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Lot Essay
"Indeed, no other medium possesses the natural property of transparency that lends glass its distinctive allure. Likewise, as wood has its veins, glass has its "cords" or pouring lines which form wave-like strands within the cullet and which leave their traces after a long period of settling and cooling. In the same way as veins of wood, the cords guide the sculptor in cutting and shaping the forms. But on the whole, the creative process involves bringing into play the reflective and refractive properties of the medium in a complex interaction with the setting, natural or man-made. For glass sculpture which possesses its own formal dynamics holds a dual relationship with the environment. On one hand, it passively reflects the myriad features of the surroundings, even as the images that glide or float upon its surface are continually modified by the changing conditions of the light through the day and the seasons. But on the other hand, the intervention of the sculptor breaks up the flow of the reflected images by various refractive and multiplying strategies through which he creates multiple perspectives of interior spaces that reverberate within the transparent form." (Alice G. Guillermo, "Magic of the Carved Glass" in rlina - Glass in Silver, exb cat. 9 to 29 November 2000, Ayala Center, Manila, p. 4.)
Alice Guillermo has successfully summed up the inherent quality of glass and therefore the intrinsic characteristic of the glass sculpture. Inherent as the quality is, it would be for the ability of the artist to bring it out. Ramon Orlina did exactly that with the present lot. Another work from the Michael's Martial Art series, the sculptor tackles the task of endowing a hard and cold material with a sense of twisting movement, of the figure spiraling around an axis hence creating effects that are both rich in their complexity and controlled in their simplicity. A 'cubist' feel is attached to the work which displays the further distillation of form that characterizes Ramon Orlina's sculpture. However, if the sculptor retained a measure of complexity in his faceting of planar elements, their contribution to the structure of the figure is unambiguous and constructive; the parts never distract from the whole. What the parts manage to do is to evoke the living and moving human figure as they were translated and integrated, while maintaining the purity of their own forms.
Alice Guillermo has successfully summed up the inherent quality of glass and therefore the intrinsic characteristic of the glass sculpture. Inherent as the quality is, it would be for the ability of the artist to bring it out. Ramon Orlina did exactly that with the present lot. Another work from the Michael's Martial Art series, the sculptor tackles the task of endowing a hard and cold material with a sense of twisting movement, of the figure spiraling around an axis hence creating effects that are both rich in their complexity and controlled in their simplicity. A 'cubist' feel is attached to the work which displays the further distillation of form that characterizes Ramon Orlina's sculpture. However, if the sculptor retained a measure of complexity in his faceting of planar elements, their contribution to the structure of the figure is unambiguous and constructive; the parts never distract from the whole. What the parts manage to do is to evoke the living and moving human figure as they were translated and integrated, while maintaining the purity of their own forms.