Every day, the nine-year-old boy would wake up early and prepare for school. At 6 a.m., he would arrive at the Benedictine institution and would go straight to class. One day though, the boy sneaked inside the chapel’s Roman garden crammed with pieces of exquisite marble. Irregular pieces of marbles were abundant during that time in his school as the chapel was going through some reconstruction.  So, he grabbed a piece and took it home. That was a Friday. The next day, the curious boy scoured for a hammer and a piece of nail at his home and started exhausting and exploring the marble. He found himself carving and hammering away roman numerals one to 10 on it, as if making a small, pocket-sized tablet of the 10 Commandments. That was artist Roberto M.A. Robles’s first (fated, perhaps) encounter with sculpture.

Now at 52, Robles is unstoppable. He has consistently mounted exhibitions here and there and has been fortunate enough to receive residencies and grants abroad. But luck has not been the sole reason for Robles’s success. One should know that he could not have been able to paint and sculpt had he continued with his agricultural studies back in the day. Studying how to be a farmer or an agriculturist was his grandfather’s wish, and he, being a good grandson, could not help but to obey. Robles said he was doing great in his subjects, for he loved science and how it works. Things could have went smoothly then for the young Robles; he could have gotten a degree at the agricultural school had he not gone to the library and read art reviews and artist-features from dailies.

“I’ve always felt that I have to be somebody in life,” Robles says in his deep baritone voice. “I wanted to be a responsible person. And I felt like I could be that “responsible” if I pursued what I really wanted to do. So I gave up my agricultural studies and said that I will be an artist. I said that I want to see myself and my works being reviewed also in a newspaper. I wanted to be the people that I saw in the newspaper.”

Fortuitously, Robles’s grandfather did not have any qualms about his grandson’s decision. But from that point onwards, Robles was to be on his own. What is interesting about Robles’s artistic journey is that he set a stringent deadline for himself. If he hasn’t met his goals after a certain period of time, he would not be convinced of his artistic capabilities; he wouldn’t believe that he has become a true artist, and he would give up his career. After finishing his art studies at the University of the East in 1980, Robles said that he would no longer question himself if he will get recognition from the Art Association of the Philippines. As if the fates had spoken, in 1986, he was cited for his mixed media work.

“I figured that  if I didn’t win first prize, I would just be a commercial artist and earn a living,” he explains. The artist in Robles, it seems, gets bored easily. And if circumstances don’t necessarily go in his way or his expectations aren’t met, he is bound to leave and move forward. “I took up a master’s degree at the University of the Philippines. But I got bored because I was looking for a great teacher. Well, Jose Joya and Alice Guillermo were good. After a semester, I gave up and worked on my paintings and creative works on my own.”

To date, Robles is known in the art scene for his Zen-inspired oeuvre that usually boasts of a muted color palette—black-and-white tones silently swimming and dancing in a surface. Art critics have always been keen to describe his pieces as leaning towards minimalism and abstraction. The artist discloses that his affinity towards abstraction or the intangible, if you will, is just but natural for him. In fact, Robles says that even his creative process, the progression of how he gives birth to opuses easily stems from his mind and heart. It’s as if the works are but innate extensions and appendages of the artist himself that are rendered in canvases and formed in three-dimensional pieces and mixed media works.

A perfect example of this symbiotic relationship between the artist and his pieces is seen in Robles’s latest exhibition at the Galeria Duemila. Titled ‘Origen,’ the show features the artist’s most recent paintings and sculptures. Pieces in the exhibit are a continuation of the artist’s ‘Felipinas’ show at the same gallery two years ago and talk about the texture and color of the Filipino culture as seen and felt by Robles himself. Highly conceptual, the works are bewildering representations of the artist’s immediate surroundings in his hometown Batangas.

A huge black-and-white abstract painting that displays thick and large brushstrokes represent the playfulness of a local bird. A small piece done with gestural and seemingly hurried strokes mostly in green depict a landscape Robles once saw. A blue painting stands for daybreak. Hence, in this show, no matter how decidedly mind-boggling and abstract pieces can get, Robles “paints canvases that echo his environment—its immediacy, its constant presence, and its significance to find union between the subtle and the magnanimous.”

It’s no wonder now that Robles is an experimentalist. His pieces are an evolution—from the tangible to the intangible, from the what-is to the what-he-thinks-of-them-should-be. While most artists start work with a concept in mind, Robles does the opposite.

Another thing going on in the exhibit is Robles’s presentation of his inclination towards history and one’s origins. One memorable piece in the exhibition that talks about such is a larger-than-life plaster sculpture of a man that is lacking parts to the head and shoulders. What the artist is trying to say in this work is that “it is not so much a commentary on the incompleteness of man, but perhaps on how history has been so potent that it has caused part of man’s identity to be anchored on a certain moment.” That somehow, “we are never quite complete, as parts of ourselves are posited to be transcended, and this is why it is natural, if not human, to look back into our origins and states.”

Ultimately, Robles pushes boundaries in ‘Origen,’ as he masterfully deviates from the clamor of postmodern conceptual art and cradles the silence that emanates from the past.” It is also Robles’s way of telling us that making and exhausting the possibilities of art is his life and is second-nature to him and that he breathes it; thinks of it, and dreams of it (easily and naturally)—every single time.

‘Origen’ by Roberto M.A. Robles will be on view until April 25 at the Galeria Duemila, 210 Loring St., Pasay City. For more information, call 831-9990 or visit www.galeriaduemila.com.