Lot 113
NOEL PAMA
b. The Philippines, 1961
UNTITLED, 2008
Signed ‘NPAMA’ and dated ‘2008’
(lower right)
Oil on canvas
122cm x 92cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Kuala Lumpur.
ESTIMATE RM 4,000 - 7,000 |
There’s much debauchery about, in a dimly-lit dingy joint with the men and women in various stages of undressed. Booze, Cigarettes and Karaoke – the prelude to sex at one of the closed rooms provided. The women are dressed in rags that leave little to the imagination while the men, because they are the paying and often paying generously, are treated like kings. The girls with their hair long and their skirts very short. As the two nearest viewer seem to get intimate, another hostess who’s obviously not taken, saunters close for a bit of the action, hoping on a threesome perhaps. There’s a lot of groping around while two others get vicarious thrills from watching the hostess sexy moves, never mind if she’s not dancing to the beats or has two left legs. Yes, the scene seems familiar from the work in the previous Henry Butcher auction, with the same cheap plastic chairs and gaudy chequered floor tiles. Will the viewer get a ringside seat to a classier joint if and when the artist Noel Parma next feature such subjects?
Noel Parma becomes well known in Malaysia with his participation in the International Sasaran Art Festival in Selangor. Self-taught, he has shown a natural ability for painting figures. His specialty was Drafting Technology, from the Technological University of the Philippines. His art prizes include 3rd Prize for sculpture in the Art Association of the Philippines competition in 1998, and the Landbank Mural Design and the Commemorative Stamp Design competitions in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Noel Parma had a solo called Nocturnal Labyrinth in Singapore in 2008, and took part in the Malaysia-Vietnam-Philippines exhibition at Wisma Kebudayaan Soka Gakkai in 2005, and the Malaysia-Philippines exhibition at Galeri Seni Mutiara, Penang, in 2013 – the year he took part in Sasaran Art Festival.
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