 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":5500000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":5500000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":6424000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":37928,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/58/86/lot/206.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":205,"next":0,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}