The Gatekeepers circa 2025

Out of the Frame: On Gatekeeping, Conceptual Orthodoxy, and the Ethics of Deviation 

In the ever-shifting terrain of aesthetic production, the question of who holds the authority to define, delimit, and disseminate art remains a persistent specter—one that haunts both the institutional corridors of power and the intimate spaces of community-based praxis. The art gatekeepers—curators, critics, academicians, and conceptual purists—stand as sentinels of a certain epistemic order. Their presence is not incidental but symptomatic of a broader regulatory impulse that seeks to stabilize meaning, to render legible what is otherwise unruly, and to preserve the sanctity of form against the threat of its own dissolution. 

Yet this impulse, however well-intentioned or historically entrenched, is not immune to critique. It is, in fact, the very site where many artists—particularly those operating from the margins of empire, identity, and genre—choose to intervene. To debunk, to deviate, to defamiliarize: these are not merely aesthetic gestures but ethical imperatives. They are acts of refusal against the tyranny of coherence, against the violence of normative frameworks that flatten difference into digestibility. 

The progression of art, if it can be called that, is rarely linear. It is more often a regurgitation—a cyclical vomiting of past forms, ideologies, and affective residues that refuse to be fully digested by the present. This regurgitation is not a failure but a form of resistance. It is the body of art remembering what it was forced to forget, reanimating what was once deemed obsolete or excessive. In this sense, regulation becomes a kind of necropolitics: a curatorial death drive that embalms the living pulse of art in the name of archival purity. 

But what of those who think outside the box—or more precisely, outside the frame? The frame, after all, is not merely a physical boundary but a conceptual apparatus. It delineates what is visible, what is valuable, what is viable. To think outside the frame is to risk illegibility, to court misrecognition, to embrace the possibility of failure as a generative force. It is to inhabit the liminal, the interstitial, the fugitive. 

In my own practice, I have often found myself drawn to these fugitive spaces. Oil paintings that resist spectacle, annotated with fragments of oral testimony and vernacular memory, become sites of relational engagement rather than objects of consumption. They are not meant to be decoded but witnessed. They do not aspire to universality but to intimacy. In this way, they trouble the very notion of what constitutes “conceptual rigor,” offering instead a poetics of care, a politics of presence. 

The gatekeepers may stand, but they do not stand alone. They are accompanied by a chorus of dissenters—artists, thinkers, cultural workers—who refuse to be disciplined by the logics of institutional validation. These dissenters do not merely reject the frame; they reconfigure it. They turn it into a window, a mirror, a wound. They ask not what art is, but what it does—how it moves, how it touches, how it remembers. 

To think out of context is not to abandon context but to reimagine it. It is to recognize that context is not given but made, not static but porous. It is to understand that every aesthetic society, from time immemorial, has been shaped as much by its ruptures as by its continuities. The artist, then, becomes a kind of archaeologist—not of ruins but of possibilities. They dig through the sediment of history, unearth forgotten gestures, and reassemble them into new constellations of meaning. 

This is not an easy task. It requires a willingness to be misunderstood, to be misread, to be dismissed. It demands a commitment to process over product, to dialogue over doctrine. It calls for an ethics of witnessing—one that honors the complexity of lived experience without reducing it to spectacle or sentimentality. 

In the Philippine context, this task is further complicated by the legacies of colonialism, authoritarianism, and neoliberal redevelopment. The urban landscape itself becomes a palimpsest of erasure and resistance. Mandaluyong, for instance, with its histories of institutionalization and post-1990s gentrification, offers a poignant case study. The testimonies of its residents—archival fragments, oral histories, vernacular epistemologies—form the basis of a new series of paintings I am currently developing. These works do not seek to represent trauma but to hold space for it. They are not illustrations but invitations. 

To work in this way is to reject the spectacle of suffering and embrace the labor of care. It is to understand that art is not a commodity but a conversation. It is to recognize that the frame is not a prison but a proposition—one that can be bent, broken, or rebuilt. 

