About the Artist

“ Isang hamon ang pagtatanghal ng obra ni Jose Vinluan Zulueta sa pangunahing lungsod sa Amerika. Kabilang si Zulueta sa pangunahing kabataang alagad ng sining sa Filipinas na may sariling tatak at malikhaing pagpapahayag na lulan ang sugatang kaluluwa ng lahi at pambansang adhika tungo sa paglaya sa kahirapan bilang Filipinong artista. “

                                          Teo Antonio, Pambansang Makata ng Filipinas

 

 

“ Does the artist ever leave home? I hear guts ripping, dripping, and holes are chasms of distance and memory. The burden of Pinggot Zulueta is a journeyer’s sorrow: cutting soles, skinning soul, singing paean to facelessness and peril in another land and clime. But a hand remembers the gift; the hand reaches the heart, and the heart remembers it beats to life, and is grateful.” 

 

                                                            Rebecca  Añonuevo,  Poet / Critic 

From what we saw of his last exhibit on home grounds, Jose Vinluan Zulueta (Pinggot, still, to his many friends, though perhaps now simply Zulueta, the artist, to his increasing admirers), sets aside his digital palette and returns not only to “analog” paint but to the even more primal and interior territory that has always been there before it could be touched by any brush or “pick tool.”

He returns, too, to the individual figure, not the dazed (by hunger) or distraught families or Madonna-and-streetchildren picking through garbage or lost in the middle of street marches cowering under the transmogrified manifestations of state power—remnants of his digitally-altered photojournalism.

Instead, the lone figure materializes in the by now recognizable Zulueta colors, the form not just disembodied but disemboweled, torn perhaps in the elemental struggle with loneliness and loss of a native foothold.

But the title itself seeks homage to his adopted home, and though the Land’s “lone white cloud” might be “stained” with his pained memories, it is the colors that triumph, less in the tortured manner of an Edvard Munch, but in the flushed, apocalyptic intensity of an early Legaspi.    

                                                                     Marne  Kilates , Poet/Editor

                

        Reminisce, 2005                       Flight II, 2005                             Quiet Thoughts,2005

 

 

 

 " It took a drastic change of landscape and career pace---from journalism in Manila  to odd jobs abroad---for artist Jose Pinggot Zulueta to trace the way back to his art. The road he has taken can be lonely, but Zulueta has used this experience wisely to get reaquainted with his art and raise it to a higher level of consciousness.  What we see are the inner roads of a man's journey.”   

                                                         Nestor Cuartero, Tempo / Panorama

In his characteristic touch of surrealistic imagery laced with menacingly  gothic textures,  Zulueta plumbs the depths of the soul of a people perpetually thrust into an existential limbo.These are collective portraits of a nation struggling to find its memory and identity, a postmodern gallery that, with the artist's altered consciousness after extended life abroad with his family,  confronts the   psyche of a people forever grappling with loss, death and perdition.”   

                                                                       Gino Dormiendo, Art Critic

 

" The Aotearoa Series of Filipino painter Jose Vinluan Zulueta is a mixture of human emotions towards the search  for  the  path  of  spirituality.  It depicts  the helplessness of all mankind  in the world full of pain and  sufferings  yet it shows  the power of hope that accepting the harsh reality of life is the only way we can fully understand it."

                                                    Ariel Dim. Borlongan, Journalist / Editor

“ Jose Vinluan Zulueta has gone a long way, literally and figuratively, as an artist since our collaboration by way of Asinta. It was in 2002, when his career as both painter and photographer was at its peak in the Philippines, he left for New Zealand. Indeed, it was great surprise as well as a sacrifice for somebody who was ahead to disappear just like that. However, after a year or two, Pinggot is back in vengeance, so to speak, with a fresher, ironically more mature, perspective and persuation,  or it is persuasiveness? Aotearoa Series is his way of saying his reason for leaving, and at the same time, living. "

                                              Vim Nadera,  UP Institute of Creative Writing

 

 

Pinggot Zulueta is a truly gifted soul who is, in parts, a photographer, a painter and a cartoonist -- a combination of talents that he spotlighted in his one-man show in the Philippines. As a photojournalist for many years in the Philippines, Zulueta captured through his lens countless powerful images of unfolding current events as well as human-interest scenes that he was always on the look-out for as he roamed Manila’s streets.

Moving to New Zealand with his family proved daunting for him at first. Transplanted to a new land and suddenly immersed in a different culture, Zulueta faced the most difficult times. But it was here that he actually managed to return to his roots as an artist. In his paintings, he has sought to define the migrant experience – the wrenching emotions of being away from one’s country and all that is familiar, as well as the urgent need to uplift one’s self in the midst of a strange environment.

The New York exhibit is Zulueta’s way of showing fellow Filipinos -- especially those who have been based in the United States for a long time, a shared experience. In his themes of change and constancy, upheaval and adaptation, Zulueta particularly wants to establish a connection with those who, like him, have struggled to find meaning in a foreign land and have risen to meet the challenge.     

                                                Susan de Guzman, Journalist / Art Curator