About Filipino Artist Gaston Damag

Education

After graduating from Baguio City High School, Gaston went back to Banaue trying out his hand in elementary architecture, pondering on a future career based on delighting in seeing pictures of beautiful homes and well-designed man-made landscape. This would not come into fruition upon the death of his father. Losing interest in his studies, Gaston went on hiatus and and stayed in Banaue for a bit to learn more about his people and this culture. He did this by visiting many villages and by working as a tour guide to these villages. Soon after, his brother invited him to Manila to enroll in an art school.

Gaston accepted and he eventually enrolled in a painting class in Slims Fashion School. He transferred soon after to the College of Fine Arts in University of the Philippines in Diliman 1984. His college admittance was endorsed by Philippine National Artist of Sculpture and College Dean at the time Napoleon Abueva who vigorously intervened and insisted in Gaston Damag’s entry into College of Fine Arts.

Gaston stayed in UP College of Fine Arts for one year before leaving for France. Upon his arrival in France, he immediately enrolled at the French Alliance to learn the French language. From 1987-1989 he attended French Civilization classes at the University of Sorbonne. This course would enable him to learn a more literary form of French and be admitted to the rigorous and prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris (Paris Fine Arts School). Eventually he got in and managed to graduate with honors in 1993.

Gaston Damag was also accepted in the Ecole National Superieur d’Arts Plastics de Cergy Pontoise directly in the 3 rd year level. This school under the juries of Pierre Alechiensky, Joelle Kermarrec accepted him as their student apprentice. After spending 5 years in Paris Arts school (ENSBA), Gaston Damag graduated Cum Laude in multimedia and won the first prize for its sculpture competition in 1995. In 1994, he represented his school in a jury show called EIGHTY “a suive” (“To be continued”) sponsored by International art magazine now NINETY.

Gaston Damag worked in repairing apartment buildings. He also worked also in a museum for 11 years as a specialist in art installation.

Art

Gaston Damag’s artistic approach fuses his heritage, background in ethnology and anthropology, and European training in the fine arts. He often uses wood, steel, glass, and oil painting in his works. Gaston Damag’s artistry can be traced to his youth in Banaue, where, as a teenager, he would sculpt bulul – wooden icons representing rice guardians – to sell to tourists in the area. Banaue is a municipality situated in the mountainous Ifugao province in the northern Philippines. It is most known for its majestic 2,000-year old rice terraces and considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Because of the importance of rice in the Ifugao people’s daily life, the bulul figures such modernity, however, have had a great impact on their community over the years.

In a solo exhibit at The Drawing Room in Singapore’s Gilman Barracks, Gaston Damag builds this show as a homage to this culture of rice, using bulul figures and cutting through them which was meant to reflect, deflect, and put into question the valuation of the rice god in the present time.

The bulul is employed by Gaston Damag not only to ground the culture he participates in but also as visual method of focus and deconstruction. He fuses these symbols with diverse modern industrial materials to address the ways a non-western ethnic culture can navigate a cultural perspective dominated by the West. The crucial experience that determined the direction of his works was the artist’s visit to the Museum of Man in New York in the 80’s where, to his dismay, paraphernalia of his extended family were framed in the context of human evolution of past and present. This presented a conundrum in the difference in the notion of time (and consequently of existential and artistic positions); at that moment he began to carry the thought: “If I am a man of the past, where is my place?” It is question of placement in the “grid of museums” as a matter of displaced cultural objects in a reliquary of westernized cabinet of curiosity.

Selected Bibliography

  • 2013 Manila Vice, MIAM, Sete, France
  • 2012 Bastards of Misrepresenation, NY Edition, published by Re:Surgo
  • 2010 Bastards of Misrepresentation, Freies Museum, Berlin
  • 2007 Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece.
  • 2006 My Home is my Castle, Luxembourg. Transferts, Bruxelles.
  • 2002 Pananaw 4, N.C.C.A., Manila.
  • 2000 Les inrockuptibles(éd. Dec)
  • Paris pour escale, conversation with D. Bose
  • 2001 Beaux-arts magazine (éd. Juin). Art press Diaporama
  • Art actuel(éd. Feb) Le monde (éd. Jan)
  • Catalogue de foire international d’art contemporain de Bruxelles
  • 1999 Art in America (éd. September).
  • La Naturaleza de la Cultura, conversation of Gaston Damag with Manuel Ocampo.
  • 1998 At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
  • 1994 Fragile, Crema, Italy.