The conceptual orthodoxy that dominates much of contemporary art discourse often privileges abstraction over affect, theory over testimony, innovation over memory. But what if we reversed this hierarchy? What if we treated memory as a form of innovation, affect as a mode of theory, testimony as a site of abstraction? What if we allowed ourselves to be guided not by the metrics of success but by the ethics of relation? 

This is not to romanticize marginality or to fetishize failure. It is to acknowledge that deviation is not a detour but a direction. It is to affirm that thinking out of the frame is not an escape but an engagement—a way of entering into the world more fully, more vulnerably, more responsibly. 

In this light, the gatekeepers become less formidable. Their authority, while real, is not absolute. It can be challenged, reimagined, reconfigured. The conceptuals, too, are not monolithic. They contain within them the seeds of their own undoing. They can be repurposed, recontextualized, reanimated. 

What matters, ultimately, is not the frame but the framing. Not the context but the contextualization. Not the gate but the gathering. 

And so I return to the question: should we worry? I think not. To worry is to assume that deviation is dangerous, that illegibility is a liability, that failure is fatal. But what if we embraced these conditions as generative? What if we saw them not as threats but as thresholds? 

To think out of the box—or out of the frame—is not a rejection of art but a reaffirmation of its possibilities. It is a way of saying: we are here, we remember, we resist. It is a way of making space—for others, for ourselves, for what has yet to be imagined. 

Let the gatekeepers stand. Let the conceptuals persist. But let us also stand—together, apart, in-between. Let us think, feel, and make beyond the frame. Let us regurgitate, reconfigure, and reframe. Let us be artists not of objects but of relations. Let us be witnesses not of what is but of what could be.

Whimsy, Kitsch, and the Politics of Play: Reframing Aesthetic Legibility in Contemporary Philippine Art

In the current landscape of Philippine contemporary art, the resurgence of kitsch and whimsical aesthetics presents a provocative counterpoint to the conceptual gravitas that has long dominated institutional discourse. Often dismissed as unserious, sentimental, or aesthetically regressive, kitsch and whimsy are frequently relegated to the peripheries of critical engagement. Yet this dismissal reveals more about the anxieties of gatekeeping than the actual potential of these modes. In a time marked by socio-political precarity, ecological collapse, and cultural fragmentation, the embrace of kitsch and whimsy may offer not an escape from reality but a reconfiguration of how reality is felt, remembered, and shared.

Kitsch, in its classical formulation, is often associated with mass-produced sentimentality, aesthetic excess, and the commodification of feeling. Clement Greenberg famously derided it as the antithesis of avant-garde art—a manipulative, populist form that panders to the lowest common denominator. However, such critiques fail to account for the ways in which kitsch can be reclaimed as a site of affective resistance, especially in postcolonial contexts. In the Philippines, kitsch is not merely a style but a symptom—an index of colonial residue, diasporic longing, and vernacular resilience. From jeepney ornamentation to sari-sari store signage, from religious iconography to pop-cultural bricolage, kitsch permeates everyday life, blurring the boundaries between art and artifact, spectacle and sincerity.

Whimsy, similarly, is often dismissed as frivolous—a childlike indulgence in fantasy and play. But whimsy, when situated within a trauma-informed and relational framework, becomes a radical gesture. It refuses the austerity of conceptual orthodoxy and reclaims joy as a political act. In the Philippine context, whimsy can be read as a response to historical violence—a way of re-enchanting the world without denying its wounds. It is a mode of aesthetic survival, a strategy of care, a language of possibility.

Recent exhibitions and artist-run initiatives have begun to foreground these modes with renewed seriousness. The Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art, for instance, has hosted works that integrate kitsch aesthetics with regional narratives, challenging the Manila-centric bias of critical discourse. The once and long gone artist collectives such as Surrounded by Water and Big Sky Mind have long embraced playful, irreverent, and affectively charged practices that resist the sterilization of art into academic legibility. These spaces offered not just platforms for exhibition but laboratories for rethinking authorship, audience, and aesthetic ethics.

