Art Review: Caricatura by Gil Maningo

Sm City Cebu in coordination with GraphicStar presented the 1st ever caricature exhibit in Cebu entitled Caricatura: The gaiety of one’s character and emotion – A solo exhibit by Gil Maningo. The exhibit ran from July 10, 2015 to July 24, 2015.

Gil Francis Maningo was Born in Cebu City and completed his Fine Arts studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He then went to the US and held various jobs there such as being a graphic artist in Chicago Sun Times Magazines and a part-time caricaturist in New York, Greenwich Village.

He came back to Cebu in 1989 and founded his own company, KULAS, which introduced Kulas shirts that were exclusively for Cebuanos.

Other than that, he is also a renowned musician as he was one of the first recording artists under Octo Arts Records and a finalist in the 1990’s Cebu Pop Music Festival.

For those of us who loves watching caricature, an exhibit such as this is always enjoyable to watch as we are interested on how the artists rendered the different faces of these famous personalities.

Caricature, which is simply defined as a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way is always hilarious. And what made the exhibit much more entertaining is that it showcased the caricatures of local personalities like businessman Bunny Pages and Marissa Fernan, artist Mar Vidal, industrial designer Kenneth Cobonpue, dance maestro Val Sandiego and Michel & Amparito Lhuillier

The exhibit also had caricatures of Muhammad Ali, Seth Curry, Dwayne ” The Rock “ Johnson, Steve Jobs, The Beatles, Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino.

So indeed, this exhibit was fun and looking at how many works were bought, we can also conclude that financially it was also successful. Congratulations to Sm City Cebu and Gil Maningo!

Sm City Cebu is located at North Reclamation Area,Cebu City.

About the author: N.M. CABANGBANG or “BANGBANG” has been writing about events, art and culture for MetroCebuNews since June 2014. He is a graduate of Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Painting at the University of the Philippines Cebu and was the chairperson for two major student organizations, namely Fine Arts Student Organization (1997-1998) and Nagkahiusang Kusug sa Estudyante political party (1998-1999).

Since 2010, he has been an ART teacher at B.R.I.G.H.T. Academy and is also the football coach for the school’s women’s team. He is also the singer/songwriter of the rock & roll band PALTIK which has released their self-produced album, “Here Come the Guns of the South”.

He is happily married to his beautiful and talented wife, Rizza Del Castillo –Cabangbang and lives with their three beloved dogs: Choknut, Cream-O and Moby.