No Fighting in the Museum #2

Part of Lyle Buencamino’s ongoing painting project called “No Fighting in the Museum”, these monumental black and white paintings are based on archival images of LVN Pictures film stills. LVN Pictures had been a key player in the local film industry in the Philippines for more than six decades, although its heyday was in the 1950s-1970s. In 2008, the artist was commissioned by the Lopez Museum to develop an exhibition based on images from the LVN archive which the institution had recently acquired. Learning that his family was related to the owners of the movie studio, Buencamino also felt that the project gained some significance on a personal level. 

Working with a series of fight scenes from various films, Buencamino is primarily interested in the idea of an artist’s intervention and notions of originality and creativity involved in translating a photograph into a painting. The title of the series is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the site where the first pair of paintings, No Fighting in the Museum #1 and No Fighting in the Museum #2, was exhibited. The artist noted his amusement in showing such violent images in a space where a sense of decorum and propriety is always required. After his show at the Lopez Museum, Buencamino decided to expand the series to 10 paintings. Since 2009, he has been working on this series, completing 8 paintings so far but noting that series make sense only if the completed works are realized as a museum show. Perhaps what this ongoing series is ultimately about is the artist’s struggles with his own inner demons and the obstacles he can endure and overcome for his art.