by Anna Gamboa
Street art gets elevated and exposed to a wider audience at Bonifacio Global City.
Trust Bonifacio Global City to take street art to new levels. Visitors, residents and those working in the district were surprised as colors and forms began to take shape on many walls on large buildings. An initiative of the Bonifacio Arts Foundation, Inc., the group partnered with LA-based art consultancy Le Basse Projects to curate the right blend of Filipino and foreign artists.
One of the most-seen murals around BGC, Drew Merritt and Cyrcle collaborated on the huge mural of the sideways suspended spaceman, an impossible astronaut in grayscale with straight lime green neon bars woven in and out of the figure. Another work by Merritt portrays a stark, alluring and almost monochromatic pin-up girl, whose back is presented to the viewer.
Anjo Bolarda’s playful and dynamic lines converge in a candy-striped mural that dominates a wall near Bonifacio High Street, while Kristin Farr’s meditative and geometric works, cast an almost hypnotic spell with the rhythm and melody of repeating patterns and colors. There’s Faile’s pop-art mural, almost garish in color, but still eye-catching in composition. Some wonder what it’ll look like after some time, when the sun has bleached away most of the colors. Egg Fiasco and his haunting deer mural, looking like something conjured out of a surreal dream.
Do they awe because of their size or beauty? Not all the art on display is on an enormous scale—there are smaller works, hidden around a corner waiting to be discovered by eyes that seek the novel or unusual. Nate Frizzell’s charming and haunting child-sized mural of a pre-pubescent boy armed with a spray can trailing a bright yellow line after creating a quickly sketched tiger, a more realistic tiger’s mask suspended before him. Another work, playing on the almost totemic animal-child, rough-versus-fine art theme portrays a boy in a dark hoodie leaning against a quickly sketched bear standing on its hind legs. Or the little child in jeans and a raglan shirt perched with almost-cartoonish birds.
Showcasing the inclusive nature of public art, other murals and artworks are tucked away, Easter eggs hidden in BGC’s works and crannies waiting to be chanced upon by intrepid explorers of the cityscape, in this global stage featuring pop art in its playful and poetic forms. They now form part of the landscape, delightful surprises that draw the eye with their pops of color or surprising turns of lines.
Photos courtesy of Shutterpanda and Bonifacio Art Foundation, Inc.
