MANILA, Philippines -- One of the things that is severely lacking in the contemporary art landscape is a gallery devoted to good design. An argument that may contradict this is the fact that there are many furniture shops and design destinations that thoughtfully curate their pieces, as though they were works of art--only, they don't claim to be side-stepping in what is considered as the insular realm of visual arts constituted, as far as we know, of paintings, sculptures and other recognizable modes of expression. We generally consider a chair, for instance, no matter how beautifully created and wonderfully explained, is still a chair: a piece thoroughly and irrevocably invested with its function.
But Bruno Manuri, author of Design as Art, was vocal in saying that design is today's most significant visual arts. The fact that it's commonplace, ubiquitous and all-pervading (you are probably reading this while sitting on a designed piece) makes it all the more vital in the life of humans. ''Culture today,'' Manuri says in his influential book, ''is becoming a mass affair, and the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher's shop (if he knows how to do it).''
In the West, the line that divides art and design is blurring. Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, interrogates our thinking of what constitutes good design and its pre-conceived limits. ''Design is not style,'' she says. ''It's not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a Renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn't know it was missing.''
The words of Manuri and Antonelli may help us to have a better appreciation of Gamitan, a seminal, thought-provoking exhibit at the Avellana Art Gallery that asks difficult questions on the nature of art, the benevolence of design, and their radical sameness. Artists who have participated in this exhibit are marquee names in their respective fields: interior design, (Eric Paras and Ricky David), fashion design (Jojie Lloren) and architecture (Bernie Sason and Dan Lichauco).
To see chairs basking under gallery lights (Paras's ''Trono'' and Sason's ''Mad Max'') may be disconcerting for someone who is compelled to see them as works of art. But if one goes beyond the urgency of their function, one will realize that their structure (made up of rigid lines and materials as a possible nod to Brutalism) is evidently sculptural. They, in fact, resist to be sat upon (Sason's platform is riveted with studs while Paras's has a big hole in the middle) and instead force the viewer to appreciate their materiality and raw form.
A more romantic sensibility is fused into the work of Lloren who, aside from being one of the country's top couturiers is also our own Tim Gunn for the local franchise of Project Runway. His two creations, resonantly titled ''How Do You Measure Love?'' and ''You Don't, Dear,'' ask to be taken as a duet in sinuous form: they both feature materials in the tailor's trade (tape measure and zippers), evocative silhouettes and conceptual longing for disguise in the face of love's sheer nakedness. The seeming tug-of-war between revelation and concealment is evoked by the golden pair of scissors driven into a dressmaker's mannequin.
Another work that makes us consider the materiality of the objects in question is the pair of lamps by David. As if to zero-in on their lack of metaphorical hook, the lamps are titled, ''Ilaw'' and ''Ilaw Din,'' making them look defiant from being reconstituted into the supposed lofty notions of art. But because of this, they emerge as even more powerful, leading us to consider their palpable function of illumination (light, in itself, is symbolic of many things), their objective presence and their unavoidable structural beauty.
The relevance of Gamitan is that it puts the subject of design in the center of our discussion of art that badly needs to be updated for the 21st century. This fills in a missing piece, hopefully spurring other galleries and art spaces to highlight the works of those who produce something that the world didn't know it was missing.
