Big business, that is. If the entrance fee of P450 at their exhibit was any indication, artists may now finally stop describing themselves as struggling. (And no longer starving.) Billed as the year’s biggest showcase of paintings, sculptures, all sorts of mixed-media stuff, it attracted art lovers, collectors, the curious and the learned; they were there to look with wide-awake eyes. See, there’s a growing base of aficionados and it’s not quite a “revenge” event unless surrendering to the Muse after three years of a lockdown can be considered an inspiration. Look around you. Auction houses seeing a lot of action. Collectors driving up prices. Gallery owners running a race to include and keep the most popular exhibitors. Young couples queuing up with their babies on a Sunday afternoon when they could be at the beach or mall. Have you heard of special buyers who’ve run out of walls and corners for their acquisitions and had to build or rent a warehouse to store their treasures? What’s the point of appreciating a masterpiece if it’s bundled up somewhere? What they do, I was told, is to rotate the masterpieces. Without these generous collectors, today’s art scene would not be the dynamic magnet of good old, cold cash. Better art than guns, or mistresses. At Art Fair Philippines’ Kaida Contemporary 2023 at The Link in Makati, what used to be a parking lot, all three floors were needed to show the works of a large but unknown number of artists. I was there for my son’s kinetic sculpture of a robot with 727 handmade parts, some of them moving parts, which he had worked on for six months. Made of aluminum, brass, wood, and glass, the robot was named “Fix Me,” which I couldn’t figure out because it didn’t look like he needed fixing. No information was available on the participating artists but I recognized the name Anna Orlina. With one look at her glass sculptures in rainbow colors, you had to be enchanted, and know she’s her father Ramon’s daughter. I couldn’t discern a theme for the exhibit. What was obvious was that even among the pretty florals and sceneries ran a thread of horror and shock: a metaphor for contemporary life?