DOUBLE TAKE

Double Take takes another look at evolution

Did you really see what you thought you saw? Was what you always knew as real merely a cleverly woven myth? Look at evolution and transformation in Lopez Memorial Museum’s current exhibit, Double Take, featuring works from its permanent collection, LVN archival photographs and a video installation by young director Raya Martin.

According to curatorial consultant Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, “Impassioned battles are waged upon any number of crafted platforms—notions of blood, glory, territory and ultimately, nation. In mining specific aspects of the LVN film still archive, particularly war films spanning several eras of Filipino filmmaking, Martin (the exhibit’s featured artist) counts on the museum infrastructure to set off a playing on the eyes and mind.”

The Lopez Museum's larger gallery spaces show pronouncements from the historian Floro Quibuyen, art historian John Clark and theorist Marian Pastor Roces to set off seminal pieces in the collection by 19th century painters Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo. The two artists are also re-examined in light of discourse and personal communication with the National Hero, Jose Rizal. Within these sites, text and image encounter each other hopefully to engage visitors in reassessing what these icons stand for vis-a-vis such charged concepts as country and parity.

Double Take also invites attention on images that hint at how Luna and Hidalgo saw the everyday as colonial subjects egging for recognition. It also brings to the fore pictorial practice that, in one way or other, propelled the imaginations of individuals ultimately believing they were brothers making up a single race, to take on sword, spear, rifle, and even talismans on bare skin.

Legaspi-Ramirez adds “It is in summoning such clichéd yet still charged tableaus of the real and unreal (like a flank of ‘battle-worn’ shields girding up for a no-holds bared fight) that this exhibition counts on for inquiry, at the very least, to take place. It is in this sense that Double Take hopes to occasion revisitings if not restitution.”

Featured artist Martin (right photo) holds a BA in Film and Audiovisual Communication, cum laude, from the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman, and a BA in Journalism from UP Baguio. He is the first Filipino filmmaker to be accepted in the Cinéfondation Résidence of the Cannes Film Festival. His latest works, “Independencia” and “Manila,” were shown at the Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2009 in May.

Double Take runs until September 25, 2009 at the Lopez Memorial Museum is at the ground floor, Benpres Building, Exchange Road, Pasig City. Contact 631-2417 for info.

FERNANDO ZOBEL IN THE 1950s

FINAL CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR 2009 ATENEO ART AWARDS

The Ateneo Art Gallery is pleased to announce that they will be accepting nominations for the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards from 1 May 2009 until 1 June 2009, 5 pm. Recognized internationally, and known locally as one of the most coveted contemporary art prizes in the country, it is given to three outstanding Filipino artists aged 35 and below who have made a significant mark on contemporary Philippine Art.

Artists may be nominated for works in a solo or group exhibitions held in any public venue from 2 May 2008 to 1 May 2009.

The nominator must be a current or former member of the Jury, public gallery director or curator (commercial and non-commercial), independent curator, professional visual artist (must have participated in at least one solo or group exhibition in a public venue), art administrator, art journalist, or an art educator residing in the Philippines.

All nomination forms must be accompanied by visual documentation in either of the following formats: JPEG, AVI, WMV, MPEG, MOV, SWF and other PC-compatible formats in CD, 35-mm slide transparencies or 5R photographs.

Aptly entitled, “The Next Wave,” the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards promises to be yet another milestone in Philippine art history as it hurdles towards the future clad in five years of success. This year, in addition to 8 local jurors composed of Ramon E.S. Lerma, Director and Chief Curator, Ateneo Art Gallery; Fr. Rene Javellana, Professor, Fine Arts Program, Ateneo de Manila University; Florentina P. Colayco, Dean, College of Fine Arts, UP Diliman; Arch. Lorelei DC de Viana, Acting Dean, Institute of Architecture and Fine Arts, Far Eastern University; Marcel Crespo, Art Patron; Karen Ocampo Flores, OIC, Museum and Visual Arts Division, CCP; Claro Ramirez, Jr., Visual Artist and Consultant for Exhibitions and Artistic Direction, Lopez Memorial Museum; and Luis Yee, Jr. (Junyee), Visual Artist, the jury shall include the Director of the acclaimed Mori Art Museum, Fumio Nanjo, Tokyo jury member of the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London (1998); co-curator of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (1999); artistic co-director of the Yokohama Triennale (2001); jury member of the Golden Lion Prize, Venice Biennale (2005); and artistic director, Singapore Biennale(2006). The annual inclusion of a foreign juror truly underscores the Awards’ international reputation as “the most important art prize for an emerging artist in the Philippines.”(Gina Fairley, Art Monthly Australia).

The winners will be announced in a grand ceremony to be held on 13 August 2009 at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall, subsequent to an exhibition of their works with the other short-listed artists.

For more information visit http://gallery.ateneo.edu or contact Amanda Legasto, 2009 Ateneo Art Awards Project Coordinator, at +6324266488 or alegasto@ateneo.edu.

INDIO

Antonio Leaño
Iñdio
Pinto Art Gallery, Antipolo
Opens 31 May 2009

Antonio Leaño showcases his most recent mixed-media works and drawings in Iñdio which opens on May 31 and runs until June 20, 2009 at Pinto Art Gallery, Antipolo City.

As an artist who refuses to be boxed-in, Leaño’s latest exhibit defies expectations and explores yet another mode to express his sensibilities. His deep insight and interest in math, physics, cosmology, architecture and history in combination with his aesthetics result in works that strike a harmonious balance to the eye and the soul. Each carefully chosen visual component merge with each other to make-up a creative whole that is simultaneously intense and subdued.

Leaño blends negative and positive spaces as he fuses figurative and non-figurative representations to orient and even re-orient given perceptions. Aiming to challenge the viewers’ visual acuity and acquiescence, the artist employs imagery from our Spanish colonial past, amalgamated with other archaic elements, while resting in a quiet yet highly textured expanse. This play of contra-positional facets captivates and provokes the senses.

Leaño was a recipient of various awards and distinctions, with a number of notable solo and group exhibitions, both locally and internationally, tucked under his belt. The artist also took part in several residency programs in Japan and Australia. He has a reservoir of experience and discovery to cull from.

Unlike connotations passed, this Iñdio is far from disparaging or deprecating, rather, he is imbued with immense pride and dignity. Antonio Leaño makes sure of that.

Iñdio opens on the 31st of May, Sunday, 3pm at Pinto Art Gallery in Antipolo City . Pinto Art Gallery is a member of the Silangan Foundation for the Arts, Culture and Ecology. It is located at #1 Sierra Madre St. Grandheights, Antipolo, City. For inquiries you may email us at silangangardens@yahoo.com or call us at (632) 6971015.

SPECIAL FEATURE : POKLONG ANADING

SPECIAL FEATURE : POKLONG ANADING
2008 Ateneo Art Awards Winner
Recipient, Common Room Foundation Bandung Residency Grant


Poklong Anading finds value in the most mundane objects. The rubble that he uses in this work is debris from a road digging near the 18th Avenue compound where the artist and his friends maintain their studios; while the kaleidoscopic patterns adorning them are taken from discarded rags. Seeing a woman on a street sewing these rags together from scrap with absolutely no regard for design inspired Anading to overcome his self-professed fear of color.

Anading's practice while very cerebral, is firmly rooted in his Cubao environs. Although Fallen Map is not meant to be social commentary, it inadvertently becomes so given that the work renders the artist's perception of the world around him. By questioning his milieu, Anading makes us rethink our own reality, giving voice to the unheard thoughts of the ordinary person on the street. By saying, "I don't know what's going on," referring to the seemingly unnecessary bi-annual road work, he hits the nail on the head.