Gaston Damag

Gaston Damag is a Filipino born, Paris-based artist whose roots in the Cordillera region of the Philippines informs and influences his artistic practice. This heritage is amalgamated with his own background in ethnology and anthropology, and academic training in the fine arts in Europe. Using contemporary and industrial materials such as steel, glass, wool and oil paintings as elements in his works, Damag mixes these with the learned craft of wood carving bululs (Ifugao rice deities) in forming critiques on identity, geopolitics, colonization, perception and modernity. Damag’s art has brought him to exhibit in various museums in France, Luxembourg, the USA, and the Philippines. He has also participated in art fairs such as the well-known  Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain  (FIAC) in France, Art Basel in Switzerland, and   Art Basel Hong Kong and in Biennales in Thesalonikki and Jakarta.

Early Life

Gaston Damag was born in Banaue in 1964. Of Ifugao parentage, he has 8 sisters and 5 brothers. His father was a postmaster of Banaue for several years. Whenever his father gets home early from work, he would tinker around his workshop as he was also an excellent craftsman. Gaston was very close to his father as they would cut wood together or do a little bit of gardening. Occasionally, Gaston and his brothers would be invited into his father’s workshop to help him sculpt and do carpentry. This informal domestic internship has mentored him in working with metal and wood.

His mother was one of the daughters of a famous shaman family in the Banaue region. Gaston Damag’s uncles and aunties regularly practiced traditional rituals regularly in their house. As a result, Gaston and his siblings grew up with the regular rhythm of shamanic ritual.

Gaston’s mother was a businesswoman who owned one of the first antique shops in Banaue. She sold wood carvings, coffee beans, tobacco and other souvenir items. The income generated from his mother’s entrepreneurial skills has enabled Gaston and his siblings to study in well regarded universities in Baguio and Manila. After their father’s death, she migrated to the USA, only going back to the Philippines twice, her second time was when she needed to be buried at home.

As a child of the 70s, Gaston distinctly remembered the atrocities of martial law. He never really understood why a teacher, a policeman or a farmer was killed or why a group of soldiers are massacred.

Career

From 1989 to mid 200s Gaston Damag has mostly exhibited in France and Europe. In 1998-1999 a survey show of Filipino artists in diaspora At Home and Abroad : 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists has reacquainted his work to Filipinos as it toured cities with a broad Filipino demographic such as the Metropolitan Museum in Manila, University of Hawaii, and Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Not until 2007 did Gaston Damag finally returned back to his home country and be bi-locally based with a succession of solo exhibits in Green Papaya, Finale Art File, Pablo Gallery, Silverlens, The Drawing Room and Jorge Vargas Museum in UP Diliman QC.

He frequently collaborates with another bi-locally based Filipino artist Manuel Ocampo in a number of shows such as Rabelais in La Panacée in Montpellier; La Naturaleza de la Cultura in Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla in 1999,and Miserable Intentions in Galerie Alimentation générale d’art Contemporain in Luxembourg and in Arcade, Marseille, France.

Awards

  • 1995 First prize in sculpture, Ecole des Beaux-arts, Paris
  • 1994 EIGHTY “a suive” (“To be continued”) International art magazine now NINETY, selected by a jury to represent Paris for tour show in France

