Arre
Mythic
by Patricia Barcelon
(May
7, 2000 -TODAY)
Can comic-book art truly be
considered an art form? For those who have seen the work of comic-book artists
such as Charles Vess (of Sandman fame) and the Japanese all-female manga group
CLAMP, there is little doubt that it is.
Artist Arnold Arre may well
be regarded as our own version of Vess, et al. Arre's artwork is strikingly
different from the more familiar local comic art of Pugad Baboy and Little Pupung.
Straying away from the
already familiar Westernized creatures of dreams, his Mythos series takes a leap into a
modernized version of local folklore, fusing a fairly large cast of Filipino
mythological creatures into the comic-book world.
Arre updates the looks of
creatures like the manananggal by depicting them as everyday people. Thus Arre
gives us the slightly horrifying idea that these creatures are living a hell of
a lot closer to us than we think.
Better make sure next time
you go to a rave that the chick in the midriff-baring shirt you're dancing with
has her torso connected to the rest of her body. These are the stuff that our
homegrown horror flicks should be made of.
Using watercolor and
airbrush, Arre paints a vivid array of pictures without losing the essence that
makes the creatures mythical in the first place.
Now on display at The
Crucible Gallery, SM Megamall Bldg A.