Lyra Garcellano with Jeff Carnay for Taxonomy
Three generations of contemporary artists make up the Silverlens Galleries’ offerings for the month: a celebrated Filipino artist in his 50s who now lives in France, a painter in her late 30s from the seminal group Surrounded By Water returning to performance art, and a young artist barely two years out of university experimenting with abstraction. Continue reading
Noi Gonzales, "Pakikisama", at Pinto Art Gallery
I’ve been stranded in the seven kingdoms of Westeros these past few weeks, ensnared by the five mammoth volumes of The Game of Thrones. I thought it high time to come back to reality, to catch up on Manila’s art scene—my original form of escape. I wanted to see some exhibits that were due to close, and to make sure I made it to some of this weekend’s more promising openings.
My two-day art binge took me from the heart of Taguig’s Global City, to the streets of Makati and yonder, all the way up to the hills of Antipolo. Continue reading
At Blanc Compound's Melted City: Hazel Lee Santino, "Lemert Park", oil on tracing paper on oil on watercolor paper
The past two weeks saw a flurry of shows opening in Manila, and I’ve spent the last few days catching up: Continue reading
Kaloy Sanchez, "Flightless"
It must be the season for group shows. The third one I’ve seen this month, Hate Mail, at Manila Contemporary, is the second in a series of exhibits that, per the wall text, “…looks at visual linguistics in relation to communicating fundamental human emotions…” It comes after Love Letters, which the gallery, fittingly enough, mounted close to Valentine’s Day. Continue reading
When Gary-Ross Pastrana conceptualized On The Radar: 6 New Symptoms, he went back to the original brief for SLab, the gallery where the show now runs. SLab or Silverlens Lab had been intended as a space that welcomes visual arts
Maria Jeona, "Identity crazy, your own worst enemy, hair and makeup by Maria Jeona"
experiments, a complement to silverlens, Manila’s first gallery devoted to photography projects. What better way to revisit this thrust than to put together an exhibit of six artists who have just started making names for themselves? As the exhibit’s curator, Gary gave them a bit of a nudge and a push, required nothing drastic, but squeezed out more from what they are currently doing. Continue reading