HARBINGER

Jake Verzosa's HARBINGER Opening on March 15, Thursday at Silverlens Gallery

Take a straightforward portrait and turn it into something figurative, this is what photographer Jake Verzosa has demonstrated in his latest body of work whose title, Harbinger, was inspired by Magic the Gathering cards and other Role Playing Games. Or, as Verzosa put it simply, “I like the word.”

A fixture in the fashion industry, Verzosa presents the model, the very subject he is used to working with, in another light–as a vessel of form and movement. His images aim to document a figure in transition, to record what transpires when his subject is asked to interpret a series of cloud formations through movements across the canvas of the camera frame. Take a closer look at the hazy black and white images and you will discover distinct human forms juxtaposed alongside random storm cloud formations.

Verzosa’s latest images are a tight combination of a series of photographs he took in 2005 documenting cloud formations and a human body depicting movement in the form of top Philippine fashion model, Ria Bolivar. “I thought that it would be interesting to record human movement without any direction from the photographer. It should emerge from within the subject,” shares Verzosa.

It is evident in his works that a strong connection with the image, idea, and even the subject is a significant factor in Verzosa’s artistic process. Bits and pieces of the artist’s life are subtly displayed in this body of work–his success as a fashion and commercial photographer, his fascination with science, born during his high school days at Philippine Science school, and his personal inclination towards taking photographs rather than making them. “I usually use film for my personal works but for this body of work, since it involved a lot of trial and error in terms of capturing beautiful accidents, it made more sense to shoot in digital,” he adds.

This body of work does not aim to delve into deep definitions and solve unanswerable queries. In its truest sense, the exhibition is a profession and manifestation of form captured in the documentary and organic style which is always present in Verzosa’s work. “I do what I do because I feel the intrinsic need to document the odd and the beautiful. Change is always permanent and photography is my way of moving through time. I am motivated to do works that I feel are significantly larger than me.”

The 32-year-old Manila-based artist is inspired by other photographers, musicians, random conversations, and hearing success stories and seeing unusual beauty, and keen on shooting stories about beauty, culture, social issues and the human spirit. He is busy with his family, commercial work, and a long-term project documenting the last tattooed women of Kalinga. He has traveled extensively around Southeast Asia and his works have been exhibited in Manila, Singapore, and Paris.

Jake Verzosa’s Harbinger opens on March 15, 2012 at Silverlens Gallery, simultaneously with Pow Martinez’s Cyborg Scallops at Silverlens SLab and Maria Taniguchi’s Untitled (Celestial Motors) in Silverlens 20SQUARE. All shows run until April 14, 2012.

Words by Monica Barretto; Image: Jake Verzosa, Harbinger #1, 2005 (left) Harbinger #2, 2012 (right)

DAWN TO DUSK

For those of you who have not had a chance to join Tilak's DAWN TO DUSK photography workshop at BenCab Museum before, here's another chance to do so on his third DAWN TO DUSK workshop this March. And for those who have participated before, you may want to do so again...

DAWN TO DUSK 2012

Photography Workshop

with Tilak Hettige

at BenCab Museum, Farm & Gardens

2 to 4 March 2012

(Complete details on attached poster)

For more information on Tilak, check out his site:

www.tilakhettige.com

BenCab Museum

Km. 6 Asin Road

Tuba, Benguet

Philippines

Tel. (+63 74) 4427165

Mobile 0920-5301954

www.bencabmuseum.org

ASCETICS(UNBOUND)

Lui Medina's ASCETICS(UNBOUND)

Opening on February 9, Thursday at 20SQUARE

Drawing inspiration from the concept of limits and an aim to gain an understanding of its nature is what prompted Lui Medina’s latest body of work titled ASCETICS(UNBOUND). In this show, she continues to delve deeper and investigate the metaphysical manifestation of simple objects, just as she has done in her past shows. The 30-year-old artist pursues this investigation not only through her artworks but also through the processes and materials used to create each piece. “Both material and the ritual of making are signifiers that attempt to verbalize the continuity and intimate relationships that take place,” Medina expounds.

ASCETICS(UNBOUND) features four pieces tediously crafted by the artist. Medina’s affinity to oval panels, which she has showed in past exhibitions, is once again evident in this display. She states, “I think there’s something about these shapes that allow me to see and treat my works as objects.” For this body of work, the UP Fine Arts and Slade School of Art graduate worked with oil and beeswax on gesso panels and genuine gold leaf. She also went the traditional way using a mixture of rabbit skin glue and chalk, working layer by layer, slowly building the surface to be painted on. Even bits of the red oil paint used in the artworks, she made herself. Bordering on sculptural pieces, it’s Medina’s interest in the idea and interpretation of her artworks as objects is what shines through.