Virgilio "Pandy" Aviado paid Anading perhaps one of the greatest compliments that a senior artist could give a young colleague: "I started to look at rubble with a different perspective...I began a new way of looking at things...He was able to teach me something new in aesthetics."

When Robert Irwin describes art as a "continuous examination of our perceptual awareness and a continuous expansion of our awareness of the world around us," he seems to be referring to Anading's accomplishment in Fallen Map.

--Yael Buencamino


Fallen map
POKLONG ANADING
26 January-14 February
Mag:net Katipunan

The Ateneo Art Gallery would like to announce the final call for nominations for the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards. Nominations are on-going, and will close on 1 June 2009 at 5pm. Nomination forms are available at the Ateneo Art Gallery and can also be downloaded at http://gallery.ateneo.edu. All entries must be accompanied by the necessary visual documentation and received at the following address:

Ateneo Art Gallery
Ground Floor, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City Philippines 1108

For more information, please contact, Amanda Legasto, 2009 Ateneo Art Awards Project Coordinator at 4266488 or alegasto@ateneo.edu

INCIDENTS

Marlon Magbanua
"Incidents"

Exploring the textures, patterns, movements, and shades of sound, abstract artist Marlon Magbanua creates an emotive visual language that at once decodes and then re-imagines the vast, dynamic range of everyday auditory experiences in the space of a single canvas. "Incidents," his fourth solo show to date, captures the most vivid yet mundane aural scenes: from the familiar, if comforting white noise of the city, underscoring the urban dweller’s existential conundrums, to the beerhouse tunes of the blind street musician, cackled through the shattered, booming bass of an old electric guitar, to the immutable silences of contemporary existence, framed, ironically enough, by the constant prattle of daily life.

Having come from a musical background, much of Magbanua’s work has involved an interplay of aural and visual constructs. The past few years, however, have seen an increased fascination with translating sound into color and form—literally, assigning both numerical and visual equivalents to the elements of sound. Given the functional quantification of visual elements (most familiar in digital imaging software), sound, Magbanua exerts, may very well find direct translation in images, given the right set of values and equations.

In his paintings, lines are a kind of time signature, with thinner lines indicating a faster pace and thicker lines a slower beat. Variations in hues define the pitch, with dark shades indicating lower notes and lighter shades higher ones, while textures indicate sound effects, such as the use of flangers or distortion pedals.

Color, on the other hand, functions more subjectively, conforming inevitably to cultural and psychological associations. For example, reds typically imply intensity or rage, blues melancholy, and blacks the metaphorical darkness of the soul. Magbanua’s only fixed value assignments are yellow representing the middle note, ‘sol,’ and grey representing the impossibility of absolute silence.

"Incidents" most notably departs from Magbanua’s previous work in its experimentations with greater color combinations and frenzied forms. While the artist takes off from his previous aesthetics—specifically, balancing smaller, seemingly standalone abstract paintings within a larger, contrasting abstract piece—his new works moves away from his previously quieter, more controlled and consequently minimal sensibility and towards more intense and eruptive compositions informed by the chaos and variability of urban environmental sounds.

"Basket Case," for example, represents the auditory experience of being in a marketplace, with agitated lines, scribbled in graphite and pencil, outlining and at times interrupting shapes and forms, and mix of both brighter, typically "happy" colors bordered by a looming darkness suggesting the organized pandemonium of the scene. In a suggestion of imagery, on the other hand, rows of box-like shapes, framed by thick, broken orange and white lines, seem to imply a bird’s eye view of lined-up stalls, while an overlapping image of a basket, its handle arching over the painting, would perhaps further enforce the visual connections.

"Thank You for Calling" reflects the now common experience of a call center agent working the graveyard shift: a play of blacks and greys recreate the immense loneliness and despondency of the job, implying silence in an envelopment of lower registers and dim, "neutral" noises. One central piece of the collection, "Uttering Blind Words," takes off from the artist’s experience of stopping to listen to a blind musician playing somewhat obliviously in the heart of Ortigas, where he was obviously ignored by the busy, impatient, indifferent crowd around him. The faint color gradations over the main shade of yellow, which create a richer and deeper totality, impress more of a contemplative rather than blithely happy tone to the image, and the compact, minimal arrangement of forms and contained bursts of color seem to suggest the struggle to find release—music, perhaps, desperately fighting to not be drowned out in the city’s blare.


Marlon Magbanua is a graduate of Fine Arts at the Technological University of the Philippines. He has shown in paintings and performance art festivals and exhibits across Asia, including two major art events in Taiwan and Japan, and has been distinguished in several abstract art competitions. This is his fourth solo show to date.



YONINA COLLEEN CHAN
Assistant Editor
i section, Manila Bulletin

SPECIAL FEATURE : MARINA CRUZ-GARCIA

SPECIAL FEATURE : MARINA CRUZ-GARCIA
2008 Ateneo Art Awards Winner
Recipient, La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre Bendigo Australia Residency Grant


The child's dress is a recurring image in Cruz-Garcia's body of work. Although the subject is the same, the treatment is always different, always evocative of a different emotion---beautiful, fragile resin twin dresses or a haunting black rubber latex play frock. In "Embroidered Landscapes," she takes this theme and her art making practice to a new direction.

Recognized for her competence in both painting and sculpture, in this work Cruz-Garcia eschews both in favor of digital printing and embroidery. A classic case of "the medium is the message," the manner in which the artist chooses to present the content contributes substantially to the way in which it is understood by the viewer.

By opting to print a photograph of the dress, she immediately establishes both the authenticity of the artifact and the era in which she created the artwork---digital printing on canvas not having been an accessible process even a decade ago. The image, seemingly taken immediately after the dress was unearthed from storage, conveys that it is the actual object with its stains and wrinkles-evidence of the passage of time---that the artist values. On to the image of this garment, sewn by her grandmother for her mother, Cruz-Garcia embroiders the icons that capture the essence of her mother's life and, in so doing, maps out her own identity.

The use of needle and thread validates the relevance of craft, honoring the artisanship of bygone generations.


Written by
Yael Buencamino


Embroidered Landscape of My Mother's Life: A Biography in Philippine Art Awards
MARINA CRUZ-GARCIA
25 October 2007
National Museum

The Ateneo Art Gallery would like to announce the final call for nominations for the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards. Nominations are on-going, and will close on 1 June 2009 at 5pm. Nomination forms are available at the Ateneo Art Gallery and can also be downloaded at http://gallery.ateneo.edu. All entries must be accompanied by the necessary visual documentation and received at the following address:

Ateneo Art Gallery
Ground Floor, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City Philippines 1108

For more information, please contact, Amanda Legasto, 2009 Ateneo Art Awards Project Coordinator at 4266488 or alegasto@ateneo.edu

IF THE SHOE FITS

Alliance Française de Manille presents
“ If The Shoe Fits ” by Pete Jimenez

Pete Jimenez always finds little gems hidden in junk shops around Metro Manila. What most of us see as useless junk become treasures-in-waiting. They just need to be taken in the good hands of an artist like Jimenez.

In If The Shoe Fits, Jimenez shows us that his favorite weapon of choice --- that is, scrap iron, can be combined with wooden shoe lasts and have second lives as interesting art pieces. The exhibit runs at The Water Dragon Gallery at the 2nd floor of the Yuchengco Museum from May 28 to June 20, 2009.

