Maria Jeona Zoleta, "Playground Love"
Even with a title like Tricky Sexy Sodomy or The Case of The Attention Seeking Whores, by Maria Jeona’s standards, you could call this show restrained. No bloodstained feminine napkins, no panties and bras hanging anywhere. Certainly a touch more circumspect than we’ve seen from her before. 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
Maria Jeona, detail, "Monogamist Kultur at Si Sexy at Maraming Stretchmarks at Malalaking Butas ng Ilong Long Long"
Early last week, I spent 14 hours straight in serious contemplation of art, and the better part of the next few days writing about it. Even I needed a break from the art overload. Enter Maria Jeona and her first solo show, mounted at SLab’s 20Square, the perfect antidote to all that cerebral activity. She gave me just what I needed to get back into the swing of Manila’s art scene after a (very brief!) hiatus. Continue reading