Alfredo Esquillo

(b. 1972)

Golf Plan

Footnotes

Provenance
Hiraya Gallery, Manila, The Philippines
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists, 1998

Literature
Tin-aw Art Management, Alfredo Esquillo, Makati City, The Philippines, 2013, p. 35, illustrated in colour
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists, San Francisco, 1998, p. 79, illustrated in colour

阿爾費雷多‧艾斯奇洛
高爾夫球場
一九九七年作

簽名：A Esquillo 10.1997
油彩 鋸屑軟銲橡膠板

來源
菲律賓馬尼拉Hiraya Gallery
現藏家得自上述畫廊

展覽
「At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists」，舊金山亞洲藝術博物館，1998年

出版
Tin-aw Art Management，《Alfredo Esquillo》，菲律賓馬卡蒂，2013年，第35頁，彩圖
舊金山亞洲藝術博物館，《At Home & Abroad: 20 Contemporary Filipino Artists》，舊金山，1998年，第79頁，彩圖

Alfredo Esquillo majored in painting, graduating in 1993 from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. From the start, he showed great talent with his skilled, almost photographic style of painting. His early career developed around the themes of the 'magic realist' artists and the Filipino social realists. Golf Plan was painted in 1997, the year of the Asian financial crisis, when the peso plunged to half its value against the US dollar. Esquillo breaks up his canvas into two distinct halves, as if his countrymen can similarly be divided into two groups – those doing back-breaking work and living off the land compete for the same land with a small elite class, who pass their time playing golf with an equally intense focus. The painting is rent asunder by a stake that asserts 'I will buy your land.'

The masses in this painting are not faceless and their presence dominates the picture. Despite this, they are consigned to a passive, even subjugated role in society. All agency seems to reside with the minority, represented by the faceless and expressionless golfers. The bulldozer's arms mirror the golf swings as they move effortlessly through an idyllic 'natural' scenery. A golfer sends a ball ripping into the left half of the canvas, shattering the tranquility of the work, its effects at once palpable and violent. The toil of human hands, represented by the baskets and sacks of rice, is immaterial when confronted by the power of heavy machinery and capital.

Esquillo makes it painfully clear that there is no escape from capitalism and modernisation, which value solely the acquisition and accumulation of assets and wealth. Still, the indomitable gaze of the female farmer located at the centre of the painting expresses a sense of hope and wisdom. She knows the land is so much more than an economic symbol. It represents the blood and toil of the people, and thus neither capitalism nor modernisation can ever hold an absolute claim over it.