Manila Curatour

IN SITU: TAPAS, SPANISH DESIGN FOR FOOD

10:34 PM

MUSINGS: Artist Statement

11:54 PM

Opposing Friction

As an aspiring curator, I construct my daily life with doses of narratives, texts that will integrate what I visually perceive. I try to make connections out of everything I see hoping that someday it will weave into a beautiful truth. I make associations and I write them down. Essentially, I translate visual into writing and translate writing into visual. I make stories out of beautiful, curated pieces. You can see this in my imagined exhibits that hopefully I can turn into a reality. In turn, I create projects grounded with a certain truth from novels I’ve read, verses I’ve seen and quotes I liked. They say the human being is always already caught up in language. (Virno) We are born into it, trapped by it but is always transcended by it. By being in language, we can imagine things far beyond what we can experience (l’imagination au pouvoir). For me, it is the best kind of medium.

Nowadays, we are all bombarded with different kinds of information and visual overload. The demarcation between what is ugly and beautiful inevitably blurs. Everything becomes relative and is downsized to what is acceptable. I believe that we can still draw out inevitable meanings into our visual projects, deeper than what Raunig, Ray and Wuggenig’s initial approach on the creative as an engineer of entertainment.

I can identify myself with the contemporary times, a mixture of new media and even newer ideologies but are all in part of an invention created long before. Kevin Moore has once said that a museum/art curator is equal parts communicative and political. Communication plays a big role in this field I choose because we relay significance of the past and the future. Oftentimes, some forget to live in the present having been engrained into preserving materials and ideas from way back. The political part comes from taking sides, having to hold or preserve a certain side to a story. I wish to be in the present, a certain bearer of a facet of truth we can only hope to see in current times. I think it is our responsibility to educate and to expose people to the beautiful and the not so beautiful parts of life. While I do not hold sides, I aim to create an established name that is known for integrity and virtue.

I guess in part, we are all storytellers about a bigger truth only ourselves can see. We do want to share it somehow with a thin line of belief that by telling, we are contributing to a start of a new perception, the desire to develop it. It is in our very core, it is in our very bodies, the force to develop the world and be one with it. (Raunig, Ray and Wuggenig)

That is why I strive hard to create and/or accept projects that I believe would be a contribution to a community. I do not want to be perceived as the artist who is more focused on revealing and expressing herself but rather I am more inclined to creating projects/exhibits that are manifestations of a truth, whether it be a beautiful or an ugly one. Only then can we do our job to develop or perpetrate it.

Being an artist is such a beautiful thing. It opens you up to worlds of wonder yet it puts you on the pedestal. It confers you to a responsibility of making good shit that nowadays this world needs.

Gary Ross Pastrana's works at the back

IN SITU: MATTER/REAL Exhibit

3:00 AM

MUSINGS: 5 Things You Don't Know About Fine Arts Majors

9:00 PM

MUSINGS: Of Places I Know Of

9:23 PM

EXHIBIT REVIEW: Ateneo Art Awards 2015

1:40 AM

Frank Callaghan's Deadends

Ryan Villamael's Isles

Charles Buenconsejo's Unending Void

The Ateneo Art Awards is an annual event held by the Ateneo Art Gallery that showcases nominated works of artists not older than 36 years old. This is in accordance to the credo of the first modern art gallery in the metro. As such, the award-giving body aims to help the artists create a name for themselves in the art industry through acknowledging their works, giving art residency grants and laying a springboard for the mid-career artists in general. Although lacking in years, some of the shortlisted artists do not fall short of the expectation.

The underlying theme most evident in this year’s shortlisted works was that of exploration in science and technology. Some dealt on the play of lights in a photograph while others illustrated raw images of life and its beginnings. It is interesting to note that this year’s line-up was consequential in concept in which you can expect the climax to be the biggest winner of all.

Science can owe its success to its discipline, preciseness and methodological process. It has been thought of as contrasting to art at times since art leaves room for expression and creativity. Art’s subjectivity has made science a far unreachable alliance. This year’s featured works is a testament of the inevitable merging of both fields. Drawing from science’s manipulation, the works are relevant to our society nowadays.

Art and science also deals with the same question but in different ways. Their search for truth and meaning has anchored them in man’s pursuit for everything under the sun. The former focuses on the internal forces at work in the search while the latter focuses on the external forces acting on the subject. They present two facets that certainly link them to each other.

The artists shortlisted this year used the preciseness of science to validate their artworks as such. Their medium and content bring art to a whole new era again.

Veronica Pee and her work entitled, “Pocket Universe”, was a crowd pleaser amongst the youth. Pee, with her precise illustrations has been both visually appealing and unifying. She has crossed demarcations on science and art. Although celebrated, her illustrations are but reminiscent of a biological image most medical students deem worrisome. Her stance on it though open up another world that we only can look from a single angle thus arousing in us a full-on curiosity. This curiosity allows us to use our imagination, a coming back to art.

Frank Callaghan has put photography in a whole other level. His works evoke longing and solitude with corners being his usual subject. The execution of the artist is a paradox of what he is trying to convey. The termination of solitude is seen as but a turn in the corner. The title, “Deadends”, is literally what the work’s form is. He experiments with light to create the illusion of isolation.

The big winner for this year’s Ateneo Art Awards is Ryan Villamael. He has been anticipated with his extraordinary usage of resources and his meticulous skills in paper cutting. His work entitled, “Isles”, is nonetheless the climax of the whole exhibit. Enclosed in vitrinas, Isles is worthy of adoration and worship. The sacredness of the art resulted from the wholly other skill mastered to execute this. His use of cartography begs the idea of a land and its physical form. The aspect of its two dimensionality however allows it to still proliferate hidden realities. Ryan Villamael proved his ingenuity and originality in this year’s awards.

Charles Buenconsejo, a resident shortlister of the Ateneo Art Awards, has managed to complete residencies abroad through the gallery. His works all throughout the years have ripened and matured that made him a regular in every art patron’s conversation. He has made himself a who’s who in the Philippine art scene. All are eager to know what this artist is going to do next.

Buenconsejo has proved time and time again that his works are commentaries on the immediate trends we are experiencing. He does not bat an eyelash as he unleashed another set of pessimistic works that will make his audience think twice. His work entitled, “Unending Void”, is a repetitive video almost seducing you to a light, a path that you believe is redemption.

Ian Carlo Jaucian explored science and engineering as he created a mobile robot. The task of employing circuits and other kinetic materials is not new in Jaucian’s repertoire. This time his work enjoins the critical issue of human ways and its complete disregard on the environment. His work is reminiscent to that of a child’s early entertainment but brings us back to a higher level of fascination with art and science.

The exhibit occupies two rooms. The first room encloses all the works that experiment on new media, while the other one house the other comforting, usual visual works. The former room elevates experience and is a summary of the young Filipino artist’s yearning for new ways.

The desire to create is common amongst these artists. They do not simply imitate but they push the boundaries in producing art. Pursuing the question of truth through science and art, they generate works that are socially relevant in concept and ultimately pleasing in aesthetic.