Jose Datuin

Jose Datuin: A Patterned Life

Text by Pam Brooke A. Casin

REALITY is relative. There are always two or three sides of every story; there are different angles to view; there are many perspectives to look at. While reality seeps through our pores every day, may it be dismal or glorious, one fact remains: people hold on to intangible things, the abstracts, to get through life—love, faith, courage, conviction and wisdom to name a few. In the visual arts, painters seemingly hold on to the abstracts to liberate themselves from formalism or to express themselves fully in bright shades of red, in monotonous strokes of blue, in rich blotches and splashes of yellow or in unprompted patterns created by the mind’s eye. 

But as reality is relative, so are the abstracts. They exist in a continuum but all equally compelling just the same. They may be scrutinized every now and then but they are proof of what the mind is capable of. Avant-garde and defiant, abstraction is an off-shoot of the creative, the exploratory and the bold.

And, for painter and sculptor Jose Fernandez Datuin or Joe to his family and colleagues, abstraction is his way of life. Though he dabbled a bit in landscape and drew folk scenes for a period of time, Datuin is most prolific and efficient in the abstracts—those which do not entirely resemble reality or those that distort it. Never mind that he is not that adept with anatomy, for him painting geometrical patterns and sculpting large stainless rings have given him enough breathing space to pursue what he ultimately desires.

Datuin projects his abstracts in such a manner that they are sometimes anchored upon visual references and entities (although his audiences may have a tricky time of deciphering what article the artist has rendered fuzzy). Hence, the artist adds overlapping shapes and sharp edges to disfigure a certain object. As Datuin is trained in graphic design, his paintings lean towards contemporary sensibilities. He uses allusions and weaves them upon cross-cultural borders of the East and the West.

His technique differs from sage abstract painter Gus Albor who paints stark and barren juxtapositions of neutral black, white and gray. Instead, his oeuvres are strangely multihued and distinctly jovial. Colors run amok his canvasses; warped, coiled shapes in monochromes and pantones pop out against dark backgrounds; and clean-cut, sharp stencils flow smoothly throughout his planes.

Interestingly enough, Datuin’s style results in a neat and precise abstraction. Owing to his stint as an art director for a large television network, Datuin’s pieces show the dynamics of colors that unsurprisingly resemble poster art. In his Ikebana series, Datuin skillfully arranges colors of different gradients and shapes in such a way that spectators have to pay attention to each of the paintings’ title for a vague idea of what the painting actually stands for. But Datuin doesn’t limit his audiences to such, as in categorizing his compositions.

“Although I want my audience to be more relaxed while viewing my paintings, it would be better if they are able to ponder what meanings my pieces hold,” Datuin says.  “By being an abstractionist, I give audiences a venue to think and to start discourse. With abstract, I am able to bridge concepts and ideas outside reality and translate them into a blank space.”

In terms of sculpture, Datuin is attached to rings and circles. He painstakingly molds a block of stainless steel into infinite rings and when he gets these rings done, he solders them piece by piece, interconnecting them, as if linking chains and building blocks. His large sculptures embody movement and balance. His are ring sculptures that dance and breathe life just as his acrylic works are.

Evident in Datuin’s pieces is his attempt to address the growing clamor for innovative and groundbreaking art that is fueled by novel origins. Perception towards his works may be destabilized by the fact that his compositions may appear as snobby and discriminatory but getting intimidated by his pulsating palette and pure abstract artistic approach should not be an option.

Although Datuin is an already accomplished abstractionist, having had his design used by the Olympic committee during the Moscow Olympic Games and winning several prestigious recognitions such as the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Benavides Award given to an outstanding UST alumnus and Best Entry to France for the UNESCO International Calendar Design back in the ‘80s, he is not one artist to stop polishing his craft. He refutes being stagnant and does not see himself reaching a plateau. He believes in reinvention and, who knows, he might just shift to another creative genre and sees photography as his next outlet.

Datuin is stopping short at nothing to buff up and foster what he has started because for this art savant, the gauge of a true artist is not qualified based on his or her artistic aptitude but on the artist’s ability to adjust, to adapt to change and to stay in the ever-competitive art league. For Datuin, a true artist withstands the test of life and times and endures—even as reality ceases to make sense, even as aesthetic standards have insolently changed temperaments and even as human contextual experiences invariably transform from one to another.