At the age of 45, Genesis S. Rovero will finally hold his first solo exhibition at the Renaissance Art Gallery. Many will consider it as a little late in the game, but Rovero is not participating in any race or competition. Interestingly, a similar situation happened to the National Artist Hernando Ruiz Ocampo. He, too, had his first show at age 45 - and, by a fascinating coincidence, Ocampo’s most famous work is titled “Genesis.” His flame-like painting served as the basis for the monumental tapestry of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Genesis Rovero should consider these seeming coincidences as an auspicious signal for his first solo show.

 

In like manner, Rovero has given his show the title, “Tugon.” The vernacular word means a response, a reply, an answer. In 2024, Rovero placed second in the GSIS National Art Competition, non-representational category. He took that victory as a validation of his commitment to art. “Tugon” is the Universe’s way of letting Rovero know that he is on the right track.

 

A graduate of the University of the East-Caloocan’s College of Fine Arts, Rovero emerged from the same generation as fellow abstractionists Max Balatbat, Arley Carig, Josef Laureano and Fitz Herrera. Indeed, UE, through its various colleges, has fostered a culture of excellence in the arts and has consistently been at the forefront of nurturing superlative visual talents. Under the deanship of the late Florencio Concepcion, the university produced the likes of Romulo Galicano, Augusto Albor, Lao Lianben, Omi Reyes, and Buds Convocar, to name a few. To this list, the beneficent Universe may, in due time, include the name of Genesis Rovero.

 

Rovero’s abstract works are a heady and stimulating whirl of layered patterns, gyrating in their own space, and inducing their own illusory depth. Like a circus ringmaster, geometry cracks the whip, sending circular and curvilinear forms dancing cheek-by-jowl with spiderwebs, clotheslines, zigzags, and chequerboard tiles. The recurring and repeating patterns echo each other in an operatic chorus, actually a deft orchestration of contrasting patterns that leave no trace of where one begins and the other takes off. While it seems that Rovero composes from sheer instinct, it is more factual to say that his designs, aided by computer work, are synergistically attuned to controlled choreography. Indeed, the references are to motion and human gestures, like standing and waiting, watching and observing, listening and contemplating.

 

As an abstractionist, an artist must intensely be sensitive to the emotional and psychological resonances of color. After all, aside from form, color is the instrument that he must wield to give a physical reality to his vision. While not a physical depiction of specific places, Rovero’s references to environment - alleyways, parks, railroad tracks, rooms for rent, rotondas, neighborhood jaunts - are made mutely eloquent through the use of earthen colors, reeking of grit  and soil, rust and dust, parched earth and withered vegetation. In these works, Rovero mines the browny shades of tan, taupe, terracotta, beige, olive green and moss. Thus, Rovero is able to summon the elemental sensations provoked in him by environmental degradation, but still admirably conveying a measure of sentimental affection and nostalgia, for which the artist may still hold certain memories, perhaps since childhood years.

 

Having reached his mature years, Rovero admits to a debt of gratitude to the artists whose works have moved him to admiration and inspiration. Among Filipino artists, Ang Kiukok, Hernando Ocampo, and Jose Joya, all proclaimed National Artists,  are at the top of the rung. More markedly visible in Rovero’s art are the influences of the American Cy Twombly, the German artist Andrei Butzer, and the Italian artist Alberto Burri. Twombly inflected Rovero’s art with a childlike playfulness, while Butzer shared his assertive forms. Burri, who was also a physician attending to the wounded soldiers of the war, stirred Rovero into incorporating rolls of gauze bandage dipped into paint and slathered across the canvas surface to dry and heal, as it were, the wounds of humanity.

 

With “Tugon,” Genesis Rovero’s formal bow to the Philippine  art scene, he may well proclaim: “In my art is my beginning.” As to his curious baptismal name, providentially, upon his birth, his proud father, had the Good Book with him, and guess what the first chapter is.

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Cid Reyes is the author of choice by five National Artists: Arturo Luz, BenCab, J. Elizalde Navarro, Napoleon V. Abueva, and Fernando Amorsolo.