Medina’s practice places itself on the thin line between the visible and invisible. The manifestation of being in that borderline position, such as tension and anxiety, is a recurring element in her work. It may as well be the driving force behind her practice and craft. It’s obvious that she has a deep interest in the process by which her art is created and the actual making of the pieces. Materials like beeswax, gold leaf, and oil are constant mediums Medina utilizes and starting points for ideas.

In addition, Medina shares, “The materiality of the immaterial, depth and transcendence creates the platform on which my enquiry lies and are, at the same time, the very ideas I question. Material is substance and significant, process and making are involvements, and all play a part in the effort to reach that state of sensory and psychological experience, both between the objects and themselves, and between the objects and spectators.

Medina is a Manila based full-time artist and part-time lecturer at the School of Design and Arts of De la Salle College of St. Benilde. ASCETICS(UNBOUND) is her eighth solo exhibition.

ASCETICS(UNBOUND) by Lui Medina opens on February 9, 2012 in 20Square, together with FROZEN ACTUALITIES by Rachel Rillo in Silverlens, and Carlos Celdran’s LIVIN LA VIDA IMELDA in SLab.

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, tel. no. 816- 0044, 0917-5874011, or manage@silverlensphoto.com.

Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am– 7pm and Saturdays 1-6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com / slab.silverlensphoto.com

FROZEN ACTUALITIES

Rachel Rillo's FROZEN ACTUALITIES Opening on February 9, Thursday at silverlens

In the early 19th c., photography was a way for painters to record still life tableaux, with the intention to paint these later on as realistically as possible. Two centuries later, photorealistic painting is still de rigueur in the Philippines, with photography still taking a backseat to its canvas cousin.

Rachel Rillo does something beautiful with paint, and with photography. Taking objects with shapes all too familiar, she paints a coat of white acrylic over them. These painted forms—an erasure of identity or, alternately, a masking of meaning— she photographs repeatedly against a brown pigment wall. The fissures and cracks in the wall show, witness to time, while the bottles and balls, figures and objects are stripped of scale, duration, and technology. Sunlight wraps around her objects, allowing shadows to fall as they do.

Akin to Morandi’s still life paintings, these are simple photographs. But they are by no means naïve. “The sifting process enables the generation of a new image, one that is estranged, and somehow more sublime, than its original source”, Rillo says.

Rachel Rillo’s Frozen Actualities opens on February 9, 2012 at Silverlens Gallery, simultaneously with Carlos Celdran’s Livin' La Vida Imelda at SLab and Lui Medina’s ASCETICS(UNBOUND) in 20Square. All shows run until March 10, 2012.

Words by Isa Lorenzo; Image: Rachel Rillo, She Sells, 2012

[SEA] TERRITORIES OF THE REAL AND UNREAL

[SEA] TERRITORIES OF THE REAL AND UNREAL: Photographic practices in contemporary Southeast Asian Art Curated by Adeline Ooi and Beverly Yong

ARTISTS

Amanda Heng (SG)

Angki Purbandono (ID)

Davy Linggar (ID)

Gina Osterloh (PH/US)

Isa Lorenzo (PH)

Ismail Hashim (MY)

Julia Sarisetiati (ID)

Kornkrit Jianpinidnan (TH)

Lena Cobangbang (PH)

Manit Sriwanichpoom (TH)

Paul Kadarisman (ID)

Poklong Anading (PH)

Steve Tirona (PH)

Wimo Ambala Bayang (ID)

Yee I-Lann(MY)

Zhao Renhui (SG)



[SEA] TALKS SERIES

A day of talks will be held on Saturday, 10 December 2011, 10AM - 5.30PM

Guided tour: Adeline Ooi, Beverly Yong;

Speakers: Patricia Levasseur de la Motte, Zhuang Wubin

[for registered participants]

For more info, or to register for the guided tour and talks, please
contact Ms. Mala at +6281215500083 or info@langgengfoundation.org

MOONSHINE BASELINE

Opening Reception: Moonshine Baseline by Frank Callaghan • October 26, Wed, 6-9pm at silverlens

Silverlens Gallery is pleased to present Frank Callaghan’s latest body of work, Moonshine Baseline. With his work firmly rooted in found nighttime landscapes, Frank Callaghan reveals his visual roots by making his light source his subject matter. These are portraits of the moon hanging on the horizon.

