Romancing stone, steel, and shooting stars
Conceptual artist Reg Yuson transforms space into an experience of reflection, discovery and new perspectives
By Anna Isabel C. Sobrepeña
WE could have missed the gate to Reg Yuson’s property. The number outside the sculptor’s address was discreet. “There was a time when homes here had no numbers,” he said. “People in the neighborhood knew where everyone lived.”
His invitation to visit Alfonso, Cavite where he lived, was taken up in the middle of a week. Having been to several other artists’ residences, there was an element of surprise as we entered the driveway in the middle of an expansive property. The expectation of creative clutter like in Billy Abueva’s house or the rustic setting of Manny Garibay’s Linangan were met with a different reality.
Nestled amidst the natural surroundings were structures with a defined architectural sensibility.
LANDSCAPE OF A WORDLESS VERSE
Yuson, who had been exposed early to the disciplines of architecture and engineering, built modules during the pandemic that assigned activities to particular spaces. A place for dining was a foot path away from a studio apartment. Stone pads in the garden behind led to another independent unit, also with bed and bath facilities and a window that transformed into a balcony.
Further on in another part of the property was the studio with Yuson’s works and several pieces from fellow artists Nica Peralejo and Ling Quisumbing Ramilo. A garage adjacent to the showroom housed automobiles, intimating his passion for cars. Further in the back was a workshop with materials neatly arranged for ongoing projects.
The systematic layout spread over an expansive space with a respect for the natural world. A massive tree that would take four people to wrap their extended arms around thrived among indigenous flowers in danger of vanishing from the plant world. A river formed by volcanic activity hundreds of years ago runs through the property.
He built ponds that reflected the skies, and installed rainmakers beside chimes and hand drums for sensory experiences akin to an ethereal ode to nature. There are goats balanced on plinths installed as structural supports in a clearing where the conceptual artist intends to build a view deck. This is the future site meant for catching sunsets or watching the moon rise.
PUBLIC ART
It is in such environs that Yuson creates a fusion of art, architecture, and design.
Space is treated as a primary material. He expands the language of sculpture from the traditional into lived spaces, interaction, and perception. The engagement makes a deliberate connection where everyday life and human experiences happen. Sculpture, industrial design, and urban planning come together with deliberateness and precision. Many of his iconic works are interactive. Unlike many artists who focus on objects, Yuson designs experiences within environments such as public walkways, parks, and architectural settings. The works are invariably inseparable from their surroundings. Everyday spaces are transformed into reflective, contemplative zones.
He sees public art as a way to “stimulate intellectually, emotionally and physically.” The minimalist yet complex artworks can be ambiguous, extending an invitation to interpret rather than to be simply admired. It may appear he is disinterested in pleasing the eye and more intent on provoking thought.
Smooth, lacquered, and highly controlled surfaces appear to have been crafted by machines. This structured, engineered feel conveys a deliberate effort to minimize a visible handwriting of brush strokes or signatures which challenges the romantic idea of the artist’s touch.
NATURE’S SOUND WHEN ALL IS QUIET
However cerebral Yuson’s concept art may come across as, these stir inward experiences that are personal and interpretative. His minimalist yet complex lines and planes have a conceptual depth that pulls the viewer into the artwork. The public is able to engage with his works around the metropolis, some situated in Bonifacio Global City, in Greenbelt in Makati, as well as in Alabang and the Conrad Hotel in MOA.
“I have also installed small works at Ayala Triangle for the Sensory Garden at the children’s playground with hand drums and floor chimes,” he says.
Reg Yuson doesn’t just create objects, he creates situations. Many of his iconic works occupy public spaces where passers-by can walk around them, touch, and even play including the chime-like installations of Concerto or transmit sounds into a physical experience in Hearsay.
The works are engaging and accessible, grounded in the normal course of human activity of talking, listening, playing. It is a choreography of movement and awareness. Those who pause to go beyond the sensory experience may find layers of deeper meaning and confront a proposition: are people looking at art or is art looking at them? Surfaces literally reflect back the image of the observer, blurring lines between the object and the one looking at it. Meaning shifts as the viewer moves.
ROMANCING THE STONE
We walked into his studio where some of his collections were housed and entered into a conversation with a camouflage relief sculpture from his Territories series. “The work is about identity and nationhood,” he explained. “You never see a jigsaw puzzle as a singular piece but always a part of a bigger whole. The shape of the pieces are more relatable to landmass formation, suggestive of an archipelago.”
The works around that room and in the garden were quietly philosophical, exploring perception vs. reality, the relationship between people and space, the tension between nature and urban living, the act of seeing and experiencing.
Throughout the hours spent in this sanctuary, words were lost, incapable of capturing the sense of awe and amazement but it was a meteor and a cloud of rain that had me breathless and my pulse racing. Somewhere in the room where we sat down for a home-cooked lunch, a meteorite occupied the corner of a table. I touched the hard celestial debris and was inexplicably thrilled to hold a shooting star. It was intoxicating. But what captured and held my heart was a stunning table centerpiece, the Nimbus.
During the pandemic, Yuson gathered rocks from around the river that runs through his property. “The igneous rocks came from centuries-old eruptions of Taal that carved out our river system,” he said. Deliberately playing with the laws of physics, he elevated the stone on polished, slender steel rods and created a gravity-defying sculpture, a solid mass drifting effortlessly in mid-air. It was like rain descending from a cloud.
The afternoon faded almost unnoticed. As we walked back through the garden, the ponds mirrored a changing sky. Yuson’s greatest medium was not stone, steel, or polished surfaces. It was space itself and what it awakens within those who enter it. We left Alfonso with the rare feeling of having walked through a poem that needed no words.
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