In a 2013 essay on contemporary trends in abstract art [“The Golden Age of Abstraction: Right Now,” ArtNews] Pepe Karmel, an associate professor of art history at New York University, considered the common acknowledgment that the height of abstraction as a major movement in art has already occurred–between 1912—25 and between 1947—70–and what there is to be had in the present is a mere shadow of what came before.
In other words, a silver epilogue to a golden era. Karmel, however, begged to differ, and proclaims new ascendancy in abstract art today–but how exactly to put into the context what’s happening now to the newness and the abundance of what had been?
He wrote, and begins with a query: “How do we make sense of all this activity in a type of art that was declared dead 40 years ago?
I believe the most useful way to understand abstraction is not in terms of its formal evolution (which does not, in any case, fit the linear models beloved of theoreticians) but in terms of thematic content.
The formal qualities of an abstract painting or sculpture are significant not in themselves but as part of the work’s expressive message. Artists work by reviving and transforming archetypes from the unconscious of modern culture. 
Therefore, the most useful questions to ask about contemporary abstract painting or sculpture are: What themes and forms does it retrieve from the tradition of modern art? How have they been changed? And how has the artist used them to express the social, political, and spiritual experience of our own time?”
All in all, Karmel classifies the tendencies for abstraction as falling into six basic categories, all of which respond to two specific things.
Three tendencies respond to nature: cosmologies, landscapes, and anatomies.
And another three respond to culture: fabrics, architecture, and signs.
What then is the expressive message in Hersley-Ven Casero and Anna Koosman’s collaborative series, Parade and Props, now gracing the walls of KRI? And where does it fall in the tradition of abstraction, and has it advanced considerably the art?
Ostensibly, the series–which constitute both painting and sculpture–is inspired by the colourful festivals of Dumaguete City, which puts the works squarely in the realm of landscape.
To my knowledge, there is only one such festival in Dumaguete–the Sandurot, an annual orgy of colour and costume held every November set to much dancing and music, and purports to be a celebration of the interweaving influences of Spanish and American cultures in Dumagueteño culture.
But one can also add the Buglasan, the provincial festival of festivals held every October, which is a concentrated amalgam of all the other festivals of the various towns and cities of Negros Oriental.
Except for a unique conceit (“scarecrows” for Bayawan’s Tawo-Tawo Festival, or “crabs” for Sibulan’s Yagyag Festival), these ritualised merriments don’t differ much from each other or from the other festivals found yearlong all over the Philippines; the Sinulog of Cebu has set a definitive template everyone has followed–percussive beats that hint of tribal air, an array of accoutrements that signal Spanish or American flavours.
In my mind, they all become a blur of sameness–the same dance steps, the same dance beats, the same props and costumes and headgears and manners of make-up.
It is interesting thus to see these festivals through the lens of abstraction, and for Koosman and Casero, festival revelry is suffused in soft pink, at least with the paintings, with splashes of bold colour–circles of dark orange, shapes in deep brown, dashes of supreme gold–bursting here and there inviting an easy contrast.
In the best reiteration of the series, the shapes and colour come together as if transformed into clouds, or billowy soft textile, that merge and break way.
The colours are a rain of emotive expression, and the only means with which to understand all these is to surrender to their billowing grandeur.
They reminded me somehow of those floating wispy white curtains that engulf, sensually, Daisy Buchanan the first time Nick Carraway sees her in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby–a figure of dreams, or a dreamful figure, whichever permutation you want to have.
Are we supposed to think of our local festivals as being this dreamy, this wistful?
But while beautiful to look at, the paintings exhibit a significant remove that I can feel in their iteration of their inspiration. I just don’t see it.
At best, they are masterful impressions that remind me of the works of Dan Parry Jones, or Lucian Freud, or Evelyn Hamilton, three artists who have gone through the same phase of colour and command.
But contextualizing the paintings of Parades and Props with their inspiration, however, begs the validity of the connection–but does that really matter?
We often take the inspiration for abstract art as unnecessary anchors (I remember Yve-Alain Bois’ complaint upon learning that Ellsworth Kelly’s Train Landscape, a work of pure abstraction composed of three horizontal bands–one bright yellow and the rest of two different shades of green–in fact “referred” to the colours of fields seen from a passing train), and so be it in this case.
The inspiration is unnecessary, an unhelpful distraction. I wish I was never told about it. Divorced from that, I can take them for the fluffy teddy bears of paintings that they are. I like them, although they do fall short of their expressive message.
At worst–and this has to be said–these paintings are fantastic hotel room art.
This is where I take issue, because I have seen what Koosman and Casero can do, especially in their best HA Experiment mode.
They can indeed do better–but nonetheless, the paintings are beautiful enough.
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