Setting up the found, like a hunter setting up light traps for his camera, his is a meticulous and repetitive process. In previous shows, Stranger, Dwelling, and the hugely popular River of Our Dreams, Callaghan would stalk urban landscapes looking for interesting material to record over long exposures.

This time, he adds the horizon as a constant, as he puts the moon, our earth’s partner, in focus. Decidedly non-random in this process, he says, “There is peace and freedom in structure.” Callaghan has learned to simplify, and by simplifying, the message has become clearer.

As a related gallery event, Frank Callaghan will be hosting a Full Moon Party featuring music by Caliph 8 on November 10, 2011, Thursday, 8pm-midnight.

Moonshine Baseline by Frank Callaghan opens on October 26, 2011 simultaneously with Keen City by Isabel Roxas at SLab and Bart’s Homework by Elaine Roberto-Navas at 20SQUARE. All three shows run until November 19, 2011.

To RSVP, please call 8160044 or email manage@silverlensphoto.com

For inquiries, contact the Silverlens Galleries at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816- 0044, 0917-5874011, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are 10am–7pm from Mondays to Fridays, and 1-6pm on Saturdays.

Words by Isa Lorenzo; Image: Frank Callaghan, Moonshine Baseline #11, 2011

INCARNATE

Incarnate, to become flesh.

I read a book this summer that foretells the end of the world in 2012. Resembling a work of science fiction, it read like the sequel to the Star Wars Trilogy yet to be written by Lucas. The most vivid visual I took from the book was reincarnation crosses life forms. Plants can become animals, animals can become humans, humans can become plants, and so on— all living beings are equal on this earth in this way.

In school some twenty years ago, I would imagine what animal this or that person was. My friends and I would ask each other this question. So my best friend decided she was a dolphin, and myself, a lion. Over the years, I have met a few trees and vines, horses and rats. So the visual from summer reading, made complete sense.

What if reincarnations could mix forms: to have the body of a human but the head of a forest fern, or the body of a lion but the head of a hawk? Greek mythology is filled with these hybrid creatures, as stand-ins for morality and mortality tales. The difference between the summer reading and the Greeks is that in the latter, men were ruled and were the playthings of the gods and the demigods.

In King Arthur’s story, as a boy called Wot, the wizard Merlin would turn the future king into a bird, an owl, so he could fly through the night. Incredible freedom and unforgettable thrill, to fly and see in the dark! This transformation, a temporary incarnation, was a taste of the impossible. The now King Arthur tells this fantastic story to his wife Guinevere because there are far more amazing things than to be King.

This cast of characters of my fantasy presented in INCARNATE, are mixed form rebirths, hybrids that perhaps exist in more places than my imagination. They are named after the night sky constellations and other heavenly bodies; which incidentally, were named after Greek mythologies. So in my microgalaxy, the circle comes around.

*This is Isa Lorenzo’s 6th exhibition. Incarnate by Isa Lorenzo opens on September 28, Wednesday at silverlens.

The show runs simultaneously with Cloud Country by Patricia Perez Eustaquio, and Glutted Vertebrates by Tatong Recheta Torres in 20SQUARE. See you there!

In conjunction with this show, there will be a performance on October 15, Saturday, 4-6pm at silverlens. Details to follow.

To RSVP, please call 8160044 or email manage@silverlensphoto.com. For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext, Makati, 816-0044, 0917-5874011, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm.www.silverlensphoto.com / slab.silverlensphoto.com/ www.facebook.com/slgalleries

Words by Isa Lorenzo; Image: Isa Lorenzo, Phoenix Dextra, 2011

WET

WET
June 1 - 25, 2011

Having traveled and lived in the Philippines for years, Neal Oshima focused his lens on familiar subjects and issues that surround the way people live. His photos have motivated many to address the problems that largely affect us. This month, he shines a spotlight on water, beautiful and undeniably essential to everyone.

Wet is a survey of Oshima’s inspired meditations on the movement and textures of water. Black and white photos serve as windows to the photographer’s many longstanding encounters with it. With simplicity and clarity, he showcases distant landscapes embraced by the sea, still waters where mangroves nest, portraits of rivers and the ripples that run through its surface. The shades captured in each photo parallel the numerous forms by which we know water.