The shoe lasts are not new to Jimenez. These wooden pieces he got from Marikina have become mainstays in his studio-garage in Quezon City for more than 5 years now, waiting to be used at any point in time. These shoe lasts were once a part of an article written about Jimenez (by Alya Honasan) which stated that his next plan was to incorporate these together with his scrap iron.

When Alliance Française de Manille and the French Embassy in the Philippines were preparing to bring to Manila the international traveling exhibition Portraits de chaussures – histoires de pieds (Portraits of Shoes – Stories of Feet) curated by French curator Yves Sabourin (on show at Yuchengco Museum until June 20, 2009), Jimenez was invited to do a show in conjunction with the French shoe exhibit. It was an exciting but challenging task for Jimenez to create art pieces using the shoe lasts since it was his first time to ever think of works with his wooden ”shoes”. On exhibit at If The Shoe Fits is Jimenez’ own witty and creative take on shoes, composed of 20 art works of varying sizes, from an 8-inch high “Iron Lady’s Crocs”, made up of an old flat iron and welded on a piece from a tractor used in the farm lands, to a 5-foor high “Principal’s Office”, made from flat bars that look like a slender rendition of a school chair with “shoes”.

Jimenez continues to love the challenge of creating new objects with recycled iron, which keeps him busy almost every weekend. He also relishes how he has been able to show another angle of his creative side beyond his days in the advertising post-production industry. His enthusiasm rubs off when you listen to him talk about his works. “Guest Speaker” is one of the most unique pieces in his exhibit because ”I was able to use for the first time a pair of shoe lasts and a discarded gasoline tank of a motorcycle. When I combined these with an old manual water pump, I already knew what shape it would take… it looks like an animated character! I would say it is a very powerful piece”.

Another piece that catches the eye is “Bell Bottom Blues”. Jimenez describes it as a transparent-polka-dotted-skinny jeans. It is made up of cut-up pieces from on old steel matting used as fences during the 1950’s. The material was given to him by an officemate who was about to throw it away. ”You will feel the motion as one looks at the pieces suggestive of the pose and footwork of Elvis Presley”, notes Jimenez.

Such ideas just come from everyday encounters, says Jimenez. And when his mind captures them like Polaroid snapshots, he is definitely in his element. Once he is in his studio-garage with all the scrap iron at his imaginative and creative disposal, get ready to be amazed!

Pete Jimenez’s solo exhibition entitled “If The Shoe Fits” opens on Thursday, May 28, 2009 at the Water Dragon Gallery. Cocktails will be served at the artist’s reception at 6:30 pm. Exhibit runs until June 20, 2009. The Water Dragon Gallery is located at the 2nd floor of the Yuchengco Museum, RCBC Plaza, Makati City. Gallery days and hours: Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm, closed on Sundays and Holidays. Telephone number 889-1234 (Water Dragon Gallery).

For high resolution images of the artworks and more details about the exhibit, kindly contact Alliance Française de Manille, Mr. Olivier Dintinger (AFM Director) or Mr. Earl Parco (Cultural-PR Officer - AFM) at 895 7441 / 895 7585 or email odintinger@alliance.ph or cultural@alliancenews.ph.

CANNIBAL LOVE

A Carnal Exhibit Served Raw

Cannibalism is an act associated with the consummation of raw meat from the same species. Simplified, it’s eating your own. And love; what can be said about love that hasn’t been said before? This exhibit is a collaboration between two artists who brought their own perspective to the idea of love and the emotions behind it. A modern take on how carnal, raw and consuming love can be.

Brenda Praico’s pieces portray the “softer” side of cannibalism by focusing her subjects around her slightly romantic meats. A more in-depth look would reveal the feminine angle by representing one being consumed by love.

James Zabala’ works show a tougher kind of love. It concentrates on being the consumer of love itself. His works show an embracing, dominant side to love; the possessor who’s in command of the emotion.

Both artists graduated Fine Arts Major in Painting from UST and have participated in several group shows. This is their second collaboration after “Random Gods” in 2005.

Cannibal Love will run from May 25 – June 12, 2009 at Blanc Gallery, Makati. Blanc Gallery is located at 2E Crown Tower, 107 H.V. Dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati. For more information, please visit www.blanc.ph or www.blancartspace. multiply. com, or contact 752-0032, 0920-9276436 or info@blanc.ph.

INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS 2009

SPECIAL FEATURE : KAWAYAN DE GUIA

SPECIAL FEATURE : KAWAYAN DE GUIA
2008 Ateneo Art Awards Winner
Recipient, New York Art Project


An assortment of objects, icons and texts, irrationally arranged, comprise each piece. This series of seemingly disconnected images operate as Kawayan De Guia's poetics; and every work can be considered to be a hermetic, isolated world.

"Incubator" is prompted by a roster of people, and is a synthesis of De Guia's influences. These are the people who allowed the artist into their private spaces. Here, one sees constructed pocket universes of Kidlat Tahimik, BenCab, Roberto Villanueva, Tommy Hufalla, Agnes Arellano and Santiago Bose visually metaphorized by overlapping layers of figures, iconography, and archetypal symbols.

The visual cacophany is emphasized by the variety of media: pictures, adhesive, strips of wood, cyanotypes and serigraphs. The works also come close to employing freewheeling methodology with their use of unexpected juxtapositions. Despite a lack of premeditated composition, the result is an irrevocable symbiosis. This skill of producing a harmonious whole comes naturally to De Guia as he traverses the multiple apprenticeships that this series refers to.

Yet the layers of meaning signify more than De Guia's personal inspirations. They are artefacts of his deep explorations - a visual library identified with each artist that he continuously expands on with every sojourn into these rooms. The crowded sum of objects effortlessly achieves a calming, meditative ambience which is perhaps reflective of his centered carefreeness.

Written by
Siddharta Perez


Incubator
KAWAYAN DE GUIA
28 July-19 August
The Drawing Room

The Ateneo Art Gallery would like to announce the final call for nominations for the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards. Nominations are on-going, and will close on 1 June 2009 at 5pm. Nomination forms are available at the Ateneo Art Gallery and can also be downloaded at http://gallery.ateneo.edu. All entries must be accompanied by the necessary visual documentation and received at the following address:

Ateneo Art Gallery
Ground Floor, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City Philippines 1108

For more information, please contact, Amanda Legasto, 2009 Ateneo Art Awards Project Coordinator at 4266488 or alegasto@ateneo.edu

ZONES OF INFLUENCE : THE 2008 ATENEO ART AWARDS

ATENEO ART AWARDS 2008 CATALOGUE ESSAY
ZONES OF INFLUENCE:
Past, present, future

Anniversaries are a time for reflection and projecting new ideas. This year the Ateneo Art Award turns five. Its theme, “Zones of Influence”, prompts one to ask how the Ateneo Art Award has described, and indeed influenced, the Philippine art scene of now, especially in light of its constantly expanding horizon nationally and internationally?

in·flu·ence when used as a verb means ‘the power to affect something’. The power to affect change is an often illusive and arduous task in the Philippines. It is a credit usually reserved for the nation’s revolutionary heroes rather than its artists, but the Ateneo Art Gallery’s founding benefactor Fernando Zobel de Ayala was a visionary that changed the landscape of contemporary art. He supported the avant-garde of his time: Vincente Manansala, Artruo Luz, David Medalla and Roberto Chabet, the modern masters who form the backbone of the gallery’s collection. It was this philanthropic vision that pricked the attention of Ramon Lerma when he took the reigns as Director at the Ateneo Art Gallery in 2002, sparking the next ‘zone of influence’ that lead to the birth of the Ateneo Art Awards.

