Could he be the next Bencab? The graphic artworks of Leslie de Chavez may be creating quiet ripples in the capitals of Korea and China, but the 29-year-old Filipino painter is, quite ironically, a virtual stranger in his own land.

He is almost unknown In the Manila art scene, but that may change.

Leslie de Chavez has produced an astounding body of work, characterized by meticulous technique and a thematic complexity surprising for someone who isn’t quite 30 years old. He has a cult following in, of all places, Korea, and is beginning to make a name in Beijing, and has just gotten representation in Switzerland. Yet, he has had relatively few exhibits here at home, and only one solo exhibit in Manila.

Most of the art scene folks I talked to hadn’t heard of him, but one said “this guy might be the next Bencab.” He hurried to add that he didn’t mean any offense to either Ben Cabrera, or Leslie himself by drawing a stylistic comparison. He simply believes that Leslie may one day reach Bencab’s level of success and critical acceptance.

The paintings themselves are striking, pithy, impactful. De Chavez is a skilled draughtsman who has chosen to present figures with slight but noticeable distortions: the hands and heads are slightly larger than life, the bodies tight and spare, the lighting ghoulish, the colors just short of graphic novel starkness. He starts with black canvases instead of white, truly a child of the cathode ray tube. He makes dozens of sketches to develop figures, and in them one can see the evolving exaggerations of scale, and perspective, the penultimate studies almost anime-like, as if sketched from the perspective of a wide-angle camera lens. There is no doubt at all that de Chavez is of the digital era, his images informed by the refractions of lenses, his technique of cutting and pasting evolved from the grammar of the computer.

To describe his art as “social realism” is probably to sell it a bit short, considering the denouement of that genre. De Chavez is not a didactic Marxist, arguably more of a humanist. Yet, it’s clearly “message art” nonetheless. However, unlike the social realists of a quarter century ago, he presents the image for the interpretation of the viewer, without a fixed (and often heavy-handed) symbolic meaning à la roman à clef. Ironically, this is closer to the original meaning of social realism, which, when it emerged as a reaction to decorative art, romanticism and the celebration of beauty, was more akin to photojournalism than the propaganda it became in the latter years of the 20th century. De Chavez himself says, simply, that his paintings are about the effects of colonization.

Leslie de Chavez was born and raised in Lucban, Quezon, where his father used to run a bicycle shop. His parents were supportive of his art from an early age. He started drawing in 2nd grade, when he saw his neighbor drawing. By 3rd grade, he was working with the airbrush his father used to paint bicycles, and by 4th grade, he was silkscreening t-shirts. His first “fan” was a neighborhood barber, who had stopped by the bike shop, and saw one of his sketches. He advised Leslie’s father to encourage the child, buy him some paints. “The barber was a frustrated painter himself,” chuckles Leslie, “he even told my father what brand of paints to buy, and where to get them.” The brand was Maries, oil paints made in China, and following the barber’s advice, a bottle of linseed oil and some Chinese-made brushes, and of course, a canvas. Thus equipped, the young Leslie set up an easel and launched into it. His first oil painting was a cubist depiction. He had no idea what the linseed oil was for, so he mixed it in to see what would happen. The paint got really shiny, which he liked, so he mixed in a lot more. When the barber came by again, he laughed. “Ang kintab naman!”, he said. Later on, de Chavez and his father would make expeditions to Manila to buy Grumbacher paints from the Enriquez Art Supplies store on C.M. Recto. The first time they went, the elder de Chavez was so unprepared for the price of the paints—P250 per tube—they could only afford to buy five tubes, consisting of the primary colors plus white and black.

It should be explained that Lucban has quite a thriving amateur art scene. It is the hometown of Oscar Zalameda, who had his shining moment in the 60s and 70s as a member of the 2nd generation of Filipino modernists, along with the likes of Bencab, Antonio Austria, and Jaime de Guzman. Zalameda himself may have faded from the national art scene, but he is still somewhat revered in Lucban, inspiring a host of copycat cubists who “do covers” of his rural themes of fishermen, mother-and-childs, and of course, the Pahiyas festival. There are sundry artists’ groups in the municipality, including the Likhang Sining and Banahaw Artists Group. By the time he was in high school, de Chavez had joined 15 art competitions, 13 of which he won, and the other two in which he placed second.

He graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines Fine Arts program in 1999. He had the basic skills, but not the slightest idea of what to do with them. “I could paint, but I had no clue what to paint,” he says. To make ends meet, he worked as a graphic designer for a few years, particularly for the Ayala Museum. “I was literally a starving artist,” says de Chavez. “I enjoyed graphic design, but it was a job, not a means of self-expression.” He may not realize it, but the job did hone many of his skills, particularly composition, color sense and presentation. Three things about his paintings are clearly influenced by graphic design: his signature, which is a graceful logo, his digital approach, and his occasional use of oddly-shaped canvases.