Selected Exhibitions

  • 2017 Subverted Mythologies, The Drawing Room, Philippines
  • 2016 Absence, The Drawing Room, Philippines
  • 2014 Miracles, The Drawing Room, Philippines
  • Ifugao Red, In partnership with Vargas Museum, Philippines
  • 2013 The Drawing Room, GillmanBarracks, Singapore
  • 2013 Art Basel Hong Kong, The Drawing Room
  • 2012 Silverlens Art gallery“White spirit”
  • 2010 Silverlens Art gallery“SyntheticsReliquaries”. PasongTamo, Makati, Philippines
  • 2009 Pablo gallery“Wanted 2 and ‘Shamanism” Fort Makati, Manila Philippines
  • 2008 Finale gallery“Wanted” et “Shamanism” Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines
  • 2007 Green Papayagallery“Monument and Wanted”
  • 2006 Euxausi nous regardent, St. Etienne, France.
  • 2003 Vargas museum, Manila, Philippines. Alliance Française
  • 2001 Bruxelles international art faire, Belgium Les disparitions, Bruxelles international art faire, Belgium
  • Galerie Alain Le Gaillard, Paris, France and Galerie Alimentation Générale Art Contemporain, Luxembourg.
  • 1996 Le 19, Centre Régionald’ArtContemporain de Montbéliard.
  • 1994 Entre deux, Gaston Damaget Rebecca Berger, Galerie de Beaux-arts, Paris, France
  • 1992 Espaced’ArtContemporain Camille Lambert, JuvisysurOrge, France
  • 2013 Philippines Contemporary art survey, Metropolitan museum, Manila Philippines
  • 2013 Manila Vice, MIAM musée d’art modeste, Sète, France
  • 2013 Philippines contemporary arts, Metropolitan museum, Manila, Philippines
  • 2012 Bastards of misinterpretations; New York edition TOPAZ ARTS,
  • 2011 Biennale de Jakarta, délégation Philippines
  • 2010 Sculptures jardin de MUDAM Luxembourg
  • 2010 Two man show, Gaston Damag and Goetz Artdt. Vargas museum and the MO art space (June 2010)
  • 2007 Damag, Ocampo, Deroubaix. Magnet Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines. Heterotopias, Thessaloniki International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece. Hospitalité, Centre d’ArtContemporain de Camille Lambert, JuvisysurOrge, France Lists 07, the Young Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland
  • Hospitalitéstoim’aime, Ile de France. Spaceinvation, Vienna, Austria What’s up Berlin? Berlin, Germany
  • 2006 My home is my Castle, Dexia BIL Bank Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
  • 2003 Transfert, Palais des Beaux-arts, Bruxelles, Belgique.
  • 2002 Chambre double, Galerie Alain le Gaillard. Exhibition at the Hotel la Louisiane, Paris, France
  • FoireInternationaled’ArtContemporain. FIAC, Paris, France
  • 1998-99 “At home and abroad”, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco USA At home and abroad, contemporary art Museum, Huston, Texas, USA
  • “At home and abroad”, University of Hawaii.
  • “At home and abroad” Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines.
  • 1996 109…le plus belâges…,Espace Retz, Paris. France
  • La fondationFénéon, Chapelle de la Sorbonne, Paris, France
  • 1995 Rose pour les Garçons, Musée des Beaux-arts, Paris, France
  • Fragile, Outdoor exhibit of a selection of young artists from different European art schools, Crema, Italy.
  • 1994 GalerieNationaleTutesall, Luxembourg.
  • 1993 Les félicités du jury,(Magna, Cum graduates) Musée des Beaux-arts de Paris, France
  • 1991 Three young Artists, Gallery RAM, Rotterdam.
  • 60 artistes A suivre, Selection for the journal Eighty.
  • 1990 Trace 1, Cave de la cour du Mûrier, Ensb-a, Paris, France
  • Snark, Centre Pablo Neruda d’Artcontemporain de la ville de Corbeille-Essonne, France
  • 1988 Salon de jeunepeinture, Grand Palais, Paris, France

Biography

Gaston Damag is a Filipino Asian Modern & Contemporary artist based in France. Hailing from the Cordilleras Region, his modern contemporary art-style can be attributed to the melding of his time in Paris and his Ifugao roots.

LIFE IN THE CORDILLERAS

Gaston Damag or “Bandao” was born of Ifugao parents. He has 8 sisters and 5 brothers. His father was a postmaster of Banaue for several years. Whenever his father got home early from work, he would tinker around his workshop as he was also an excellent craftsman.Gaston was very close to his father as they would cut wood together or do a little bit of gardeninging. Occasionally, Gaston and his brothers would be invited into his father’s workshop to help him sculpt, make cabinets and more. This is where he learned how to work with metal and wood.

