Young Man Gathering
an Orchid on Kalis
Island, Coron,
Palawan, 1986.
Mondrian in Excelsis,
impromptu performance
with Adam Nankervis,
New York, 1993.
Exploding Galaxies: The Art of David
Medalla, a new book by British art critic
Guy Brett, analyzes the work and incredible
adventures of the Philippine-born artist
who lives and works in London and the
world. Known for his monumental bubble-
machine kinetic art as well as his
extensive performances, lectures,
participation art works, paintings and
political activities, Medalla is
currently exhibiting work in l'Informe at
Centre Pompidou; a solo is scheduled
for this fall at the Musee de la Ville de
Paris. Brett's book comprehensively
discusses Medalla's work, integrating
social insight with art historical analysis
while also outlining the glories and
hazards of the new global integration,
particularly that between Europe and Asia.
Born in 1942, Medalla was a child prodigy
who lectured at the University of the
Philippines at the age of 12, studied
philosophy and Greek drama at Columbia
University in New York at 14 and founded
the Poetry Club of Manila at 15. Eventually
Medalla went to Europe, retracing the
footsteps of Rimbaud and coming into
contact with many artists and writers, from
Man Ray to Ad Reinhardt. In London, he met
Guy Brett; their relationship is witness to
the beneficial possibilities of the East-
West collaboration. Their meeting is
symbolic of everything friendly that can
develop between remote cultures.
In their first encounter, Brett tells us,
he was astonished by the knowledge Medalla
had of his favorite English poets. Through
the fiber optics of poetry, a dialogue of
more than 30 years developed, with Medalla
apparently serving as Brett's resource for
Asian literature and art, a fabulous bounty
that includes the writings of the great
mystics as well as a fascinating folklore.
Brett soon joined with Medalla and a group
of others to found the Centre for Advanced
Creative Study in London (later renamed
Signals London), dedicated to experiments
in art and science. In the mid-'60s Signals
was the site for a series of large-scale
shows of experimental and kinetic art, and
published 10 issues of the periodical,
Signals Newsbulletin, edited by Medalla,
which has become a major document on avant-
garde activity (and which was recently
reprinted by the British Art Council).
Signals featured work by an international
roster of artists, including Takis
(Greece), Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica (Brazil), Jesus Rafael Soto
and Alejandro Otero (Venezuela) and Pablo
Neruda (Chile)--just to name a few.
At the same time he edited Signals in
London at age 22, Medalla was developing
his own work. His Bubble Machines (1963)
use soap, water, air, electricity, a small
engine and chance to produce volatile and
hypnotic visual compositions. More
experiments followed, particularly in the
fields of conceptual art, performance and
various curatorial and organizational
efforts, such as his participation in the
founding of Artists for Democracy in 1974.
However, the British art establishment was
reluctant to recognize Medalla's
contribution, even though he did most of
his work in England for some 35 years. In
the words of Brett, "By the cruel logic of
chauvinism, official aspirations to make
London an international art center resulted
in obliterating London's cosmopolitan
reality and the actual ferment of its
cultural life." Although Brett is elegant
enough to limit his observation to London,
which is his birthplace, this is not the
only city where chauvinism has become a
suicidal force. Most modern art centers
share in the malady, with Paris remaining
the least infected.
Over the years, Medalla found himself at
the center of several artistic
undertakings. After the demise of Signals
London, he went on to consolidate the
Exploding Galaxy, a live-and-work commune
that operated in and around London in the
late `60s. In addition to Artists for
Democracy, Medalla was the founder in the
`80s and `90s of Octetto Ironico, the
Baroque Buddha Brotherhood, the Synoptic
Realists and the Mondrian Fan Club. Each
one of these groups had somehow different
philosophies and members, with Medalla as
their connecting thread. Their existence in
no way discouraged Medalla's need for
constant international traveling.
Medalla's life continues to be that of a
self-realized master navigator. Although he
surfs the world by the traditional means of
airplanes, ships and cars, he uses these
"heavy" means of transportation with such
frequency and casualness that they become
"liquid," propelling him swiftly from one
nation, one language, one culture to the
next and back again. Medalla views life as
a full kinetic experience, not only as a
flux in time but also a fluid displacement
in space. His global surfing is punctuated
by chance encounters with thousands of
people, many anonymous but some who are
well-known. With all of them Medalla has a
way of communicating that amounts almost to
a technique, a sort of poetics of the
chance encounter that can lead to a
lifetime friendship. Some celebrities with
whom he has had accidental meetings are
Walt Disney, Edith Piaf, Pablo Neruda,
Salvador Dali, James Baldwin, Jean Genet,
Marlon Brando, Louis Aragon, Gloria
Swanson, Jorge Luis Borges, William
Burroughs and James Dean. With all he
strikes a conversation, and many times this
brief but interesting exchanges have been
recorded in various interviews with the
artist.
Brett's careful scrutiny of Medalla's
output has divided the work into four main
stages. First, the kinetic period,
including The Bubble Machines, 1963; Sand
Machine, 1964; Mud Machine, 1964-67.
Second, the period of participation art,
characterized by "the relationship with
other people and the interaction of nature
and culture, art and society": A Stitch in
Time, 1968; Down with the Slave Trade!,
1971; Eskimo Carver, 1977, etc. Third, the
period of performance, from the mid-'70s to
today, where we see "the staging of himself
in an ever-changing masquerade touching
history, culture, identity and sexuality,"
as Brett puts it. And fourth, his painting,
a genre that Medalla never abandoned. These
paintings feature great images bathed in
the light of a certain innocence which
seems to be at the core of all interesting
art. In them we see various images: a young
man collects an orchid in dangerous
terrain; a man holds an eel near his face
as if having with it a thoughtful exchange;
several men play music; another reaches for
"the heart of the banana" in a universe of
birds and leaves.
As to the diverse nature of Medalla's
production, Brett draws the conclusion that
each phase of Medalla's work can be seen as
a different way of approaching "the
multiple levels of reality," which no
particular phase in itself can do. Because
of the seriousness and persistence of
Medalla's mobile practice, Brett sees in
him the incarnation of basic concepts that
are as Western as they are Eastern. "There
are considerable affinities," he writes,
"between the Heraclitian and the Buddhist-
Taoist notions of the universal flux." A
chauvinistic tradition of superficial
occidental scholarship, at the service of a
short-term and erroneous idea of the
national interest, has construed this
tradition to be irreconcilable, assuming
also that "ours" is better than "theirs."
The acceptance of the art and philosophy of
Asia as well as of other foreign cultures
may after all import the wisdom and new
insight that we need in order to deal with
our "goods," which we really don't know
well enough, and with which we are flooding
these cultures.
Exploding Galaxies: The Art of David
Medalla, by Guy Brett, London, Kala Press,
1995.
Available from Art Books International, 1,
Stewarts Court, 220 Stewart Road, London
SW8 4UD England.
Eduardo Costa is a writer who lives
and works in the Internet.
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