EP90: Jose John Santos III Juxtaposing Art & Sensibilities | Saling Pusa, Mixed Media, UP Fine Arts

For Jose John Santos III, painting is never merely the faithful transcription of what the eye beholds. It is an act of excavation, a patient search beneath the surface of the commonplace for those hidden correspondences that endow ordinary things with unexpected significance. The familiar is made unfamiliar; the overlooked assumes quiet consequence. Through painting, sculptural relief, assemblage, and the eloquent use of found objects, Santos reveals that the most unassuming fragments of daily life harbor unsuspected poetry, waiting only for the artist's discerning hand to bring them to light. The roots of this sensibility may be traced to his formative years with Saling Pusa, the legendary Antipolo artists' collective that emerged in the late 1980s and would become one of the most fertile incubators of Philippine contemporary art. Within that community of restless experimenters, where ideas circulated with as much vitality as images, Santos discovered that art was not merely the creation of objects but a continuous conversation—with fellow artists, with history, and with the shifting realities of the world. Those early exchanges helped shape an artistic language distinguished not by stylistic mannerism but by an enduring curiosity, one that continues to animate his work decades later. Over the years, Santos has steadily enlarged the expressive territory of painting, refusing to confine it within the flatness of the canvas. His works inhabit the fertile threshold where painting and sculpture converge, where image acquires the physical presence of object, and object, in turn, assumes the evocative power of image. Architectural remnants, weathered maps, timeworn books, discarded toys, humble tools, and the anonymous debris of everyday existence are gathered into visual constellations that transcend their utilitarian origins. Detached from their former functions, these objects become vessels of memory, silent witnesses to history, traces of human passage through time. What emerges is a body of work that reminds us that the ordinary is never truly ordinary. Beneath the quiet surfaces of daily life lies a dense accumulation of stories, and it is the singular gift of Jose John Santos III to uncover them with lyricism, intelligence, and quiet grace. This conversation, therefore, is more than an account of works completed or exhibitions mounted. It opens a window into the inner workings of an artist who has persistently expanded the very language of painting, dissolving its traditional boundaries until it embraces sculpture, assemblage, and the poetic resonance of found objects. Here, memory and material, perception and imagination converge in a continuous dialogue, each illuminating the other. What emerges is an understanding of art not as the manufacture of objects but as a way of apprehending the world itself—a quiet alchemy by which the ordinary is transfigured into the extraordinary, and the most familiar encounter becomes an occasion for contemplation, discovery, and wonder.