In my own practice, I have encountered kitsch not as a stylistic choice but as an archival residue. The small-scale oil paintings I produce often incorporate vernacular motifs—plastic flowers, devotional candles, faded photographs—not as ironic citations but as affective propositions. These elements are not meant to be decoded but felt. They evoke a sense of familiarity, of shared memory, of relational presence. They resist the spectacle of trauma and instead offer a quiet, whimsical intimacy. In this way, kitsch becomes a language of care, a way of holding space for what is often excluded from the frame of high art.

The whimsical progression in Philippine art is not merely a trend but a symptom of deeper cultural shifts. It reflects a growing discomfort with the rigidity of conceptualism and a desire to reintroduce play, emotion, and community into the aesthetic field. This progression is particularly evident in social media platforms, where artists engage directly with audiences through humorous, tender, and self-reflexive content. These digital gestures—memes, annotated images, playful captions—constitute a new form of relational aesthetics, one that privileges dialogue over doctrine, affect over abstraction.

Yet this progression is not without its tensions. The art world, still beholden to Euro-American standards of seriousness and innovation, often struggles to accommodate these modes within its curatorial frameworks. Whimsy and kitsch are tolerated but rarely celebrated. They are seen as transitional, immature, or commercially driven. But such readings ignore the radical potential of these aesthetics to disrupt hierarchies of taste, authorship, and value. They fail to see that in a country where historical trauma is ongoing and institutional support is uneven, whimsy and kitsch may be among the few accessible tools for collective healing and cultural continuity.

To engage with kitsch and whimsy seriously is to challenge the very foundations of aesthetic judgment. It is to ask: who decides what is worthy of attention? Whose feelings are allowed to be represented? What forms of memory are deemed legitimate? These questions are not merely academic but deeply political. They touch on issues of class, coloniality, gender, and regionalism. They demand that we rethink not just what art is but what it does—how it moves through communities, how it holds space for grief and joy, how it reconfigures the terms of visibility.

In this light, the whimsical progression in Philippine art is not a detour but a direction. It is a way of reclaiming aesthetic agency from the gatekeepers and returning it to the people. It is a way of saying that art need not be austere to be profound, that playfulness can coexist with rigor, that sentimentality can be a form of critique. It is a way of imagining a future where art is not a commodity but a commons—a shared space of feeling, remembering, and becoming.

As artists, critics, and cultural workers, we must resist the temptation to dismiss what does not conform to our inherited frameworks. We must learn to read kitsch not as failure but as form, whimsy not as weakness but as wisdom. We must cultivate an ethics of attention—one that honors the multiplicity of aesthetic experience and the complexity of cultural memory.

In doing so, we may find that the most radical art is not that which shocks or subverts, but that which cares, connects, and re-enchants. We may find that the frame is not a boundary but an invitation. And we may find, in the kitsch and whimsy of our everyday lives, the seeds of a more relational, more ethical, more joyful art world.

---

If you like any of my concept research, writing explorations, and/or simple writings please support me by sending me a coffee treat at my paypal amielgeraldroldan.paypal.me  

Many Thanks to past coffee runs.

I appreciate each cup & enjoyed them so much.

Amiel Gerald Roldan

August 26, 2025 

I'm trying to complement my writings with helpful inputs from AI through writing. Bear with me as I am treating this blog www.amielroldan.blogspot.com as repositories, drafts and my journals.  

Please comment and tag if you like my reads, compilations and art works. 

amiel_roldan@outlook.com

amielgeraldroldan@gmail.com

If you like my concept research, writing explorations, 

and/or simple writings please support me by sending 

me a coffee treat at GCash /GXI +63 9053027965 or http://paypal.me/AmielGeraldRoldan