Recognizing postmodernism's multiplicity and the fracture that ricocheted across the art scene of the day, Lerma used Zobel’s dictum to exposé Filipino art marking in the 21st century. He recalled the Critics Choices of the 1980s when renowned commentators such as his predecessor Emmanuel Torres, Rodolfo Paras-Perez, Leo Benesa, Paul Zafaralla and Alice Guillermo produced an annual list of the year's best. Lerma updated this ‘zone of influence’ in 2004, convening a jury of himself, Fr. Rene Javellana, Celine R. Lopez, Cid Reyes, Gerardo Tan and Ringo Bunoan for the Inaugural Ateneo Art Award, pulling the critic's selection into the present day. Appropriately it was titled "Critical Condition."

Naturally the Ateneo Art Award has equally been defined by its nominees. It is not surprising then that among its coterie of artists many have been the energy behind a succession of alternative spaces that pushed art across the 1990s and into the new millennium. We just have to track the winners over the past five years.

Louie Cordero, Geraldine Javier and Jayson Oliveria were the recipients of the Inaugural Ateneo Art Award. While Javier’s success has notably rippled through the regional auction circuit in recent years, it was her connection with Cordero and the Cubao space / collective Surrounded by Water (1998-2003) that illustrates the Ateneo Art Awards’ identification with a Manila scene. If we are considering zones of influence, 7 of the 13 artists from SBW have been short-listed over the history of the Award. Similarly, 18 of the 43 artists short-listed for the Ateneo Art Award in its life-span have been recipients of The Thirteen Artist Award at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines. What a cynic may describe as a calendar of ‘usual suspects’ perhaps illustrates of a more endemic situation: the sheer pace that shows are churned out by this scene.

Over the last five-years Awardees have caught the eye of galleries off-shore and captured the heat in the Asian Auction market with outstanding results on this previously blue-chip secondary market. Its rollcall, Geraldine Javier, Ronald Ventura, Rodel Tapaya-Garcia, Nona Garcia, Maya Muñoz, Jayson Oliveria, Kiko Escora have already been joined by this year’s short-listed artists Lyra Gacellano and Baguio artist Kawayan de Guia. While one might question what relevance this satellite market has locally, or how is it defining a ‘style’, what is conclusive is it has led senior regional galleries to trowel the local scene for ‘fresh paint’ and the Ateneo Art Award has provided an entry point.

While Cordero went on to establish Future Prospects (2005-07) after winning the Ateneo Art Award in 2004 across town 2005 short-listed artist Isa Lorenzo de-centralized the Cubao gallery-gulch by opening Silverlens Gallery, focusing on photography. During its first year Yason Banal’s exhibition was nominated for the 2006 Ateneo Art Award, the same year he was included in the inaugural Singapore Biennale. Lena Cobangbang, also hailing from SBW and Silverlens, followed the same trajectory selected for 2008 Singapore Biennale with a series that placed her on the 2006 Ateneo Art Award short-listed, “Terrible Landscapes”. Fast track to 2007 and the growing acceptance of contemporary photography gave Wawi Navarroza the Ateneo Art Award for her mature manipulation of the medium. This year’s short-listed artists Christina Dy and Rachel Rillo lift our expectations of photography and push it boundaries to a new place. It is just one example in the Award’s history that weaves across venues, time, boarders and medium.

Recalling the titles of past Ateneo Art Awards: “Global / Vernacular” (2007) and “Outbound” (2006), this year’s catch title is far from accidental. It sits well with the theme described as, “Working within geographic and metaphysical localities whose boundaries are constantly being transgressed and redefined.” It encapsulates Zobel’s vision that provoked a future generation and continues its sentiment through the contemporary idea of expansionism by offering residencies at La Trobe Visual Art Centre in Australia, Artesan Gallery in Singapore and Common Room Networks Foundation in Bandung, Indonesia. The greater award is this “calling card” for the future.

Parallel to the diversity of these residencies: a university space, commercial gallery and alternative new-media venue, we witness that same spread across media celebrated with equal footing: video, performance and photography alongside figuration. Rewind to 2006 Ateneo Art Award winners to narrate the point: Poklong Anading for his lightboxes “Anonymity”, also short-listed this year for his painted cement shards in “Fallen Maps” at Mag:net. Co-winner Mideo M. Cruz nabbed the award for a challenging installation and performance titled “Banquet” at the CCP. Like the auction success of others, Cruz has shaped his own international profile since being awarded, performing at festivals in Japan, Italy, Beijing, Zurich, France and Singapore. The third winner in 2006 was Maya Muñoz for her abstract portraits at Hiraya Gallery.

This year we witness again that diversity; cite the line-up from Anading’s cement remnants to Mark Salvatus’ video “Wrapped” made on residency in South Korea, to twice-nominated Cristina ‘Mac’ Valdezco’s obsessive wall-piece of paper-tape and thread and self-taught Dumaguete-based artist Mark Valenzuela with his terracotta sculptures and drawings in “Warzone” at Galleria Duemila.

This breadth and mine of talent is perhaps best surmised this year by Marina Cruz-Garcia, short-listed for three exhibitions, a first in the Award’s history. Oscillating between painting, sculpture and a photo-based mixed media work, “Embroidered Landscape of My Mother’s Life” that landed her the Grand Prize for Philip Morris Philippines Art Award, she was among several artists that maintained the presence of figuration within a contemporary dialogue, including Robert Lagenegger’s satirical paintings critiquing the Filipino art scene and Lyra Gacellano’s haunting paintings in “Short Stories” with a post-SR consciousness.

While Manila’s emerging artists sit somewhere between these histories and eddies, the Ateneo Art Award provides a constant that cuts across it, morphing a new landscape of galleries and regional dialogue. It is an ongoing assessment. This year’s ten short-listed artists offer a marker for now and, when we look back, theirs will be the tenor of fresh voices being heard beyond the local noise – they are the ‘zone of influence’ of today.


Gina Fairley
Juror, 2008 Ateneo Art Awards
Independent curator and Regional Contributing Editor,
Asia Art News, Hong Kong

The Ateneo Art Gallery would like to announce the final call for nominations for the 2009 Ateneo Art Awards. Nominations are on-going, and will close on 1 June 2009 at 5pm. Nomination forms are available at the Ateneo Art Gallery and can also be downloaded at http://gallery.ateneo.edu. All entries must be accompanied by the necessary visual documentation and received at the following address:

Ateneo Art Gallery
Ground Floor, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City Philippines 1108

For more information, please contact, Amanda Legasto, 2009 Ateneo Art Awards Project Coordinator at 4266488 or alegasto@ateneo.edu

LA TENTAZIONE DEI COLORI

Born in Gioia Tauro, Italy, Luigi Giacobbe completed his art studies in Rome. He gained the attention of various Roman art exponents when his work was exhibited in the early 1980 in Paris. Subsequently, he participated as a guest in the art exhibit 100 Painters of via Margutta. In 1983, The Art of Imagination was born, a creative project that reflects the artist’s endless quest for the human capability of expression.

After living in France, Russia, Japan, and South Korea, Giacobbe now resides in Manila, his third Asian country since beginning his long journey in 1985. Manila’s generous colors offers several attractive points of inspiration for the development of future works that the artist entrusts to his imagination and hopes to share in the future. He travels with the awareness and the willingness to encounter different situations; artistic and cultural expressions that continue to contribute to the conception of his work as well as the enrichment of his artistic education.

The exhibition features 22 mixed media works, which focus on the particularities and differences, minute but precise, encountered by the artist throughout the years, where structures and materials express the strength of colors entirely.

