By: Alya B. Honasan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
September 15, 2008
Lifestyle Section
Pete Jimenez’s scrap metal sculptures are shot through with energy and wit-maybe because he has such a great time making them.
“It looked like an insect,” says Federico “Pete” Jimenez. “I still remember.” The artist is talking about the very first metal sculpture he ever made from found objects, an “experimental” assignment for his class with National Artist Napoleon Abueva, at the University of the Philippines College of fine Arts, where he graduated in 1982 as a Visual Communications major. Then Jimenez pulls out a pen and begins to draw the work from memory on a paper napkin, an assemblage of metal gears, with one jagged ring cut in two to make curving antennae for a round head. So where is the historic piece now? “I can’t find it,” he says, with a bemused shrug. “I think my father sold it for scrap.” It’s just the kind of matter-of-fact reality check that keeps the talented Jimenez terribly grounded. “I don’t think I have any angst,” he says with a chuckle. “Well, maybe I have some inside me, but it’s definitely not the dark kind.” There’s the fact that the scrap-metal vendors who know him very well as a regular suki can’t figure out why he wants ugly stuff instead of shiny new metal. Youngest daughter Julia, 8, once described her father’s work as mainly “ayun, pukpok-pukpok, pako-pako” (hammer-hammer, nail-nail). Then there’s also the fact that, as manager of the post production house Optima, Jimenez has a day job that’s filled with stress, deadlines, and a lot of the self-depreciating humor that you’d expect from folks in the advertising industry. (His colleagues like to call him bakal boy.) Read More
The Apotheosis of Found Objects
By: Helen Yu-Rivera
Business Mirror
October 1, 2008
How is an everyday object transformed into a work of art? An object may gain status through time in the same way that wisdom is often ascribed to age. A modest table or chair can turn into fine antique in many years. But not all objects are privileged to acquire such status. A rusty nail, spring or scrap metal, for instance, will never become priceless antiques and do not command center stage in the drama of everyday life. While many recognize these objects’ importance in the assembly line, they are merely part of something larger and are discarded once their usefulness expires. Pete Jimenez’s sculptures afford these seemingly insignificant objects the chance to undergo a transfiguration. From their humble origins in junkyards, they are given new lease in life and elevated into the status of “art.” These found objects are given formal coherence, expressive character and embodied with a “concept” in the hands of this talented artist. Read More »