Artists statement: The Webster Dictionary defines syncretism as the attempted blending of irreconcilable principles or parties, as in philosophy or religion; grammar: the merging of two or more different categories or inflection forms into one.
SYNCRETISM as Andre Breton would have put it, had no artistic currency, until the artist picked it up and gave it that currency.
SYNCRETISM is the fusion of opposing art principles employing polystylism, multimedia, pastiche, appropriation, assemblage, installation, etc. To combine tromp loeil and bricolage, painting and installation, abstraction and representation, etc.
To define SYNCRETISM is to bring it back to the context-background of its evolvement. Four hundred years of colonization erased all our links with our so-called Heathen and savage past through the burning of all vestiges of that culture by the colonists-missionaries whose religious zeal was matched only by the Spanish Inquisition back home. After the 2nd World War, and after we've won our Independence from our second colonizer, the United States- in the early 1950s, Manila was a-buzzed with Modernism, as we engaged in the rebuilding of our Nation ravaged by war and the re-inventing of a culture disrupted by colonization.The socio-political culture we were re-inventing was closely linked with the West rather than our Asian neighbours, for the East and West , and Germany in Central Europe were divided by the bamboo and iron curtains as the Cold War became entrenched. Meanwhile, an intellectual battle ensued between the vanguards and the rear-guards of Art, and the Culture we were re-inventing was a hybridization that towards the end of the Century was germinating to burst forth in the New Millennium as SYNCRETISM.

SYNCRETISM MANIFESTO

SYNCRETISM embraces all denominations, factions, cliques, trans-genders and breeders, the establishment, the heretics, the marginalized, the ostracized, the fat, the thin, Capitalists and Communists.

SYNCRETISM assimilates Americanism, Europeanism, Chinafication, Japanization, Latinification, Filipinization, Art Brut, Naif, Dada, Fluxus, Subliminal-Automatism-Abstract, Pop, Anti-Art, Baroque, and grandma Art.

SYNCRETISM rejects dogmatism, fundamentalism, traditionalism, exclusivity.

SYNCRETISM denounce, repudiate, refuse, eliminate, discard charlatans posing as artists and art lovers who twist public opinion into believing that marketability equals artistic excellence. I honour them with my Annual Peck Pinyon Awards.

The SYNCRETIST debunks the singular, signature style as a means of mass production and easy product recall.
The SYNCRETIST cultivates multiple styles, multiple techniques, multi-media, multiple personalities and guises, in order not to be pigeon-holed and trapped in little boxes to be rarefied, classified, commodified.

The SYNCRETIST mistrusts the sleek and overly refined technical style of the charlatan as the inauthentic posturing of the commercialized lacky of the 'nouveau riche' whom he glorifies.

SYNCRETISM aims for peace, understanding, and harmony in the world. … Read More