A celebration of the waterscapes that surround our islands, Wet allows us to sightsee and reflect on both old and new, traditional and experimental photographs. These pictures, like water are quiet and still, heavy, light, and always brimming with life.

WET by Neal Oshima opens on June 1, 2011 simultaneously with Postlocal 2011 curated by Isa Lorenzo and featuring Gaston Damag, Pow Martinez, and Lynyrd Paras at SLab, and Assemblage: Project 3 by Julius Clar at 20Square.

To RSVP, please call 8160044 or email manage@silverlensphoto.com

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816- 0044, 0917-5874011, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am– 7pm and Saturdays 1-6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com / slab.silverlensphoto.com

2011-12 FIFTH EDITION OF THE COLORS OF LIFE INTERNATIONAL PHOTO CONTEST

Photocontest 2011-12

Colors of Life announces the 2011-12 Fifth Edition of the Colors of Life International Photo Contest. An International Photo Contest providing an opportunity for photographers to submit and exhibit their works in the United States and internationally.

ABOUT CONTEST BENEFICIARY

This year’s competition will support the activities of Every Child Matters Education Fund, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC providing advocacy for various issues of critical importance to children, including:

Access to affordable, comprehensive health care services
Early care, learning opportunities and after school programs
Reducing poverty
Eliminating violence, neglect and abuse against children in their homes and communities

Globally, misery has a child's face. According to leading humanitarian organizations fighting global poverty, children suffer disproportionately from misery and mistreatment. By supporting Every Child Matters Education Fund through the 2011-12 International Photo Contest and its visual impact, Colors of Life is harnessing the evocative power of photography to help improve children’s lives.

CONTEST THEME

"Every Child Matters"

Preferred subjects for photographs submitted are those related to the issues focused on by Every Child Matters Education Fund, i.e. health care, education, poverty and violence and abuse, each as it involves children in America. The goal of this year’s competition is to produce a documentary-style exhibition from the 30 finalist photographs that will be utilized by Every Child Matters Education Fund in exhibitions and other events to call attention to its efforts on behalf of children. Given the theme and documentary nature of this year’s competition, the jury will afford significant weight to those submissions adhering closely to the theme in selecting the finalist and prize-winning photos.

CONTEST DETAILS

Open to all photographers.
All forms of photographic medium are eligible.
Printing and framing of selected finalist images will be provided by Colors of Life with the support of its sponsors.

CALL FOR ENTRIES

May 1st 2011

ENTRY DEADLINE

June 30th 2011

http://www.colorsoflife.org/photocontest

STRIP 2011

Patricia Eustaquio, Nona Garcia, Geraldine Javier and Yasmin Sison are all known painters and are all recipients of awards for their work in various visual art forms, whether in painting, sculpture or installation. But for the exhibit opening this April 27, STRIP 2011 at Silverlens introduces them to the art world as photographers with an exhibit curated by Rachel Rillo.

The exploration of media in their work is something that the artists do not shy from. Patricia Eustaquio has used leather, crochet, ceramic and resin, to convey broken narratives within her varied installations. Geraldine Javier recently utilized a craft that she learned in her childhood, tatting, in her artwork and even integrated them with her paintings. Nona Garcia has worked with photo assemblage, x-rays and monochromatic paintings that look like black and white photographs. Yasmin Sison, aside from being an artist, has taught art from preschool to collegiate levels. They have all used various vehicles to communicate through their art.

Photography is not really new for these artists as they have all utilized them in some way in their art process. Likewise, they have all explored the concept of memory. However, this time, memories are translated into photographs, presented as the final form. In STRIP 2011, they are given the chance to present themselves as artists working with photography.

For Rillo, there is no intention in her curation of this show to measure up photography as an art form versus painting, an argument that she views as archaic. Instead, she invites the viewers to see works from these artists from a vehicle different from what they have become accustomed to.

Words by Iris De Ocampo; Image: Geraldine Javier, Alice and Lucinda, 2011

HOME SWEET HOME: THE DENNIS RITO PHOTOGRAPHS

SIX6

SIX6, curated by Isa Lorenzo
with Frankie Callaghan, Wawi Navarroza, Neal Oshima, Rachel Rillo, Steve Tirona and Denise Weldon
November 24, 2010, Wednesday
6-9pm

Silverlens Gallery is turning SIX!


