US-based Filipino painter Edwin Wilwayco reveals his latest body of work at Galleria Duemila this month in a month show that gives proof why he has become one the country's highly esteemed lyrical abstractionists.
Recently settled in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, Wilwayco returns home to the Philippines to put his most recent oil paintings.
Completed in array of colour range and sizes, these works evoke a confidence with canvas that can only come from years of mastery. Each gestural stroke - whether to unmask the undercoating or to punctuate a surface with a swath of colour - originates from a deep contemplation on how to render idea and emotion onto paint and panel.
Wilwayco's previous oeuvres - heavily inspired by music and the environment - have always had an irenic dynamism in them. One sees this as well in the showering, verdant flourishes of "Wind on Water" and in the red earth forms in "Dance of the Little Fairies". Looking at such pieces, dutily informed by his surroundings, viewers are pulled in to meditate and imagine. Material becomes spiritual.
But Wilwayco too tries something different in this set. From ‘Border Crossing’, a marbly pigeon-grey fan triptych to the patchwork-like ‘Riverside Drive’, Wilwayco veers away vibrancy of familiar blues and yellows and explores the challenge offered by monotone.
“Much like an old photograph, I wanted to work on tonal values,” Wilwayco says. These experiments on shifts on light and less on colour shows a constancy in his vision for this medium. Indeed abstractionism has not yet reach its limit.
Art critic Cid Reyes writes, "These current abstractions are emanations of his ardor and passion for nature, rooted in the landscape paradigm of so many abstractionists, from Hans Hoffman (“I bring the landscape home with me”), Joan Mitchell (“I carry my landscapes around with me”) to Jackson Pollock, who thundered “I am Nature!” With such awesome forbears, no wonder that abstraction has become second nature to Edwin Wilwayco.”
'Second Nature' by Edwin Wilwayco runs from 6 August 2011 - 29 August 2011 at the Galleria Duemila, 210 Loring Street, Pasay City, Philippines. Opening party is scheduled for 6 August 2011.
Edwin Wilwayco will also be part of a three-man show organized by the Philippine embassy in Sweden this autumn. His works will be on view at Estonian National Library in Tallinn from 20 - 26 September, the Lithuanian Art Museum in Vilnius from 6 - 9 October, the Foreign Art Museum in Riga, Latvia from 10 - 14 October and the Ersta Sköndal University College in Stockholm from October 14 - 18.
For more information, please contact, Mara Herrera of Galleria Duemila through Tel. No. (+632) 831-9990 Telefax (+632) 8339815, e-mail: gduemila@gmail.com or visit our website at www.galleriaduemila.com.