Established in 2004 and formerly known as MuseumSpace, ArtistSpace is a commercial-run gallery owned by the Ayala Museum. ArtistSpace dedicates itself to the promotion of Philippine contemporary art and talent. By featuring a wide range of styles and media and a different artist every two weeks, ArtistSpace aims to cultivate curiosity about new art and encourage viewership by young professionals, students, and other adults.

The ArtistSpace is located at the 2/F Glass Wing of the Ayala Museum, and is accessible via the 2/F pedestrian walkway. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends.

YAB-YUM/YANTRA: TANTRIC LOTUSES

Spirituality, Sexuality, and Artful Reproduction
Agnes Arellano and Pardo de Leon’s Yab-Yum/Yantra: Tantric Lotuses

The discovery of the general in the particular is a long-running tradition w/in multiple traditions: the incomprehensible totality of God compressed into the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton, iconic coats of arms w/in w/c are entire genealogies, Sol LeWitt’s cube finding infinite variations in his analytical minimalism, the revolutionary notion of fractals in mathematics where the whole is found in every part, the very idea of DNA where identities are contained in the minutiae of the flesh, etc.

The two-woman exhibit Yab-Yum/Yantra: Tantric Lotuses furthers this tradition by searching for singularity of spirit in what seems to be the dull plainness of a drone, dragging in its reproduction of a single sound, one classic example of which is the sacred syllable om. Opening on May 23, 2009 at the Galerie Hans Brumann in Greenbelt 5, the show references Hinduism, Buddhism, and Tantric mysticism in two media: Agnes Arellano’s sculptures and Pardo de Leon’s abstract paintings. Two women, two media: the exhibition obviously is at once a celebration and critique of binary oppositions—body and soul, lover and beloved, creator and destroyer, the general and the particular.

Most of all, the yab-yum or father-mother, an old motif which is Arellano’s favorite, but this time with a fresh approach. Here, she continues her search for a personal spirituality, rooted nonetheless in ancient traditions, and makes a negotiation between religion and sexuality—things that have always been mutually exclusive in the ‘postcolonial culture’ she grew up in, sexuality usually negatively perceived as pornographic in the context of religion. Since 1983 when she first expressed visual interest in the image of the yab-yum, she has always mostly worked from research; her current crop of sculptures, however, are drawn from recent travels to India and Bhutan, where images of sexuality are held sacred in the inner sanctum of temples.

Fascinated by encounters with all kinds of people whether in the city or on journeys into deserts, forests, and high mountain regions, De Leon finds common and recurring forms in the Tibetan Buddhist mandala, the Tantric yantras, and in Christian iconography. Crossings between cultures and subcultures, commonalities between Sufis and acid-trippers, the personal bleeding into the mystical—these are the mysterious gray areas De Leon explores in this show. And this is but a continuation of her years of abstract painting as a form of meditation, which over time has been described by critics as a ‘minimalist approach to psychedelia’ and ‘transcendentally modernist.’


OPENING RECEPTION
6:00 pm, Saturday, 23 May 2009
Third Floor, Greenbelt 5, Legaspi Street, Makati City
Telephone (632) 728 2175 • E-mail dididee@hiraya.com
ghb.hiraya.com

OF TIME, FREE FORM, SHAMBALA : EKZENA AT RICCO RENZO GALLERIES

Ricco Renzo Galleries puts on view a three-person exhibit entitled “EKZENA” which opens on May 22, 2009. Revolving around the perception of “scenes,” the mind-set of Zen and the concepts of lyrical abstraction, the title has inference to a philosophy where art is presented in a style that combines maximum of technique and a minimum of planning and deliberation. However, the abstractions presented are not the haphazard approach for art’s sake, but of the manner by which the artwork impacts on the viewer.

Scenes are very much a part of everything that is art. A scene can be a subject or the content the artist will portray but it can also be the place and venue where an event takes place. To create and make a scene implies action and movement. This action of a scene is the very essence of the phenomenon of a happening. The occurrence of an art happening alludes to an improvised spontaneous art activity or exhibit where the eyes of an audience are treated to art that is free and unpredictable. Spontaneous abstract art can not be planned and predetermined. Pure and clean abstraction excites visual perception. Looking at an abstract painting oftentimes creates individualistic episodes depending on how the viewer views it. Abstraction is open to varied opinion and interpretations. It combines free will, intellect, intuition and instinct.

“EKZENA,” an abstract art exhibition by the triumvirate of artists namely JCrisanto Martinez, Sio Montera and Javy Villacin suggest all of the things and incidents mentioned above. Each artist presents a personal series of works that tackle chosen themes like time, space, the journey of life, death, wisdom, and the paradoxes of our human condition.

JCrisanto Martinez’s oeuvres reflect on “time” as a sinuous medium to be maneuvered similarly as paint. His washes of acrylics on burlap delve into the continuum of time. By layering images, Martinez incorporates undertones and meanings that summon a response by the viewer. At one end of the premise of his series’ working concept is to defy the notion of art as perceive merely by sight. Intuition – which is the state of knowing something instinctively, or the immediate knowledge of something – as a word and a process came as a challenge to the artist in developing this series.

Sio Montera’s mixed media explore on “free form.” These impasto art pieces bring him to the state of mind where the cerebral authority rules over “art;” an awakening of the artist’s subliminal self. As the outcomes are unpredictable, the artist is conscious all throughout in what he is doing, while freeing himself at the same time from representations that limit visual perception.

The large canvasses of Javy Villacin continue and deepen his foray into the dream world. The aggregate of works aptly about “shambala” which is a “higher level of consciousness and spirituality,” Villacin reinforces his fascination with this dream world that straddles many states of consciousness by focusing more on the emotional atmosphere and visual resonance. But the basic elements of a Villacin artwork are the usual pencil backgrounds that rejoice the reticence, the daring even, in some cases, the mayhem of drawing.

The three artists are highly individual players who have all made a niche in the arena of abstraction. Though a happening is a scene or an “ekzena” in the confines of a gallery it very much includes the creation of an overall feeling of a contained atmosphere in a walled environment. Abstractions can be a trip to an altered state and an environment in an alternate dimension. As products of potent minds, abstract art embraces all and everything the heart and mind can originally conceived and at the same time alienates impossibilities.

EKZENA will be on view at Ricco Renzo Galleries starting May 22, 2009 at 7pm with an opening cocktail. The exhibit runs until June 11, 2009. The Ricco Renzo Galleries is located at the LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel-Air II, Makati City, Philippines. For inquiry please call 898-2545 or 0927-386-1460, email kbn@riccorenzo.com or visit www.riccorenzo.com. [ARTEPINAS / JCrisanto Martinez / Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano]

DOLORES

Artist’s Statement:

Do-lo-res [duh-lawr-is, -lohr-] a female given name: from a Latin word meaning “sorrows.” It is usually applied to contexts of mental pain and suffering.

This exhibition which features the moody portraitures of Andres Barrioqunto presents a collection of different women, depicted in either a vast landscape or a lively kaleidoscopic bed of flowers. According to the artist, the placement of his figures in such vast and remote scenery creates a certain feeling of isolation and loneliness. “I want to emphasize or somehow portray the effects of men, or maybe the backwash of life in general towards women.” Barrioquinto says. Generally, his concepts for this show are inspired by all the women around him, from the youngest tramp strewn across the street to his very own birth mother. This is a tribute to them, for the scars and afflictions that life has left them with. It is highly noticeable that in this present batch of paintings, the figures somehow bleed a certain blanket of mourning for the human soul. “My paintings are usually dark and macabre, and they still are now, only in a different and more subtle sense of expression.”

