by Cid Reyes
For over two decades, PETE JIMENEZ has summoned wit and whimsy from disparate-seeming bits of junk.
MANILA – At the Musee Picasso in Paris hangs a wall sculpture titled “Bull’s Head”, done in 1942, but to this day draws as much attention and continues to delight the thousands of visitors.
Picasso himself boasts of its genesis.
“Guess how I made the bulls’s head? One day in a pile of objects all jumbled together, I found an old bicycle seat right next to a rusty set of handlebars. In a flash, they joined together in my head. The idea of the “Bull’s Head” came to me before I had the chance to think. All I did was weld them together.”
An art critic described it as “a moment of wit and whimsy…both childish and highly sophisticated in its simplicity. It starts as an assertion of the transforming power of the human imagination.”
Filipino sculptor Pete Jimenez has determinedly put his own spin on the example set by Picasso’s “Bull’s head,” and has throughout been having a good time doing it. Sourcing his raw materials from the junkyards all over Metro Manila, Jimenez is the exemplar of the saying, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” For over two decades now, through a succession of several solo exhibitions, Jimenez has shown how wit and whimsy can be summoned from steel. Of course, it takes a knowing eye when two or more seemingly unrelated parts, conjoined together, will spark another a new reality. And isn’t that essentially the basic essence of creativity?
We have followed the artistic career of Jimenez pretty much from the very start. The idea of seriously becoming a sculptor has always been there since he was a student at the UP Fine Arts. But, the question is: what can you do beyond what the great Napoleon Abueva has already done? (One sculptor came up with his own answer: choose a medium that Abueva has not done, and that’s how someone named Ramon Orlina gained his fame and fortune!)
And Pete Jimenez? The person himself, though looking properly serious as the Chief Operating Officer of Optima Digital, a leading post-production house, is rich with a sense of humor, and more blessedly, a distinctively Pinoy sense of fun that thrives in word play (so evident in Philippine advertising!). Jimenez put his humor to good use. Memorable samples would be his “Petal Attraction” comprised of blooming metal parts. “Foot Spaa” is in its proper shape, with the separate toes contrived from metal hooks. The visual-verbal punning continues with “Typhoon Belt”, and you can already imagine how it looks. From metal strips shaped and molded into an eye, within which Jimenez placed a real apple, and voila, you have the “Apple of my Eye.” Other titles are dead give-aways: “Bill’s Gate.” “Ball Park Figure.” “Askal.” “Pusakal.”And lots more!
So guess, where most of his steel works were shown? At the gallery called…what else, but Mag:net!
No doubt, Picasso himself would be impressed by Pete Jimenez’s talent for the steel life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cid Reyes is a retired advertising creative, is the author of books on National Artists Arturo Luz, BenCab, J. Elizalde Navarro, and Napoleon Abueva. His latest book, “MADE of Gold: The Metrobank Art Collection” received an award from the National Book Development Board.
