Robert Langenegger
A.M.D.G. (Hitting T-birds While Stoned)
13 - 28 April 2007
Curated by Gerardo Tan


It doesn't come as a surprise anymore why religion, particularly
Catholicism, is an easy and obvious target for all comedy as the world
has been better defined by pundits of liberal causes, but who are
actually dilettantes in the wholesale of truth, reality if we are to
concern ourselves with the arts.  How best to adapt to such reckoning
is to glean them from narratives one may choose not to believe but
hearing or seeing them would make one seem (none) the wiser than the
person sitting next  to him. Or not getting it at all. All's well if
splendor is not lost in the seeing of such things.

Robert Langenegger paints such resolute unlikely narratives in his
exhibit opening at the Mag:net on April 13.  By its very title
A.M.D.G.(Hitting T-birds While Stoned), which is an abbreviation of
the latin phrase 'ad majorem dei gloriam' meaning 'for the greater
glory of god' and followed by a twisted version of an all-too familiar
simile of getting the most out of a single shot, it taunts the very
idea of procuring the miraculous in a mere snap, or as he puts it as
marking papers or anything that's graded with such a mark – a cross
atop the aforementioned initials, a mechanical action really out of
unquestioning obedience and deep conviction for the power these
initials may  hold. Failing therefore, is failing the divine.

These are beholden in scenes of debauchery, pranks, retribution and
attrition, juvenile and medieval painted in oil and acrylic, done
proficiently, some casually, pushing satire to the hilt. A planned
work of 2 life-sized paper mache figures squabbling for that
philosopher stone for a smashing art show is yet being pondered upon
by Langenegger.

However Langengger digresses from the idea of AMDG, being more of a
burden for the painter who is supposed to be indifferent in his own
pursuit of enlightenment through his own solitary craft. Who then is
that God that should befit such devotion – the market? the viewer ?
the critic? the curator? Or pure aesthetic rapture that enslaves and
consumes in that nether region of heaven and hell comparable to a
heady trip, like 'novocaine for the soul'?

Langenneger pointedly puts it as such " :The point, as one gallery
owner put it, isn't to spoon-feed the audience. In this case the
audience is breastfed by the artist with all the answers to the
unanswerable and many more. Sometimes there are harsh reactions or
objections from the lactose intolerant. Their systems might not be
devised to handle all the trace minerals and elements we sometimes
call reality which the artist made so easily absorbable. Although the
works were made to be fertile they still retain the bleakness of an
agrarian reform beneficiary waiting for the plot he could call his
own. The aesthetic pleasure derived, if any at all, is only there to
make it more palatable as the unwary audience slowly assimilates the
poison of a volatile situation in its infancy."

A.M.D.G.(Hitting T-birds While Stoned)will be on view until the 28th of April.

(Mag:net Katipunan is at  Agcor Building, 335 Katipunan Ave, Loyola
Heights, Quezon City. For Inquiry please call 9293191 (Jet Marcelino)
or email magnetcafekatips@yahoo.com.ph or visit www.magnet.com.ph