About the artist:

Andres Barrioquinto (b. 1975, Philippines) graduated in Fine Arts (Painting) from the University of Santo Tomas in 2000. A prestigious recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award (2003) bestowed by the Cultural Centre of the Philippines, Dolores is his sixteenth solo exhibition and fourth in Singapore. The exhibition progresses from the geometricism and detailed realism that he has been developing in the past year.

A THOUSAND AND ONE TONGUES

A THOUSAND AND ONE TONGUES
"dila ra'y walay labud"

Maria Victoria “Bambi” Beltran is a visual, literary and film artist. She had her first one-woman show in 2002 at the Luna Art Gallery. A member of PUSOD, Inc., she has participated in various group and two-man exhibits. Her last exhibit was entitled Tipak sa Kalayo. Her subjects mostly involve nature and the feminine body.

"exepte la langue du papillon"

Russ Ligtas is a visual and performance artist who regularly performs with Cebu’s only performance art group XO?. His performances involve dance, costuming, and pop culture elements. He also writes poetry and other text and is a member of the Cebuano writer’s group Bathalad Inc. He has been exhibiting installations and paintings in various solo and group shows since 2003.

TIME : THE WORKS OF JCRISANTO MARTINEZ

TIME

Time is a sinuous medium to be maneuvered similarly as paint. My art delves into the continuum of time. I assemble images by looking closely at them in a historical facet. I seek out for surfaces that mirror the passage of time. Fashioning the parallels in paint is a course of discovery as I allow the unprompted strata of paint to dictate the direction of each piece. By layering the images I incorporate undertones and meanings that summon a response by the viewer. By looking at the past and responding intuitively I explore the future by applying knowledge of the present. I employ intense rich color to communicate my enthusiasm over the process of creativity. I reinterpret the everyday from the past and present to generate new significance.

Through life I collect memoirs and impart my emotional response through the use of textural surfaces, real and implied. My art is a continuum. It is an identical manifestation of who I am. Without it I would cease to exist. It is a fervent and forceful reason to live. It is the exhilaration of not knowing what new image will materialize that drives me. The sensation of life and the inevitable passing of time are suggested through a knowing manipulation of time-forgotten images as well as through masterful use of traditional contemporary media. Each day is a gift. I paint and hope someone else gets my message.

Ricco Renzo Galleries puts on view a three-person exhibit entitled “EKZENA” which opens on May 22, 2009. Revolving around the perception of “scenes,” the mind-set of Zen and the concepts of lyrical abstraction, the title has inference to a philosophy where art is presented in a style that combines maximum of technique and a minimum of planning and deliberation. However, the abstractions presented are not the haphazard approach for art’s sake, but of the manner by which the artwork impacts on the viewer.

“EKZENA,” an abstract art exhibition by the triumvirate of artists namely JCrisanto Martinez, Sio Montera and Javy Villacin suggest all of the things and incidents mentioned above. Each artist presents a personal series of works that tackle chosen themes like time, space, the journey of life, death, wisdom, and the paradoxes of our human condition.

EKZENA will be on view at Ricco Renzo Galleries starting May 22, 2009 at 7pm with an opening cocktail. The exhibit runs until June 11, 2009. The Ricco Renzo Galleries is located at the LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel-Air II, Makati City, Philippines. For inquiry please call 898-2545 or 0927-386-1460, email kbn@riccorenzo.com or visit www.riccorenzo.com. [ARTEPINAS / JCrisanto Martinez / Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano]

Each day appends to and amends my past. My art is who I am.

GALAXIES, EARTH, ST. MARYS AND SECOND HEAVEN

I.
Chao before ciao.
—Fernando Modesto

Whether as Vietnamese rice porridge or as fried rice in the guise of yang chao at local Chinese eateries, “chao” in the epigraph is in opposition to “ciao,” such that primacy is granted to the former: Chao before ciao. This opposition transcends the symbolic & does so towards the systemic, as in Roland Barthes’ famed schemata of the sign’s 3 relations: symbol, system, syntagm. Notice also that while metaphor here is not taken for granted, it does take the backseat in favor of the metonym.

‘In favor of the metonym,’ in the sense that we arrive at chao from ciao by way of punning, thru the sheer logic of metonymy—for how else does one depart from departure’s decidedness—from the finitude of farewell (ciao)—to leap onto the infinitude of rice (chao)? The vast field of Modesto’s universe—Galaxies, Earth, St. Marys and Second Heaven—cannot be measured just as rice grains cannot be counted. & yet its dimensions are definite, still: Where Modesto, hinting at boundaries, depicts the axes (East-West axis, North-South axis) of his realm, rice too has bounds made definite by cupping—

II.
Please give yourself time to dream.
—Fernando Modesto

as one would cup a pair of breasts, St. Mary’s breasts: a virgin teat for a viand or 2, steaming rice topped w/ the minute meatball of pure nipple. Are those her legs parting in the intergalactic void, is that her smooth frog in the middle of the mystic foliage, all of it Mother Mary’s / Mother Earth’s / Gaia’s?

Association: I will leave this erased, then blank—
Connexion:
 Contiguity: In his early writings, Freud was preoccupied w/ symbolism: What did this image from a dream stand for, what did that scene from a dream represent? This is the internal relation occurring w/in the sign—the signifier’s relationship w/ the signified—that begs for interpretation. This is the symbolic.
 This is chao standing for rice standing for infinity.
 This is ciao standing for goodbye standing for finitude.
 This is Oedipus constructing an entire universe for a mother.
 This is the man in fear of castration.
 This is the tree of genealogy—arboreal & rooted, static.
 This is the erasure of your composure. As always.

Yet, for all the fullness of dreams in terms of symbolism, for all its richness beneath the erasures, its logic is not run by metaphor whether solely or at all; what is dream-like is necessarily metonymic; in its free associations it becomes boundless: Where ciao becomes chao rather than mere adieu, dream bids adieu to the planar in favor of the multiplanar, of galaxies, earth, St. Mary—of dream as second heaven.

(Freud was once an icon of Surrealism. Does it surprise you that on occasion you’re reminded of the lithographs of a young Joan Miro in some of Modesto’s strokes, fleeting & flitting in the ether despite the permanence of paint & ink?)

III.
Everything is hunky-dory.
—Fernando Modesto

(Actually, no, not so much. What initially come to mind are the early delirious paintings of David Medalla before his fantastic machines, the dark seeming-primitivisms of Roberto Villanueva—a kind of folk sensibility that mingles w/ the Christianity once imposed by the West. But these are meaningless comparisons that hold no water. They hold just about as much water as any interpretation does, w/c is none: W/c is nun: Witch’s nun.)

No interpretation will ever be accurate: It’s no mystery that “mystery” comes close to “mystic,” both beginning w/ what sounds like “miss.” The mystical nature of Modesto’s work is indication of the futility of interpretation, tho it certainly isn’t forbidden. Here is the signifier, but the signified is missing, is missed tenderly. Almost as if the artist himself were saying—painting—“I love you” to each stroke, to each gesture & figure as an object in itself, complete in its utter lack of a signified. Paint as material, replete in its materiality—

IV.
Chao for imagining.
—Fernando Modesto

where materiality is prior to meaning: Chao before ciao. Such that a prayer addressed to St. Mary is not so much a real supplication but a celebration of sound if uttered, of pure visual form if painted. Notice the partial erasure in “Prayer to St. Mary’s” that brings attention to paint’s erasability, to paint’s paintness. This explains the multiplicity of circles—

an object depicted to return to itself over & over again—the Ouroboros of form exhausting itself—Mary doubling herself in the mirror as a child doubles him/herself in the mirror in its first exposure to the Self as Other—

where the child, in order to know the self, must imagine the self as other—the self saying ciao to itself over & over again—the self arriving in multiples—thru sheer contiguity/metonymy creating whole systems & syntagms—so many selves that there comes an entire universe out of it—

Fernando Modesto no longer painting Galaxies, Earth, St. Mary’s, Second Heaven, but himself becoming galaxies, becoming earth, becoming Mary, becoming second heaven.

