Jose Tence Ruiz presents the Foreword to
Litanya 1972-2022 by Jose Tence Ruiz
(Jose Tence Ruiz, 2022)
A Straightforward Foreword
The Covid pandemic, among other undeniably specific indicators, reiterated my mortality. Because of that, I decided, after years of meandering, to execute this book. It hopes to serve as an anxious inventory of my practice as an independent visual artist. It stretches 50 years, thus far, from inception and attraction, from deciding it as my life’s path and training for it, to sustaining it as a serious if precarious occupation, to the last few years where grit, persistence and some measure of acceptance and recognition by peers and community have allowed me to label it as a proper endeavor.
Because of limitations of personal energy and time, I have decided on a partial inventory of my output as maker of images: I have concentrated here on the “artsy” side, for want of a better classification. The works here, therefore, are Paintings, some Drawings, Sculptures, Installations, Prints, Digital imagery, Collective Projects and Performances which I initiated, instigated, whose ideas originate wholly from me and are my personal statements and intellectual responsibility, notwithstanding the splendid and generous collaborators I’ve worked with over the last five decades.
I do have another entire field of 21 plus years of work as a Graphic Designer and Illustrator employed by Private and Institutional Clients, Magazines, Newspapers, Brochures, Books, which I could not include here. One reason was I really wanted to be able to complete this initial attempt. This book may list and display more than 600 works. A book about the other works would have to include several thousand, so I am still hoping to get to do that. LITANYA, 1972 to 2022 is closer to my heart, and I tried to get it done before mortality overtook me, as it has with enough of my beloved peers. 50 years is an arbitrary number, but I feel it should be indicative,
illustrative and sufficient testament to my committed desire to create these images. 7This is not by any means a Catalogue Raisonné. It may help lead to one, but it is more a compulsive if somewhat chronological diary or personal compilation. If this volume is worth anything, the former may follow before our world ends, or detours into a better future. I try to be comprehensive, include a Good Image of the Work/s, Titles, Media, Sizes, Dates of completion and Notes on Collaborators, and that’s about it. There are no essays, critiques, reviews. If this collection is worth anything, they may follow in its wake. Or not.
I begin with my deep stirrings at the end of secondary school in 1972 and end with work from almost half of 2022. 50 is easy to remember, not always golden, but long enough. I try and gather an indicative sampling of works from my years of training, and all the years that develop thereafter. I did this by systematic recall, cross-referenced with my CV which I have begun to list since the 1970s, and am aware I may not succeed completely. Also, over the last 50 years, it is possible that some works I’ve made were never photographed, documented, preserved. I have therefore added at the end of the pictures an Appendix listing and describing works that had or have no image, due to neglect, theft, obsolescent media, force majeure, changing methods of visual inventory, or just could not make it to my short production period. These descriptions are also more or less chronological from 1973 onwards. As I have learned to document better, these undocumented works become less as we approach the present. Nevertheless, I find this section necessary, as one never really preserves the follies of one’s early journey, yet ruefully remembers them much later, too late. The descriptions may help me as much as they inform you.
Regarding other information about the works, I may sometimes err with dates, although I have more or less kept that to less than 10 percent. There may also be some quibbling about sizes, dimensions, of some works not within my reach, physically and by all available telecommunication methods. These have been qualified by recall and a reflection on work habits, which, in my case, are somewhat regular, even predictable. I have tried very hard to keep these to a small percentage as well. I have used both English and Metric measures (feet, inches and centimeters) but will not debate unneccessarily if someone presents demonstrably better data. In the end, if I did attempt to estimate the measurements of a work, it was to give the reader of this collection some idea as to its emotional effect and impact, relative to its size. I did make all of these works, so I somehow remember, both the choice of size and its intent.
I have another page in this book dedicated to thanking everyone who helped make it possible. It is quite a list and deserves its own page. I wrote all of the notes, took a big percentage of the pictures of most of the images. I have credited the others who took pictures of those which I didn’t. I laid the book out and worked out all the production details. Majority of the works presented are all mine, except for the collaborative and collective projects. All the recollections in the Appendix are mine as well.
This book is my reckoning with myself, so far. I hope to continue beyond it, for sure. In 1969, 54 years ago, I almost died in a vehicular accident. I escaped without serious injury, but have since had a deep cognizance of the possibility of death, and of how thinking about it energizes one’s privilege to be alive. This notion has accompanied me over these last 5 decades, and I have always been grateful for waking up, able to do more. If this book was a small measure of that gratitude, then I have at least succeeded in documenting that. I have evolved into a practicing agnostic, but I have never given up on the idea of prayer, in any form. Many of the works here are my personal form of daily prayer, and thus I call this accumulation my Litany. Each work wanted something for the world, wanted something for my community and loved ones, wanted something for me.
*****
Jose Tence Ruiz (b. 1956) is an intermedia artist who has actively engaged in set design, publication design, book and editorial illustration, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance art. From 1977 to 2004, Ruiz did editorial illustrations for various Manila-based publications as well as the Singapore Straits Times, and for the InterPressService Asia-Pacific, which served Manila, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Singapore.
Ruiz was a significant figure in the ’70s in the early articulations of what would be known later as social realism. His wide gamut of works continues to critique power and its consequences. He has embraced both traditional techniques in painting and digital manipulations. The themes and motifs of his works harness images from everyday life, such as the jeepney (public transport from the Willy’s Jeep) or kariton (wooden improvised cart). He draws from Philippine art, folk and religious devotion, native mythology, media and popular culture, politics and history, computer technologies, and biomorphic patterns. His inventive probe of the techniques of appropriation and pastiche has given rise to innovative forms. The mingling of humor and a sense of play in the appearance of the works and their titles creates a tension between the density of meaning and the latter’s affective, oftentimes lucid qualities.
He has participated in various international projects, among which were: the Rencontre Internationale d’Art Performance, Québec, Canada (2014); the Havana Biennial in Cuba (2000); and the Second Asia Pacific Triennial for Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia (1996).
More information about Jose Tence Ruiz and Litanya 1972-2022 may be found at the following links:
YouTube link to Book Talk Highlights of “Litanya, 1972-2022: The Works of Jose Tence Ruiz”
YouTube link to “The Art of Jose Tence Ruiz: The Difficulty of Being Alive,” Silip Art That Matters
The article that also discusses Litanya 1972-2022: “The Relevant and Irreverent Jose Tence Ruiz” by Isabel Rodrigo, Positively Filipino