We are celebrating our anniversary with a Photography show by SIX artists - Frankie Callaghan, Wawi Navarroza, Neal Oshima, Rachel Rillo, Steve Tirona and Denise Weldon. SIX6 is curated by Silverlens’ Director, Isa Lorenzo.

Susan Sontag's treatise 'On Photography' was the seminal text on photography theory. Published in 1973, it considered the relation of photography to art, to conscience and to knowledge. But it considered a time before digital images, computers, and Photoshop. The medium then was film. The last twenty years have seen further democratization of photography through post-production and digital tools. Today, photography is considered in relation to imagination and fantasy.

The photographers selected for this exhibition at Silverlens Gallery, it’s forty-first in its six years, are artists who have had landmark solo exhibitions in our short history. They are artists who continue to work within the multi-tasking framework of one who takes and makes photographs. They all straddle the line between film and Photoshop, using the media freely as necessary to create images that are less truthful to the eye, but more in connection with created scenery.

The instruction, the theme of this show if you will, was taken from the first page of the first chapter of Sontag’s text: “to collect photography is to collect the world”. The images that came back paralleled the photographer as traveler. The traveler who puts a camera between his eye and his landscape, but documenting not the place, but the space and the feel framed by his viewfinder. “The photographer as someone in perpetual movement, someone moving through a panorama of disparate events”, Sontag calls it. There are urban landscapes, imagined interiors and silhouetted exteriors, rural metaphors, and signifiers of human intervention.

Frankie Callaghan lights his nightscapes with a mixture of available and strobe lights. He sets up the found, like a hunter setting up light traps for his camera, his is a meticulous and repetitive process. For Six, we see a strip of four photographs. Beginning with a water village, an informal settlement of squatters; transitioning to other homes: a series of stacked concrete bunkers with lights beaming from open windows, a dwelling under a city bridge; ending with a green earth landscape. Read from left to right, it is a series on human habitation and altered landscapes of a developing country. Read from right to left, it is a series of how light has changed our consumption of the night.

Steve Tirona, the rock star, is unpredictable. Warming up the show, he brings to Six an urban kaleidoscope in fading colors of a chromogenic print. Titled with references to surf culture and drug use, his work brings a freedom to the show that reminds us that photography is a lot about “democratizing all experiences by turning them into images” (Sontag).

Rachel Rillo is concerned with form and material. Her photographs talk to drawings in the way that concrete sings to architects. She uses her photographs alternately as wallpaper, windows, or buildings, and pairs them with a black erasure where the skies or the interiors should be. She called these ‘Metaspaces’. They are unreal; but like a good hit, psychedelic and celebratory.

Denise Weldon is interested in quiet. Her personal work has always been about finding the spaces in between life’s daily grind, and harvesting the good out of them. This she manages to do in Six. Standing in a place where there is much foot traffic, whether a train station, an airport, or a bus stand, we don’t know. But we do know that people are moving quickly over a hard surface at a fast pace; and they appear bouncing or dancing, purposefully. And she is quietly shooting them.

Neal Oshima has been taking photographs for a long time. He is best known for his books, and his alternative process cyanotypes and kallitypes of Philippine textiles and traditional clothing. He likes to play with processes and materials. Constantly pushing the boundaries of photography, he was an early adapter to the digital image. In Six, he photographs water, specifically a river, and makes pseudo-rorschachs with the images in Photoshop. These are not blots, they are solid in his frame: suggesting anatomy, leaning to form, pointing to motion. He calls the series “riverrun”, after the first word of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Like the Irish author’s work, Oshima’s is an experiment in fiction.

Wawi Navarroza is a chameleon. She is whoever you want her to be. The universal appeal of this artist lies in her visual ability to crack the obvious. She ‘returns to landscapes’ in this show, creating monuments of remembrance and markers of the deliberate—a white sheet over a home’s furnishings to remember a typhoon’s destruction, a bed of fuschia bougainvilla at the height of summer. X marks her spot, suggesting a return to home.

Not to be taken as a landscape show, but a show of the specific concerns of each artist, the emphasis is on space. For after all, it is the space within the created frame that is burned it, filled, or erased.

-Curator’s Notes by Isa Lorenzo
SIX6, the Silverlens Gallery Anniversary Show with Frankie Callaghan, Wawi Navarroza, Neal Oshima, Rachel Rillo, Steve Tirona and Denise Weldon, Curated by Isa Lorenzo opens with Year of Glad by Hanna Pettyjohn; and The Easter Bunny, just as charming and just as fake by Nikki Luna.
Image: Neal Oshima, riverrun 3, 2010

ART WITH A HEART INTERACTION

The power to affect positive changes through your art is in your hands.