It was at the Ayala Museum that he met Bobi Valenzuela, whom he credits as the major influence in his art.

“Bobi was a great mentor. He taught me to search my soul, to focus on my real interests, to realize what affects me most. He lent me dozens of books, about art history, theory, criticism, and most importantly Philippine history.” Valenzuela was working at Boston Gallery at the time, and was acknowledged as an authority on up-and-coming talents.

By 2001, de Chavez was inspired enough to produce a suite of 10 paintings, which he showed to Valenzuela. Valenzuela looked at them, nodded, and said, “Good, pero practice pa lang iyan. Now you will paint for real.” Valenzuela left Boston Gallery for Kulay Diwa that year, and in 2002 curated a show called “Recent Works 1,” featuring 17 artists, including de Chavez.

The seminal painting he did for that exhibition is “Angkas,” a depiction of teenagers on a motorcycle. It was a startling piece of social commentary that has set the pattern for his work. “At that time, naging uso itong mga cheap Chinese-made motorcycles and scooters sa Lucban,” he recounts, “actually parang plague. All the kids had to have one. They cost very little, may financing pa nga, pero naging sanhi ng napakaraming aksidente—lalo na mga pagbubuntis.” The scooters made Lucban’s teenagers highly mobile, allowing them to escape from the orbit of their parents, thus unraveling the intimate nuclear family social fabric of the society. Undoubtedly, they also affected his father’s bicycle business. The painting met the approval of Valenzuela, and attracted some notice.

This led to Bahid, de Chavez’s first, and to date, only solo exhibit in the Philippines, held at Kulay Diwa in 2003. It was not just a painting exhibit, but a full-on multimedia installation which he slaved on for almost a year, filling all of Kulay Diwa’s three galleries with dozens of works. To raise money for materials, he joined the Metrobank Young Painters annual contest, and placed second.

De Chavez is a skilled draughtsman who has chosen to present figures with slight but noticeable distortions: the hands and heads are slightly larger than life, the bodies tight and spare, the lighting ghoulish, the colors just short of graphic novel starkness.

Bahid included video installation, photographs and drawings, in addition to the paintings. This exhibit was the next turning point in de Chavez’s career. Although he didn’t sell a single painting at the exhibit itself, he attracted more notice, in particular a positive review from Manila critic Alice Guillermo. As a result of the works he did, he was able to get a year-long residency in Seoul, Korea in 2005, the IASK Goyang Art Studio, Asian Artists Fellowship Program. The later sale of two of the paintings paid for his airline ticket.

“In a way, naging hit ang works ko sa Korea,” says de Chavez. “The Koreans are very nationalistic, and they empathized with my depictions of the Filipino cultural struggle.” At the same time, they found the technique very unusual, the colors very different. They did question these things. “‘Why don’t you change the skin color,’ they asked me. ‘Aren’t your paintings too cynical?’ But they understood where I was coming from.” After the IASK fellowship, he got another one, the Neo-Emerging Artists Residency, Dangsan Studio. De Chavez is today represented by the Korean gallery Arario in Seoul, Beijing and New York.

“Artists today are lucky, there are more collectors,” he says. He is now preparing for an October exhibition in Zurich, where he is represented by Avanthay Contemporary Art Gallery. He hopes to have another solo exhibit in Manila in 2010, but his lack of recognition here doesn’t bother him much.

His father still makes his canvases and stretchers, and his mom and siblings help out. “Kasama sila, all the way,” he says, proudly. It takes him two to three weeks to produce a painting, working long days, sketching, drawing, mixing, cutting and pasting. He will often scan his sketches and try out compositions and effects on his graphic design software. He makes particular efforts drawing hands and feet. “That’s the measure of skill I learned in UP, hands and feet. One of the exams was, take a piece of paper, crumple it into a ball with your hand, and draw your hand holding the ball of paper. Well-drawn hands and feet are how artists show off, in a way.”
For the meantime, he maintains his tiny apartment/studio in Mandaluyong, creating mini-residencies by lending it out as a base for fellow artists starting out. “Leslie is a very generous person,” says one friend. “The moment he met even a small amount of success, he immediately began finding ways to help other artists. But the lesson he tries to transmit is that no amount of help, or talent, replaces hard work. He worked hard to get where he is. Talent is something. But hard work is the most important.”