Ciao.

FREE FORM : THE WORKS OF SIO MONTERA

FREE FORM

In art, the creation of free form epitomizes the greatest of all human rights of expression.

When the mind takes over what the eyes can no longer perceive during artistic production, the aftermath will only be pure abstraction. Having to think in abstract terms can deter the self from reality and things practical because, first and foremost, abstraction exists only in the mind. Pure and honest abstraction is the pinnacle of the art practice because here the artist starts with zero visibility in the form of an empty space or a blank canvas. It is unpredictable, in the sense that the artist can never foresee his desired result. Given a free rein of his imagination, the artist exercises complete unrestrained freedom.

Free Form. This next level of Montera’a art brings him to the state of mind where the cerebral authority rules over “art.” An awakening of the artist’s subliminal self. Conscious all throughout in what he is doing, while freeing himself at the same time from representations that limit visual perception. Having the gift of free will has been innate in mankind since primordial times. A continuous and spontaneous approach achieves what the mind can only perceive—the unseen and the unknown. In the vein of non-objective/abstract expressionism, Montera contributes to the movement’s endless possibilities. He farms a concept and plants the germ of an idea that blossoms into a wild but carefully controlled work of art worthy of a pedestal at the apex of artistic profession.

Ricco Renzo Galleries puts on view a three-person exhibit entitled “EKZENA” which opens on May 22, 2009. Revolving around the perception of “scenes,” the mind-set of Zen and the concepts of lyrical abstraction, the title has inference to a philosophy where art is presented in a style that combines maximum of technique and a minimum of planning and deliberation. However, the abstractions presented are not the haphazard approach for art’s sake, but of the manner by which the artwork impacts on the viewer.

“EKZENA,” an abstract art exhibition by the triumvirate of artists namely JCrisanto Martinez, Sio Montera and Javy Villacin suggest all of the things and incidents mentioned above. Each artist presents a personal series of works that tackle chosen themes like time, space, the journey of life, death, wisdom, and the paradoxes of our human condition.

EKZENA will be on view at Ricco Renzo Galleries starting May 22, 2009 at 7pm with an opening cocktail. The exhibit runs until June 11, 2009. The Ricco Renzo Galleries is located at the LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel-Air II, Makati City, Philippines. For inquiry please call 898-2545 or 0927-386-1460, email kbn@riccorenzo.com or visit www.riccorenzo.com. [ARTEPINAS / JCrisanto Martinez / Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano]

DANSE

FACE TO FACE

Yellow Door Gallery and Power Plant Mall present “Face to Face,” an exhibition featuring the artworks of Art Bermido, Erick Dator, Danny Sillada, and Eman Servito, from 22 May to 4 June, 2009 at the R1 Corridor, Power Plant Mall, Rockwell. Opening cocktails are on Saturday, 23 May, 6:30 p.m. For inquiries or to RSVP, please call/send an sms to 0920.962.43.47 or email inquiry@yellowdoorgallery.net.

The four “Face to Face” artists know each other as online acquaintances brought together by their interest and admiration for each other’s artworks and are collaborating on a show at the Philippine Consulate in New York, U.S.A., slated this July 2009. “Face to Face” will finally bring Bermido, Dator, Sillada, and Servito “face to face,” meeting each other in person for the first time for this pre-show exhibition and exhibiting their works side-by-side.

Featuring Bermido’s bold, minimalist abstracts, Sillada’s enigmatic, surrealist images, Dator’s trademark Filipinana paintings rendered in “kiping” (rice wafers used in his hometown’s Pahiyas Festival) fashioned from board or wood, and Servito’s vibrant, lyrical canvases, “Face to Face” offers an interesting framework and dynamic for the convergence of their diverse artistic mien.

Art Bermido (b. 1979) has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has had various solo exhibitions in local institutions. Bermido has been a finalist for the Shell Annual Art National Competition, the Metrobank Annual Art Competition, the PLD Annual Art Competition, and was the 54th AAP Annual Art Competition’s Juror’s Choice. He calls his arresting, precise canvases “Stimuli,” each piece representing a person, event, or experience that has changed or “moulded me into who I am today.”

Danny Sillada (b. 1963) has been called a modern “Renaissance Man,” being an awarded surrealist painter, philosopher, poet, essayist, musician, and performance artist. In his intricate, layered, contemplative paintings, he reveals “revelations of [empirical and metaphysical] realities, which are reflective of my vision, my culture, and my society.”

Erick Dator is known for his depictions of Filipinana scenes employing the distinctive motif of cutouts shaped like kiping or rice wafers used in the Pahiyas Festival of his hometown, Lucban, Quezon. This distinctive style has earned him accolades both in the local art scene and abroad, as he shuttles from the Philippines to the United States (New York/New Jersey area) for various shows.

Eman Servito (b. 1983) is a graduate of Fine Arts from the University of the East where he was awarded the Artist of the Year in 2005. He won First Prize in the ArtPetron National Painting Competition in 2004 and has been a finalist in various competitions: the Maningning Miclat Art Foundation Awards, the PLDT-DPC Painting Competition, and the Shell National Painting Competition, to name a few. His expressionistic, intensely colored paintings have also been included in numerous group exhibitions.

SHAMBALA : THE WORKS OF JAVY VILLACIN

SHAMBALA

A world that straddles on many states of consciousness. An inward journey into the self. Villacin’s works are invested with evocative symbolism that links moment and space, echoing the border of ideas where art converges with science, science links with philosophy, and ultimately, the oeuvre encounters the onlooker who appends to it a personal interpretation. By using the abstract expressionist foundations of his work, he fits well with the evolutionary and formless state of nature and life. His object is to search for the beginnings of man’s awakening. Looking back, he moves forward, hurdling tribulations. Conquering by knowing thyself, he triumphs.

Shambala. A higher level of conciousness and spirituality. To bring about the oneness and harmony he seeks, Villacin continues to reach for a multilevel connection that summons for not only emotional but also intellectual and spiritual responses. A foray into the dream world where the organic, anthropomorphic and vegetal forms populate the immediate environment. The diagrammatic elements correspond to a celestial existence, and other realities which lay behind the facade of the perceptible world. The diagrams personify eternal qualities. The figurative element conveys the universal human dimension. Fused, they embody the pursuit for the “source”, dreams, and the yearning to make undisclosed visions visible.

Ricco Renzo Galleries puts on view a three-person exhibit entitled “EKZENA” which opens on May 22, 2009. Revolving around the perception of “scenes,” the mind-set of Zen and the concepts of lyrical abstraction, the title has inference to a philosophy where art is presented in a style that combines maximum of technique and a minimum of planning and deliberation. However, the abstractions presented are not the haphazard approach for art’s sake, but of the manner by which the artwork impacts on the viewer.

“EKZENA,” an abstract art exhibition by the triumvirate of artists namely JCrisanto Martinez, Sio Montera and Javy Villacin suggest all of the things and incidents mentioned above. Each artist presents a personal series of works that tackle chosen themes like time, space, the journey of life, death, wisdom, and the paradoxes of our human condition.