Be part of the Art with a Heart interaction!
[The 43rd Shell National Students Art Competition]

June 22, 2010 - University of the Philippines Cebu, Cebu City, 8am to 12nn
June 25, 2010 - Philippine Women's College, School of Arts and Culture, Davao City, 8am to 12nn
July 2010 - Manila leg (to be announced separately)

Discover how art can be a noble medium to instill values or encourage people to take positive action for various causes. Learn from the master artist himself who, as a faculty of AB Photography and AB MMA at De La Salle College of Saint Benilde and TUP Fine Arts, has been giving back his knowledge to budding artists for years. Let highly respected artist Rosscapili take you through Art with a Heart.

Shell Calendar 2011 image search: Express how you can show your love for your country by joining the digital fine art calendar competition, and if you win we will show your works to the whole Philippines! This year's theme is: 143 Pilipinas, The New Philippines. Pledges of hope, love and peace through Philippine Art.

For more details kindly email soniaptejada@ yahoo.com. ph or ronald.suarez@ shell.com

EMERGING WAVE

Wawi Navarroza at Emerging Wave
The ASEAN-Korea Contemporary Photo Exhibition 2010
GoEun Museum of Photography, Busan, June 18 - August 8, 2010

In Emerging Wave, ‘a comprehensive exhibition showcasing contemporary photography from Southeast Asia that reflects trends in the international art world’, Navarroza ‘recreates Frida Kahlo’s work of passion and pain’. Navarroza re-imagines herself as the iconic Kahlo with self-portraits ‘that convey a powerful message, surreal as the original paintings, about the will to live.’

Joining Navarroza at Emerging Wave to represent the Philippines is Bea Camacho. In her performance piece Enclose, which lasted eleven hours, ‘she created a “red cocoon” that envelops her entire body to portray an artist struggling for change.’

For more information, visit www.aseankorea.org

Notes from the Catalogue of Emerging Wave: ASEAN-Korea Contemporary Photo Exhibition 2010 by the ASEAN Korean Center.

BEING THERE 1946: THE LEGACY OF TEODULO PROTOMARTIR

Being There 1946: The Legacy of Teodulo Protomartir
June 9, Wednesday
6-9pm

Teodulo Protomartir was there in 1946 when the Americans gave the Philippines its independence. On July 4, he witnessed the birth of the Philippine Republic. For the rst time, the Philippine ag ew alone and free. The Filipino crowd cheering by, planes flying overhead, oats lining the parade…a celebration it was. And Protomartir caught it all on still camera.

Protomartir, the photographer who rst brought the 35mm format to the Philippines and actively promoted photography through his photo club and radio show, shows us a monumental event in Philippine history and the Manila that enveloped it. Considered as the Father of Philippine photography, Protomartir captured the city in ruins from the Second World War, its battle wounds and its restoration – scenes we thought only survived in memory. He captures post-war Manila’s architecture and landscape, with Filipinos going about their daily business in familiar places such as Intramuros, Luneta, Ermita and Quiapo as well as in buildings and bridges that are no longer, including the old Sto. Domingo Church, which is one of the six Churches that once stood in Spanish Intramuros. For almost four centuries there stood the home of Our Lady of La Naval before it was bombed in 1941.

Beyond historical evidence, the signi cance of Protomartir’s images is meaningful. Protomartir hands to the Filipino people cultural treasures that should remain part of Filipino consciousness and memory. Sixty-four years later, we celebrate Protomartir because through him we were there too.

Complementing this exhibit is a talk on July 1 by Carlos Celdran, celebrated tour guide and authority on Manila’s history. Entitled Placing The Transition, the talk bridges 1946 and 2010 with photos of the places Protomartir photographed as they are today. Uro dela Cruz will also be giving an introduction to Protomartir, the man behind it all. The talk will be on July 1, Thursday, 6-8pm at Silverlens Gallery. This event is free of charge. RSVP call 8160044 or email manage@silverlensphoto.com

The Images of Being There 1946: The Legacy of Teodulo Protomartir were printed by Billy Mondoñedo. Being There 1946: The Legacy of Teodulo Protomartir runs simultaneously with Bato Bato Sa Langit by Alfredo Esquillo Jr. at SLab, and Lover Lay Down by Christina Dy at 20Square.

