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
Now this is a show! Boredom must count as the biggest peril to an art blogger—well, it is mine. When art overdose sets in, exhibits start melding into one another. I feel as though I’ve seen them all before. It becomes difficult to muster 
excitement from the pieces that stand before you. So when I come across an exhibit that makes me rush back to my computer, eager to post my photos and my thoughts, I know that the thrill of art has come back. Continue reading
Mariano Ching, "Under The Western Sky Series 3"
The exhibit’s title did puzzle me, but it should have clued me in. Clint Eastwood in Hats On, Bottoms Off shows works inspired by Westerns—the cowboys and Indians variety, an odd, unexpected choice of concepts. But a chat with artist Allan Balisi, who had thought this up with Cos Zicarelli, revealed that there is nothing more to this than a bunch of cowboy movie enthusiasts getting together to produce work. Everyone in the group was game enough to stick to the plan. 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
Diokno Pasilan’s art stems from his community involvement. He moved to San Vicente, Palawan in the late 1990s, a place he still visits every year, traveling annually from his current 
base of Perth, Australia. The core of works for Here, There, and Everywhere, now running at The Drawing Room, started out as a project in 2003 to provide senior citizens of the town with ID photos for their Philhealth cards. As evidenced in this exhibit, those seemingly innocuous photos make for forceful portraits. Diokno has blown up a selection, transforming what originally had been intended as run-of-the-mill identification tags into the mixed media wall-bound works he has now installed in the gallery. Continue reading
Poklong Anading, "Anonimity", lightboxes series
It will hit you, as you make your way around the Singapore Art Museum’s (SAM) galleries, that we share so much of the same sensibilities as our Southeast Asian neighbors. Now on its last week, Negotiating Home History and Nation- Two Decades of Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia 1991-2011 presents a survey of works from within the region by 54 artists whose pieces belong to the museum’s permanent collection. While the overt references to Catholicism obviously originated from the Filipinos, the palette and images that majority of the artists adopted could have come from anywhere: the streets of Manila, KL, Jakarta, Hanoi, or Bangkok. Continue reading
Alfredo Esquillo Jr., "Mamakinley", (image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila)
A break in my schedule allowed me to swing by the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, a serendipitous occurrence I took advantage of as I hardly find myself in that side of town. I so wanted to catch BISA: Potent Presences, and, as luck would have it, there I was. Continue reading
Lou Lim, "Skin Deep"
Lou Lim, "Skin Deep", detail
You can’t beat the energy that emanates from new graduates champing at the bit, itching to show what they’ve got. Tin-aw harnessed the excitement and the eagerness of eleven new graduates from the UP College of Fine Arts for Xing E. Jacinto, an exhibit that brings together their thesis projects. One’s thesis marks the culmination of college life, a final hurdle before graduation, a pause before the real world awaits. Continue reading
Mike Muñoz may not care that his works seem anachronistic. The overt piousness of the pieces in his solo exhibit, Christiadum, now on view at Blanc Peninsula, is precisely its point. What you want to discover when you view the show is
Mke Munoz, "Mors Vincitur"
the wellspring from which his zeal and earnestness originates. What would drive an artist, who is not even in his forties, and one counted as a member of Surrounded By Water (a collective that pushed the boundaries of Philippine Contemporary Art) to make pieces that seem such a throwback? Created not just with such obvious fervor, but with genuine philosophical reflection as well. Continue reading
Robert Indiana, "Love"
Does Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE sculpture bring good luck? How else to explain its ubiquitousness at ArtHK 11, this year’s mega edition of Asia’s most important art fair. LOVE abounded, in red and blue, bronze and taupe, in life-sized and desktop versions. It even spurred a knock-off in crushed chrome from a Korean artist, prominently displayed by the fair’s entrance. Continue reading