Art,

that is all that will ever be and he was all that ever was. Where Art is being more like a father whose impact and influences last more than a lifetime. For being under your wing, this isn't enough to say, Thank you, Sir. For everything.

You are very, sorely missed.

ROBERTO CHABET (Mar 29, 1937-April 30, 2013). As we remember him.
~
Photo by Soler Santos from the Roberto Chabet Archive for artasiapacific.com
"Profiles: ANXIOUS OBJECTS WAITING TO COLLIDE–ROBERTO CHABET"
Marlyne Sahakian & Ringo Bunoan, NOV/DEC 2009

05 May 2013

,

"Bobby" was how his contemporaries called him. To us (and among us), he was just "Sir."

Many others have done and will do justice writing about the man. I’ve always wondered, though, how, if ever, does one realize near-parental responsibilities when (in his case) he isn’t a parent himself in the biological sense, when he set out to pursue and do his vision?

He cannot be summed up in careful, fanatical or schismatic words. Depending on whose point of view one solicits opinions of him from, he was alternately a leader, an innovator, a simple but complex mind or simply contemptible. I think he was kind of like telos and techne in one body; enigmatic, charming and blunt because he cut through the nonsense and broke apart deceptions. Too much, his honesty was; though unintended, it caused discomfort in others. He was just [being] himself, now in incalculable memories that, despite leaving a void, has spilled over and will continue to overflow.

He was someone we, not just his students and colleagues but "the scene"–for whatever that’s worth to generations of practitioners of which I fortunately was among–looked up to, that his passing left us orphaned.
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Never is one ready for a sudden journey someone else takes (whether one had control over it or not), and that that someone else being one who had such a strong hand that no matter how brief it held on to yours was firm it left a handprint, yet yielding for it was a hand that brushed away the cobwebs on the lens to see through but left just enough to allow for whatever else one does with it.

What one is is having to deal with being left behind and how the moments are made to at least be up to his, the journey master’s, legacy. As such, it seems that, jointly, all of us who remain will never fill those [running] shoes nor ever cast a bigger shadow (however rightly or wrongly, to others, we probably resemble an amalgamated reference in his form. Quite odd that is.).
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Thank you again, Sir. And for bringing us home back to your home. Your peace is enviable because you have claimed true, boundless art |process-ing| no one among the living can ever take away from you.
(06.05.2013)

krvilla.2013 | from images courtesy of Soler Santos/West Gallery