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0917-5874011, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com / slab.silverlensphoto.com.

Words: Bea Davila, Image: Teodulo Protomartir, 4 (top left), 12 (top right), 417-418 (bottom), 1946

PAGLALARAWAN

Basic Creative Digital Photography
Petsa:Sabado, Hunyo 05, 2010
Oras:9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Lokasyon:NCCA Office, 3/F ICAM Room, 633 Gen. Luna St., Intramuros, Manila

Paglalarawan
Basic Creative Digital Photography (Lite Version)

This workshop will introduce you to the fulfilling art of photography. This course is for enthusiasts who want to have a first taste of taking good pictures whether through the use of a digital single lens reflex (dslr) camera or a compact digital camera only. Recommended for absolute beginners and new users of digital cameras. in this module that the student is taught how to identify the subject and make use of design elements to build up a photo that reflects one’s personal vision. Discussions and lectures are spent on the first part, then shooting assignments will be given to the student to apply the lessons learned. After each exercise, a review and critiquing of the assignment will be held to assess the student’s progress and understanding of the lessons.

Mr. Jay Alonzo will hold the workshop. Samples of his work and his profile may be viewed at www.jayalonzo. com.

For more details pls. contact: Neil Villegas
• Mobile: 0917-860-0643
• Email: nsvillegas@yahoo. com

GRAIN

Grain
Rachel Rillo
November 18, Wednesday
6-9pm
Rachel Rillo Breaks It Down With ‘GRAIN’

Rachel Rillo opens her latest photography exhibit, ‘GRAIN,’ on November 18, 6pm at Silverlens Gallery.

Her latest work is a meditation on paring things down to their material source: plaster, wood, plastic. Objects photographed are small figures that are visual representations of something real. With the use of light alone, Rillo intentionally alters and deletes backgrounds and other contextual hints. Size, the environment and any other relationship the object photographed could have outside of the material from which it is made and what it symbolizes has been negated.

“Photographically, this particular work was a challenge because I had to get rid of all clues surrounding the object. The task was to make the photographs as minimal as I could get them to be without touching them up or altering them with light,” says Rillo.

GRAIN is a glimpse into the quiet truths in the most basic of equations. A cube with a triangular top is instantly a symbol of a house. A rounded figure on a shaft is a bust symbolizing a human form.

There are installations of photographs of religious iconography paired with a small plastic bag of ground, melted, pulverized, and pulped material. Assuming that the bag holds part of the subject, the photographer posits the questions: Has the idol, icon, or symbol lost its meaning? Is it sacrilege? Is it a gram of dirt or a holy gram?

GRAIN is a meditation on the elusive gestures of form and material - the nuanced expression, the violent confrontation, the abandoned and scarred. It is a reflection of the disjunctive spaces between symbolism and spirituality, memory and possession.


About the Artist

RACHEL RILLO graduated from the Academy of Art College, San Francisco. In 2000 she moved to Los Angeles to work as a freelance photographer for the television industry. Her clients include FOX TV, UPN, CBS and NBC shooting publicity photographs for the news and shows. Her photography has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, La Opinion, and other major publications in the LA area. In the15 years of living in the US, Rachel Rillo has shown her fine art work in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston. Her work has also been shown at the Silverlens Gallery in Manila, UTS Gallery in Sydney, Australia, and will be shown in Pulse Miami this December.


Image: Rachel Rillo, House 1, 2009

RELEASE

Release
Isa Lorenzo
November 18, Wednesday
6-9pm
Isa Lorenzo, 004: RELEASE

Largely a meditative reaction to her time as a recipient of the Japan Foundation Jenesys Program Creator-in-Residence at Tokyo Wonder Site, Isa Lorenzo’s ‘RELEASE’ explores the underside of the Japanese cultural identity – one that prioritizes homogeneity and conformity - and probes human expressions for “letting one’s hair down,” and “blowing off steam.”

Using the Philippines as her reference point, the artist observed that the assimilated group identity in Japan supersedes the individual’s identity. They have a saying: the nail that sticks out is hammered hardest. As a reaction to societal homogeneity, their “expressions for releasing control are extreme in Japan through subcultures—fetish, cosplay, and wota. As the title suggests, my work for this show takes off from this premise of releasing control,” says Lorenzo.

