Ernest Concepcion

Ernest Concepcion : Full Circle invasion

Clever mind, a skillful hand and an oversized funny bone. These are just a few of the attributes of New York based artist Ernest Concepcion. Another thing to note is his skillful ability to execute thought-provoking works that vary from installation pieces, videos, paintings, and anything else under the sun that requires a combination of flair and creativity.

Ernest Concepcion is a creator more than an artist. Creator being a more fitting word for his occupation, simply because his mind cannot be contained by mere brushes, canvas and any other such mediums. Instead he occupies his time challenging the idea of what is, in fact a medium. Breaking out of the confines of traditional art forms, his early works were dominated by a hunger to explore and push the boundaries of the definition of art ironically through tributes to great art. And now, with his first one-man show, “Puso + Daga," being exhibited at the West Gallery, he has gone back to his roots in every sense of the word.

Oddly enough, this widely exhibited painter never sought the recognition and success he has garnered. “Even when I was in school, I never thought I could continue doing it.

I thought I’d have a degree, and then get a day job, I never thought it would be a career because I just loved it too much. I was having so much fun working on it." However, like the name of the famous coffee shop of the city that he has called home for the past 10 years, serendipity happens.

Born and raised in the Philippines, the young artist recalls his early interest in art along with his older brother, “As a kid, I used to draw with my brother…he was able to expose me to a lot of good movies in the '80s. We loved Mad Max, that’s how we learned how to draw cars. Doon ako nagkaroon ng fascination with just building stuff.” 

This fascination eventually led him to the University of the Philippines in order to get his Bachelor in Fine Arts where he graduated from in 1999. Majoring in Painting, he cites many well-known artists as both his contemporaries and mentors, all of whom have proven to be strong influences in his early stages of exploration, “It was a great phase,that was the time I was reading a lot of books on theory. My teacher, Jerry Tan exposed us to a lot of artists essays, so we were kind of very heavy theory based work. It was a lot of art history…When I was in college I didn’t actually paint a lot, we were against painting, we were painting majors but we went beyond that, we were doing video work that had some paintings in it, we were exploring other avenues.” 

 

Upon graduation, diversity was the name of Ernest’s game. Embarking on many mediums he relates numerous involvements in the art scene through hi s enthusiast i c participation.“I even  set up an independent record label called dokyumento records, which I got from a grant f rom the NCCA, so I was recording bands, so I was really doing so much stuff after ’99 in here, actively, creatively.” 

Despite exhibiting mostly nst a l l a t ion based work, certain elements have beguto present itself as a recurring theme in his works, s p e c i f i c a l l y that of his signature move of  injecting subtle humor into his works.”I was already working with puns, kind of humorous na din work ko before eh…back then were conceptual but they were also humorous, slight comedic nature.” 

Aside from that is also his interest towards using language as a tool to create a new meaning from the while picture and be seen as an element of a sentence. ‘Naging works ko din ang quotation marks…I built these paintings in the shape of quotation marks, it was a cut canvas and giant quotation marks, and everytime may group show I would install my work on both ends of the show, so when you look at the show, it would seem like my piece, kasi parang quote/unquote" ko yung buong show.”

This need to push the boundaries of the ordinary took Ernest farther than he thought, specifically to the city that never sleeps. “It got too small for me, I wanted to do so many things. So I took that challenge to go to a highly competitive environment, which was New York. “

Ernest migrated in 2002, needing nothing more than a portfolio of his works and his determination to challenge himself and explore. However, with the expensive fees of equipment compared to here, Ernest 's technology based installation worked suffered greatly. Nonetheless,this suffering bore fruit to another era in Ernest’s artistic life: Line wars. 

Line wars,” is a wonderful display of tension and dexterity. A collection which amounts to over a hundred works of ink on paper, it marks the beginnings of his new artistic persona. "I was kind of in a sleepy town in Jersey, in a small apartment and that’s how I decided to become a kid again and start drawing these small works on paper…my brain was kind of clamoring to express itself… it was saying do something, so yun yung naging outlet ko. In fact yung f irst drawing ko is squirrels vs. ants eh, c o z t h e r e were a lot of squirrels in Jersey and a lot of ants, so I had them battle it out in a small drawing.”

Although this series continues to explore other aspects of tension and conflict, it is through an interesting turn of events that led to the rise of Ernest’s fame among the artist’s circles. “One of our friends who was a curator, decided to have a show...The theme was apocalyptic, like Utopia…I said ‘oh, I have this video of us threeFilipino  astronauts in the kitchen, would that work?’ She asked, 'what has that have to do with the end of the world?' Sabi ko sa kanya, if you start seeing Pinoys in foil astronaut suits, I think that’s a sign that this is the end of the world. So she started laughing and included that piece in the Bronx."

The video was included as an installation piece, and caught the attention of Melissa Chiu, who invited Ernest. And after having seen Ernest’s work, she went on to display his own personal works on the main wall, an event that he considers to be one of

the biggest catalysts in his career.

He went on to multiple group shows, with 2008 marking his first one-man show in New York City. At this time he had already begun to experiment with color, in which the medium also battled each other as is normally seen in the conflict within his painting. Even more so his interest in space, by asserting his invasion of it through each of his shows. "I like the subversive aspect of it. Di lang ako nagpapakita ng trabaho; I'm  kind of like infiltrating your space.”

It is no surprise, then, that this latest exhibit at West Gallery manages to bring together this element of tension, humor, invasion and playful innocence with a distinctly Pinoy stamp. “Puso + Daga” is a colorful display of “conflicting chat speak and biblical images…It’s still humorous…Patawa pa rin. And the flashy colors.. the text. So it’s a tribute to that. And also sa mga jeep, I want to get back to that. Interesting dito yung enamel paintings....a lot of people thought that yung enamel medium is a medium that I’ve been just working on, but the funny thing is the enamel paintings started even way back when I was still in school… pre line wars phase. And since this my first solo show sa Pinas, I wanted to do an homage to my roots. When people heard I was gonna have a show here, they thought I would show a New York kind of work, I wanted to do something so Tagalog, so Pinoy, it's sort of a tribute from where I came from…I still want to involve elements that kind of don’t really make sense. But at same time you kind of make sense out of it. Something you wouldn’t expect.”

Truly a master of the unexpected, the only thing that we can safely assume is that many clever jokes and moving images are yet to be unveiled.