Jose John Santos III, "Clockwise", detail
While briefing the press right before officially opening the doors to ArtHK 12, Magnus Renfrew, fair director, announced that beginning next year, Art Basel officially takes over the Hong Kong art fair. Henceforth, it shall be known as Art Basel Hong Kong, the third fair in the franchise after the original Art Basel (the one that actually takes place in Basel) and Art Basel Miami Beach. Continue reading
Anselm Kiefer lets a thousand flowers bloom at White Cube Hong Kong
And so the madness begins in Hong Kong for art fair week.
The flurry of texts as I waited for my flight to get going clued me in on the frenzy, even among the Filipino art aficionados. Who was going when to HK? For those counting heads, the better question seemed to be who was not? Continue reading
Jose Legaspi, "Drawing 1", pastel on paper, 228.6x 114.3 cm/ 7.5x 3.75 ft.
Come to Drawing at the Vargas Museum for the sheer pleasure of reveling in Jose Legaspi’s incredible skill. Continue reading
Epjey Pacheco, "Homo Execessum (Man of Excess)", detail
Epjey Pacheco has turned his pen to himself. Shift, his one-man exhibit at The Crucible, takes us on an autobiographical journey. Through a variety of portraits, we witness him morph from a man preoccupied with the worldly to a more spiritual being. The reason for the change, however, does not figure in the show. Continue reading
Vermont Coronel, "Connection", detail, layers of painted stencils
Vermont Coronel has professed his admiration for Logan Hicks, the American stencil artist known for his detailed urban landscapes. Unsurprising then that he has chosen to work with the same medium: layers of meticulously fabricated stencils, traced from his own photos of random city scenes, translated to canvas via spray-painted acrylic. It takes a minimum of three layers of stencils to complete an image, and it takes Vermont a week to create each layer. Continue reading
Riel Hilario, "Perro Amoroso", detail
More often than not, a privately commissioned work goes straight from artist to collector, and largely disappears from public view. Art Informal’s Tina Fernandez feels, however, that certain pieces deserve a wider audience, even for a brief period, before they go off into homes or to storage facilities, available only to a select few. Continue reading
MM Yu, "Beliefs II", detail
Another terrific trio opened at Silverlens last week, three shows that also relaunched the gallery as a single space with three exhibit areas. SLab and 20Square opened in 2008 as two distinct galleries under the Silverlens group, envisioned for non-photography exhibits. These two spaces and the original photography gallery will now all carry the Silverlens name, with a soon-to-open Silverlens Singapore in the pipeline for the last quarter of the year. Continue reading
Noell El Farol, "Disposable Anting-Anting", detail
Avellana Art Gallery’s annual printmaking exhibit always provides an opportunity to catch up with the stalwarts of the Philippine Association of Printmakers Inc. You get a mix of the old hands tweaking the tried and tested, along the craft’s younger practitioners introducing some fresh perspectives. Beyond Printmaking lives up to its purpose. It makes us believe in the art form’s vast possibilities, certainly aided by the wonderful way this show has been installed. Continue reading
Ferdie Montemayor, "Lakad", acrylic on canvas, 50.8x203.2cm/ 20x80 in.
It’s about time. I can’t remember when Ferdie Montemayor last went solo. He has made his presence felt through numerous group exhibits in recent years. Surely, an artist with as much fans as he does deserves to star in his own show. This outing at Tin-Aw Art Gallery has been a long time coming, but perhaps, the wait has made it all the more satisfying. Continue reading
Before he started exhibiting again in the middle of 2011, Jigger Cruz, now 27, decided to stop painting for a year. He felt frustrated at his lack of commercial success. This despite earning approval from critics impressed enough with his skill to get him into the finals of competitions like Metrobank’s (2003) and Philip Morris’ (2006). Continue reading