EQUILIBRIUM

“EQUILIBRIUM” BY EGHAI ROXAS AT THE CCP

For the month of December, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) proudly presents the solo exhibition of well-known Abstractionist Eghai Roxas titled “Equilibrium”, from December 11, 2008 until January 11, 2009. “Equilibrium” will bring together twelve large works that the noted Filipino artist has produced over the past year utilizing the artistic forms for which Roxas has been celebrated in the Manila artistic community. This includes the use of delicate monochromatic washes of black and white, allied with strategic gestural strokes, bold lines, globes, and circles with shadows to create a synthesis of Western and Asian Modern Art. Eghai’s “Equilibrium” touches on the artist’s meditations on the nature of existence, and the interactive balance between emotion, nature, and the elemental human struggle to redefine meaning and the relevance of art to the greater society.

To be opened on Thursday, December 11, 2008, 6PM at the Pasilyo Guillermo Tolentino, 3rd Floor Hallway, CCP Center for the Performing Arts, Roxas Boulevard, Manila, “Equilibrium” also retraces the odyssey that the noted painter, sculptor, and performance artist has undertaken since his days as one of the youngest members of the Social Realist movement that defined cutting-edge Philippine Art with a social heart during the Seventies. Inspired by the Modernist irony of Abstract Illusionism, especially those of American artist James Harvard in his advanced art studies in the United States after 1986, Eghai has managed to channel his concerns for depicting social issues, as well as his practisanal concerns via this form of contrasting abstract patterns and cast shadows that question the formalist strictures of Abstraction during the early-mid 20th Century, redefining art in the present as an evolution of motifs and meanings that result in synergy and synthesis. The use of elegant contrasts of dense textural grounds, minimalist background wash, thick gestural strokes, geometric planes, and illusional shadows on large, rectangular canvases also produces a hybrid combination of modern Western abstraction and traditional Asian calligraphy that best exemplify the uniqueness of Philippine Contemporary Art.

Eghai Roxas is a product of the prestigious University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts in 1980, under the tutelage of National Artist Jose Joya, Roberto Chabet, and Abstractionist Constancio Bernardo; and has worked under renowned maestros like Gawad CCP Para sa Sining awardee Jose “Pitoy” Moreno. Eghai has mounted major exhibitions in such locations as the Ayala Museum, the CCP, the Vienna International Center, Ad Infinitum Gallery in Chicago, and New York’s Puffin Room. He has won many awards and distinctions, including Juror’s Choice at the 1994 Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards; one of the Ten Most Outstanding Artists of the 1994 Diwa ng Sining Awards organized by the Rotary Club of Makati West; and First Prize in Non-Representational Painting at the 1997 AAP Annual Art Competition. He is also currently concerned with performance art as an extension of the canvas in terms of foregrounding meaning and relevance to the greater social community, having co-founded the Electric Underground Collective along with Cesare A.X. Syjuco, Jean Marie Syjuco, and Lirio Salvador. His opening reception for “Equilibrium” on December 11 will feature one such interactive performance piece titled “Cycles.”

For more details on Eghai Roxas’s “Equilibrium,” please call the CCP Coordinating Center for Visual Arts at Tel. # 832-3702.