EKZENA will be on view at Ricco Renzo Galleries starting May 22, 2009 at 7pm with an opening cocktail. The exhibit runs until June 11, 2009. The Ricco Renzo Galleries is located at the LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel-Air II, Makati City, Philippines. For inquiry please call 898-2545 or 0927-386-1460, email kbn@riccorenzo.com or visit www.riccorenzo.com. [ARTEPINAS / JCrisanto Martinez / Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano]

INNER SPACES

Inner Spaces
Briccio Santos
May 20-June 20, 2009
Opening Reception: May 20, Wednesday, 6pm

Silverlens Gallery presents Inner Spaces, Briccio Santos' one-man show of recent photographs, from May 20 to June 20, 2009. A photographer, painter, and film-maker, Briccio Santos will be exhibiting around 50 black and white photographs taken during his forays around Makati City, a place that has served as habitat and home, setting and subject. Santos approaches photography as sculpture and abstraction, emphasizing the perception and construction of form, texture, and structure. Deliberately ambiguous, his images defamiliarize the urban landscape and strive to capture the essential beneath. Inner Spaces by Briccio Santos opens at 6 pm on May 20, 2009 and runs until the 20th of June 2009. Santos will be giving a talk on June 6 from 3-5 pm, “Inner Space: Isolating Spatial Contexts”. Inner Spaces will be shown alongside The American Sweet by Hanna Pettyjohn at Slab (Silverlens Lab) and Maude Marie and Other Curiosities at 20Square Gallery. For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0905-2650873, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com.


Collage, images from Inner Spaces show, 2009

EKZENA

Ricco Renzo Galleries puts on view a three-person exhibit entitled “EKZENA” which opens on May 22, 2009. Revolving around the perception of “scenes,” the mind-set of Zen and the concepts of lyrical abstraction, the title has inference to a philosophy where art is presented in a style that combines maximum of technique and a minimum of planning and deliberation. However, the abstractions presented are not the haphazard approach for art’s sake, but of the manner by which the artwork impacts on the viewer.

“EKZENA,” an abstract art exhibition by the triumvirate of artists namely JCrisanto Martinez, Sio Montera and Javy Villacin suggest all of the things and incidents mentioned above. Each artist presents a personal series of works that tackle chosen themes like time, space, the journey of life, death, wisdom, and the paradoxes of our human condition.

EKZENA will be on view at Ricco Renzo Galleries starting May 22, 2009 at 7pm with an opening cocktail. The exhibit runs until June 11, 2009. The Ricco Renzo Galleries is located at the LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia St., Bel-Air II, Makati City, Philippines. For inquiry please call 898-2545 or 0927-386-1460, email kbn@riccorenzo.com or visit www.riccorenzo.com. [ARTEPINAS / JCrisanto Martinez / Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8PRpStOY-I

DAVAO LIVING ARTS FESTIVAL

LIVING ARTS FESTIVAL is designed as an interdisciplinary, intercultural, multi-media and multi-lingual festival of the arts in commemoration with the Year of the Ocean:

Interdisciplinary because it embraces most branches of arts – visual (painting and sculpture), theatre (plays and drama), dance, music, film, literature (poetry and fiction), and architecture

Inter-cultural and multi-lingual because it features artists and cultural workers not only from Mindanao and some parts of the Philippines, but also from the Asia-Pacific (Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Pacific Islands, etc.)

Multi-media, because there will be live performances as well as projected (through film showing)

LIVING ARTS FESTIVAL immediately comes after 2009 World Ocean Conference, possibly one of next year’s biggest gatherings on response to climate change. Thousands of participants worldwide are expected and that the LAF organizers are already conferring with the WOC Secretariat to officially name the LAF as one of its official side events.

LIVING ARTS FESTIVAL will have most of its events free to the public, assuring you the widest reach in terms of audience.

LIVING ARTS FESTIVAL is an ideal venue for your demonstrate your everyone's concern for environment. People's participation will be considered as investment on “arts-for-nature” and shall form part as an “endowment fund for the future”.

LIVING ARTS FESTIVAL’s scale is unprecedented and its menu of activities is definitely one for the record. At this point, we have already confirmation from Mr. Joey Ayala, Popong Landero, Bayang Barrios and other prominent artists who will be sharing their works paying homage to Mother Nature.

The Save Davao Gulf Foundation, Inc. (SDGFI) was established in 1998 by a group of people concerned about the condition of one of the country key biodiversity areas: the Davao Gulf. More specifically, SDGFI addresses the environmental degradation and the depletion of marine resources in Davao Gulf. It is involved in the marine turtle conservation, establishment of marine protected areas, coastal clean-up, tree planting initiatives, cetaceans and marine mammals rescue, among others.

With its mission to address “head on the threats to the quality of the waters of Davao Gulf”, SDGFI initiated the formation of Davao Gulf Management Council (DGMC) to effectively coordinate with the various stakeholders in the gulf composed of 5 cities and 18 municipalities, relevant government agencies, NGOs, people’s organizations and academic and research institutions. As its Secretariat, it is the lead agency in its advocacy, resource generation and support mechanism.

SDGFI is the Davao Living Arts Festival’s main proponent.

Year 2009 is declared as the Year of the Ocean. Amid the multifarious and complex social and environmental issues that shall unfold during the entire year, we believe that the year shall also be a fitting time to celebrate life, nature and art.

We need to pursue our rituals for life and embrace our arts from rituals, and thus advance our engagements for nurturing nature, most specially the oceans that bring us together.

This project is envisioned as an effective and efficient vehicle to advance our positive advocacies towards conserving nature as well as for respect and protection of life. Likewise, it shall affirm the social significance and intrinsic value of art to rally the massive engagements of all stakeholders --- local, national and international --- for sustainable living. Thus, it is hoped that with the positive institutional endorsements that the project can generate, the probability of the high-level community support and ownership would be realized.

The over-all implementing methodology of the project is participatory and the identified strategies shall engender massive community involvement. As of this writing some of the details of the festival design are still open, although the major components are already described in the broadest way possible. At the outset, however, it is clear on the minds of the organizers that this Living Arts Asia Festival will not be merely a presentation of cultural events and full-packed activities. It is resolved that through this project the following calculated statements of impacts and outcomes are achieved.

Our Creative Diversity: Bridging the Islands, Bonding with the Oceans

On the third week of the month of May 2009 (18th to 23rd) , an enormous cultural event shall take center stage in Davao City, designed as an interdisciplinary, intercultural, multi-media and multi-lingual festival of the arts in commemoration with the YEAR OF THE OCEAN. Artists of various disciplines, ethnicities, nationalities, generations and from various regions shall converge in Davao City, and, together with the Davao audiences, shall celebrate their creative works as homage to nature. Once again, the innovative showcases shall substantiate how “arts revive the spirit of creative and caring communities in pursuit of the UN millennium Goals”.

As agreed in the BIMP-EAGA Meeting held last October 28, the event is one of the components of the World Ocean’s Conference which will be held in Manado, Indonesia on May 10 to 15. It is also Davao’s contribution to the heightening awareness on the need for consistent efforts for conserving our oceans.

During the festival, the project organizers found it imperative to convene series of conferences and symposia that shall locate and affirm the concrete contributions of the arts and culture sector in the overall human strategy for building a culture of peace and for fostering sustainable development. Likewise, the event shall have spaces for cultural interactions and creativity workshops in order that the participating artists can realize more clearly the connectivity of their creative works, the particularity of their cultural contexts and their shared aesthetic visions towards a “fairer world for all”.

The BIPM-EAGA secretariat has agreed to support the cultural event in Davao City as a side event of the International Conference on the Oceans and shall convince the member-states to send it delegations to actively participate in the event.