The photograms in RELEASE are from printed material ubiquitous to public spaces: tear sheets, exhibition flyers, performance advertising. They are layered aesthetically and printed correctly with the corresponding tonalities. Half of the pieces in ‘RELEASE, she leaves unaltered. They remain controlled. The other half, she disrupts the perfect layering and printing by using micro explosives - a release control from the darkroom.

Followers of Lorenzo’s work will notice that each piece is titled with a word or two – a marked departure from her pattern of leaving works numbered or dated. Lorenzo says, “the series is a set of traditional and universal symbols but are also personal talismans to move ahead in life”. ‘RELEASE’ is a collective set of accidents and mistakes, of images disrupted, of spontaneous signifiers.

Isa Lorenzo’s RELEASE will run from November 18 to December 12 at Slab’s 20Square and will be shown alongside Rachel Rillo’s ‘GRAIN’ at the Silverlens Gallery across the bridge.

For inquiries and more information on RELEASE, please contact Cathy Paras-Lara at communications@silverlensphoto.com or 816-0044.

Image: Isa Lorenzo, Empress, 2009

ZOOMING IN BIODIVERSITY

The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) is pleased to inform you of the first ASEAN-wide Photo Contest on Biodiversity with the theme, ZOOMING IN ON BIODIVERSITY.

In partnership with the European Commission, ASEAN Member States, and the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC) , the contest aims to generate public awareness on the importance of sustaining our biodiversity. Powerful images of biodiversity' s importance to food security, health, livelihood, climate change, and other pressing issues and concerns can translate awareness into public support to reducing biodiversity loss – a silent crisis that could lead to humankind's extinction.

The contest will run until 30 August 2009 and winners will be awarded during the ACB side event at the ASEAN Conference on Biodiversity in Singapore on 21 – 23 October 2009.

We would appreciate it if you could help ACB and AIJC promote the photo contest by publishing the news release and poster AD. You may also post the announcement and poster in your website with link to the ACB website (www.aseanbiodivers i ty.org), until 30 August 2009.


Download contest rules.

SUBJECT / OBJECT

MM Yu
Subject / Object
9 June - 2 July 2009

Subject/Object, MM Yu's latest solo exhibition of new photography-based works at Mag:net Gallery Katipunan, embarks on an experiment where the photograph embodies both the intentional and accidental, the found and the perceived.

In the show, Yu shares over a hundred photographs of random scapes and objects, shot in spaces inhabited by her contemporaries from the Philippine art scene: areas where the artistic and utilitarian, personal and professional, merge and create an interface.

Out of these visual investigations, Yu produces photographs of accidental sculptures or still lifes, perceiving uniqueness in the nondescript, intention in the incidental. Yu limits her interventions in the compositions to framing; she chances upon the scenes as they are in artist's studios and homes, documenting what she sees at random, selecting frames based on visual impact and interest. She engages in a form of documentation that privileges intuition, aesthetics, and randomness.

Yu also includes in the show several actual objects, their ambiguous presence perhaps alluding to how subjects simultaneously become objects on display, and demonstrating the process of borrowing as a means of documenting presence.

Yu's photographs also seamlessly pose the question of how the boundaries between art and "non-art" may not be so delineated after all. The artists implicitly represented in Yu's photographs are noted for their diverse contributions to the advancement of Philippine contemporary art, yet none of their names are literally denoted or alluded to in the carefully composed and vivid images of spontaneous and generally anonymous settings, except for a few context clues related to their works. Yu intentionally puts less focus on artworks that hang on the gallery walls and focuses her lens on objects and spaces related to processes or activities prior to exhibitions or the production of actual works: desks, rooms, tables, exercise balls, tools, raw paint, the work wrapped up or in a state of completion.

In choosing inhabited spaces, personal effects, and artworks as subject of her photographs, Yu casts a new aspect to the act of documenting contemporary art practice.

Consistently threading the conceptual through abstraction and photography, Mm Yu graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, majoring in Painting, in 2001. Yu was among the winners of the 2007 Ateneo Art Awards and the recipient of the Ateneo Art Gallery's residency grant with the Common Room in Bandung, Indonesia. Yu has participated in the Big Sky Mind's 18th Avenue Artist Compound Residency in 2003 and in numerous group exhibitions since 1998.

Subject/Object by MM Yu opens on June 10 (Wednesday), and runs until July 2, 2009.

Mag:net Gallery is located at 335 Agcor Building, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. For details or inquiries, contact the gallery at 929-31-91 or email info@magnetgalleries.com or visit www.magnetgalleries.com