Arts

The Homecoming of Henri Cainglet

Henri Cainglet has come a long way.

The bold, textured abstractions in his paintings and sculptures have topped the bill in countless, distinguished art exhibitions and competitions here and abroad. His piercing, fertile imagination has kept him moving, then, sojourning, from one international city to another, from Manila to Singapore to New York to Amsterdam to New Delhi to Berlin to Kuala Lumpur and back. His art, relentlessly edgy and deviant, has raised him on the same pedestal with the most important figures in the Philippine art scene today.

Indeed, Henri Cainglet has come a long way - but home.

No longer, for Henri Cainglet has come home, and for good, to show us he’s got more artistic genius up his sleeve, that he has especially saved for Bohol, his home.

Families and classmates come home to grand reunions. Singers and performers do concerts. A painter-scultpor’s homecoming could but aptly call for an exhibit. August last year, HNU’s Photographic Museum of Boholano Life and Culture housed “Homecoming: The Art of Henri Cainglet”, a retrospective of the works of this Valencia-born artist in the past twenty years.

Henri Cainglet explained (in a note that greeted viewers upon entering the exhibition space) that the artworks in this exhibit are expressions of “the artist’s perception of what a true artist really is.”

“A true artist should not be dependent on the art market. He or she should try to develop his or her own style. I do believe that the more original the work, the more chances it will get noticed. This exhibition also seeks to define relationships between the art, the artist and the public. It is an invitation to inspire others, to understand and most of all to enhance.”

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Henri Cainglet, the man, the Boholano, more than his art, is himself, an inspiration.

He left Valencia, in his early teens, for Bukidnon where he finished high school in Kalilangan as class valedictorian. His brilliance rose above scholastics, he learned, when even at the onset of his artistic pursuit he was accorded honorable mention in the 1st Metrobank National Art Tilt in 1984.

From there, the art of Henri Cainglet grew, evolved, triumphed. His early solo exhibits already brought him outside the country, particularly, in Austria and Singapore, where he was among the first Filipinos to have put on a solo art exhibition there, which led him to a sculpture study grant at the Sonoma State University at Rohnet Park, California in1988.

From then on, opportunities, knocking on his doorway, came as naturally as the inspirations that sprung onto his art works.

In 1989, he apprenticed to New York painter, Jay Midler, and later joined the Art Students League of New York. He became artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida in the year 1991. While in the US, Henri Cainglet covered the east and west coasts, staging solo exhibitions from San Francisco to New York City.

Henri Cainglet’s twenty-year artistic career saturates with artistic accolades from some of the most distinguished institutions, as listed in his impressive résumé. Among them: Philippine representative, 1993 Osaka Triennale for Painting; Juror’s Choice, Phillip Morris’s 1996 Philippine Arts Awards which brought him that same year to Bangkok, Thailand for the ASEAN Art Awards; Grand Prize, Diwa ng Sining National Arts Award (1996) given by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts; Philippine representative, 9th Triennial India in New Delhi (1997); First Prize, Painting Category (1997) and Honorable Mention, Sculpture Category (2003) conferred by the Annual Art Association of the Philippines and again Honorable Mention, Mixed Media Category (2005) from the same organization.

Valenica did not lack in giving her most prolific son due recognition. As early as 1993, Henri was awarded the Most Outstanding Citizen of Valencia, Bohol. This year, the Bohol Association of Metro Manila, Inc. (BAMMI) named him, along with fellow Boholano artists like Luke Mejares and Giselle Sanchez, Outstanding Boholano in the field of arts.

“Homecoming” was not Henri Cainglet’s first exhibit in Bohol (he’s had two, one with fellow Boholano sculptor Napoleon Abueva) but this is, thus far, his most important here, as he reintroduced himself, his art and what they have become in the last twenty years, to the Boholano people.

This is not bravado but his way of going back and giving back to his roots. The artistry of Henri Cainglet, which he relentlessly and judiciously perfected, did not emerge from nowhere. Son to a maker of rebulto’s and a loom weaver, Henri acknowledges the artistic blood he has inherited from his parents.

The artist, in fact, visibly retains his links with Boholano craftsmanship in his paintings and sculptures which employ, and perhaps even rely on, traditional materials and methods that are used, forged, bended, molded, spread, and presented in exciting and unexpected possibilities.

This is the art that has charmed the likes of SM’s Henry Sy, an avid collector of Henri Cainglet’s and even actress Jen Rosendahl, who has one in her dining room. This is the art that he, too, wants us to experience, and experience in full, as he recently acquired a karaang balay in Valencia where he intends to reside, and where he shall display his treasured works from hereon. He will be opening his place to the Boholano public, hopefully before the year ends, and will be considering opening it up to tourists as well. His other important plan is to teach his art/craft, for free, to deserving young Bol-anons.

Henri Cainglet is home and he is, most certainly, welcome.

Tags: art, art exhibit, bohol, boholano, henri cainglet