THE MOST DISTINCTIVE feature of Asian Modern Art is the artist?s ability to reflect on the aesthetic connection between nature and art, transformed through reduction and distortion into its fundamental visual elements.

The Asian tradition of landscape painting, for example, necessitates not a literalist (that is to say, perspectival and naturalistic) interpretation of land, sea and sky, but a summation of its effects and manifestations upon the human observer, who translates the concept through veteran practice, resulting in a felt totality of experience: the interrelationship among all compositional elements into an integral, united form.

The Philippine Modernist practice of art-making follows this pattern, updating themes and topics through conceptual reworkings rooted in the postwar avant-garde, but refracting their efficacy through a multicultural conflation of approaches that results in a body of work distinctive for its chromatic and formal diversity and revolutionary potential, yet sympathetic to pre-Modern tradition.

This is especially seen in the work of José T. Joya, whose own versions of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in either an exuberant display of gestural (if calligraphic) intensity, or melodic rhythms of geometric planes set in minimal space, like lotus leaves floating on a pond.

Vision and comprehension

Among his astute pupils is Benjie Isla Cabangis.

Cabangis brings a technical refinement and clarity of purpose to the task of transforming Asian traditions to suit the Filipino Modernist perspective. He takes to heart the dictum of artisanal conversion and mastery of process that transforms a mere subject matter into a metaphysical engagement between vision and comprehension.

In ?Scattered Skies and Seas,? on view Nov. 10-23 at Paseo Gallery (4/L, Bldg.A, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong; tel. 7065516, 0922-8872736, 0917-5268082; visit www.paseogallery.com), Cabangis reflects this concern for both ordering as well as randomness in the process of ?becoming art.?

From the artist?s musings of the wild and unpredictable weather of the Philippines, ?Scattered Skies and Seas? utilizes the artist?s veteran ability to lay down dense layers of textured ground, paint and glaze that allude to roiling atmospheres and storm-tossed oceans; while keeping to a disciplined sense of planar composition, utilizing a cubical and grid-like device to segment and bracket off spaces using dividing lines with minimalist precision.

One is almost tempted to ?view? these abstractions as well as ?experience? them: the former being more radical because to ?see? content in abstraction is conventionally frowned upon by Western avant-garde theories.

This cues to another lesson Cabangis learned from Joya?the ability to transform abstract space from mere surface to a frozen mirage, an alchemical process introduced through sly visual clues based on everyday imagery.

Unique composition

?The Rising? I and II exemplify these graphic suggestions, yet do not fall into the trap of the obvious, due to the unique compositional device Cabangis introduces in this series: a grid structure that extends across the picture plane, dividing the space like so many enlarged pixels, or for that matter, like windows of a modernist office building.

The device reintroduces the sublimating dynamic upon which Modernism is foregrounded as practice, the need to reimpose the artificial duality between ground and figure.

?Higher Grounds? I and II also partake of this architectonic metaphor, stretching the canvas size to scroll proportions?again, reflecting a multicultural as well as multitemporal basis for art-making.

?Forecast? I and II bring these musings to a practisanal head, reintroducing the brilliant shock of chromatic cross-complementaries like blues and oranges that Cabangis is known for in his works since the 1980s, while reoriented to the dominant grid composition, like a checkerboard stained with the fleeting statistics of meteorological catastrophe.

?Chase the Clouds Away 09? is also a sly reference to Cabangis? previous work, a metaphor for refusing depression, while suiting it to the visual challenges of deconstructing the recent visceral experiences of many Filipinos about weather.

?Area of Responsibility? masterfully closes the visual dialogue, and reintroduces the calming gesture of aesthetic distance that makes Benjie Cabangis? works not merely referents, but also processes of self-discovery and realization that Asian Modernists have inculcated.