Two years after his first solo show, businessman-turned-artist Marco Santos is back with a second exhibit that channels fury as much as form.
Santos, who goes by MYSAN (after his initials and first three letters of his surname), debuted in 2023 at La Fuerza with ‘Persistence of Passion.’ Then 53, he was exuberant-‘a firecracker,’ as he once described himself. Now 56, he still fizzes with energy, but his art has grown darker, literally and figuratively.
His new show, ‘Man-hole,’ at Underground in Makati Cinema Square, pares down to nine works from the 12 mixed-media pieces of his debut. Where his earlier works leaned on pale plywood etched with burnt markings, this collection is heavy with char, holes, and voids.
When asked what it felt like to drive a hole into a painting on display at the iconic Makati destination known for its “ukay-ukay” (pre-loved clothing), Santos exclaimed: ‘Masarap!’
Rage, frustration, and fire
Curator Vien Valencia, a 2024 CCP Thirteen Artists awardee, selected the nine works from a stockpile of about 100 Santos has produced since leaving the business world behind.
The pieces grew out of rage and frustration, he admitted. A trip to Naoshima, Japan’s famed ‘Art Island,’ left him envious of its permanence and reverence. There, works of Claude Monet and Yayoi Kusama are housed on an island of beauty, history and creativity.
‘Why can’t we have this in the Philippines? We have 7,107 islands,’ he recalled, before correcting himself: ‘7,641.’
‘As an artist, you’re looking for your voice. Sometimes you never find it. But here’s a chance for me to help the country. Help more artists. And then I realized. Matagal ‘to. It will take forever.’
When the dream of building such a haven at home felt impossibly out of reach, he smashed his own canvases.
‘Every painting I saw in the house, I fucking smashed. I put a hole. Sa galit, sa galit.’
Some of those torched works even sat in his swimming pool before being dried “for texture,” he said.
Holes, keys, and heat
Visitors entering the gallery encounter stark contrasts of black and white. The burned surfaces and punctured gaps demand attention against the white walls.
Art is subjective, so they say. Even Santos admitted that sometimes he simply looks at a piece as a beautiful creation and that is it. No deeper meaning, no subtexts – just an eyecatching artwork.
But his pieces spur conversation.
One standout, Kagi-Japanese for ‘key’-uses string to bind the surface, with a silver key fixed inside a lone cavity. ‘When you make a lot of holes and you’re tied up, you can’t really get out. But if you have a key, you get out,’ explained Santos, who used to live in Japan.
Another piece arranges 36 blackened boxes with a lone red one, Everything else in the collection but this one is charred using high heat, but this brings the temperature down to the body’s normal temperature, thus its title “37 Degrees.”
Even the benches are part of the show. Made from World War II-era Marston Mats-perforated steel planks once used for runways-Santos coated them with acrylic to become functional artworks. Like jeepneys, he noted, the mats were abandoned by Americans and reinvented by Filipinos.
Nakedness and metaphors
Santos’ art took years before it found its right avenue. It was perhaps a spur-of-the-moment, a surge of emotions, but it was not rushed. It cannot be rushed. As he said about the painstaking process of punching a hole, torching with fire, submerging in water and air-drying for texture, his art found its place at the right time.
And Santos doesn’t shy away from blunt metaphors. ‘Having an exhibit for me is being naked,’ he said. ‘If you can be naked and accept the fact that people say, ‘ang liit ng titi mo, fuck you’-you can be an artist.’
The show’s title, ‘Man-hole,’ came after rejecting a more risqué option-‘As A Hole’-that he feared might alienate audiences.
As for the works themselves, they testify to a process of burning, breaking, soaking, drying. Santos’ art is less about control than surrender: to rage, to destruction, and finally, to form.
‘Man-hole’ runs at Underground in Makati Cinema Square through Oct. 1.