If Gaston was very close to his father, his mother was the world to him. His mother was one of the daughters of a famous shaman family in the Banaue region. Damag’s uncles and aunties regularly practiced traditional rituals regularly in their house. As a result, Gaston and his siblings grew up with the regular rhythm of shamanic ritual.

Gaston’s mother was a businesswoman who owned one of the first antique shops in Banaue. She sold wood carvings, coffee beans, tobacco and other souvenir items. Being naturally intelligent and witty, she was able to send Gaston and his siblings to the different universities of Baguio and Manila. After their father’s death, she migrated to the USA and only to go back home in the Philippines twice, her second time was when she needed to be buried at home.

As a child of the 70s, Gaston distinctly remembered the atrocities of martial law. He never really understood why a teacher, a policeman or a farmer was killed or why a group of soldiers are massacred.

This was what Gaston’s life was like in the Cordilleras and has, in more ways than one, greatly influenced his being an artist and his way of doing art.

WHY FINE ARTS

After graduating from Baguio City High School, Gaston went back to Banaue still trying to figure out what he wanted to do. Being a part of the section of elementary architecture, he loved looking at pictures of beautiful houses, pictures of well-designed man-made landscape and more. This made him want to be an architect.

However, after the death of his father, Gaston Damag suddenly lost interest in studies and stayed in Banaue for a bit to learn more about his people and this culture. He did this by visiting many villages and being a tour guide for tourists in order to earn a living. After a while, his brother invited him to Manila to enroll in an art school.

Gaston accepted and he eventually enrolled in a painting class in Slims Fashion School. After a while, he was able to get into the University of the Philippines and take up the fine arts course. He was helped by a Sir Napoleon Abueva who vigorously intervened and insisted that they accept Damag in the fine arts school.

Gaston stayed in UP fine arts for one year before leaving for France. Upon his arrival in France, he immediately enrolled at the French alliance to learn the French language. After a month, he wanted to learn a more literary form of French language thus having him enroll at the University of Sorbonne in the French language section. The reason being that he wanted to pass the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris (Paris Fine Arts School).

After 8 months of intense French language training, he managed to pass the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris exam and the Ecole National Superieur d’Arts Plastics de Cergy Pontoise. The Paris school under the juries of Pierre Alechiensky, Joelle Kermarrec accepted him as their student apprentice.

The Cergy Avant Garde Art school accepted him directly in the 3rd year level. After spending 5 years in Paris Arts school (ENSBA) Gaston Damag graduated Summa Cum Laude in multimedia and won the first prize for its sculpture competition. In the same year, he represented his school in the European Best Student of The Year show in Italy. He also graduated at the Avant-Guard Art School of Cergy pontoise.

Gaston worked in repairing apartment buildings – a difficult job, but it paid well. He also worked also in a museum for 11 years as a specialist in art installation which he got through his sculpture professor. In his 4th year, his sculpture professor told him that it was time for him to meet other art professionals. After being instructed to form a group of artists willing to work with him, he was finally able to work in a museum and be exposed to several forms of art.

INFLUENCES IN ART

Gaston Damag has a lot of influences when it comes to his career as an artist. Being curious of many things, particularly Arts, literature, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cinema, and music; he prefers to name Levis Strauss, Michel Leiris, Raymond Roussel, Peter Greenaway, Jean Luc Godard, Coltrane, Shakur Tupac and Madonna.

What he understands about conceptual is that artists are free of what they do, paints figurative, abstracts, volume representational or non-representational. According to him, he does not really know what category nor style he belongs in. The most important thing for him is that what he creates exists.

Gaston also believes in God’s existence, stating that He did everything. What else can humanity do? More Art.

DIFFERENCES IN ART

Gaston Damag doesn’t strictly know what makes him different from other artists because he feels that only qualified people should do that; comparing his work to others’. Living in Europe as a Filipino and Ifugao made resisting new Western Academism particularly challenging for him. Art has always been a language between different artworks and cultures and in that language, he finds his own. It’s hard to make an exchange without mimicking the others’ work.

THE ARTIST’S CONTRIBUTION

As an artist, Gaston Damag is known for his melding his cultural roots with his learn western influence. Having been featured in many art exhibitions and installation, and being granted several awards, Gaston Damag is a prominent figure in Modern & Contemporary Art.