no title (other drawings)
Various Artists
Danny Paz, Felix Bacolor, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Gerardo Tan (with David Griggs), Hubert San Juan, Poklong Anading, Robert Langenegger, Jed Escueta
Danny Paz, Felix Bacolor, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Gerardo Tan (with David Griggs), Hubert San Juan, Poklong Anading, Robert Langenegger, Jed Escueta
16 February – 23 March 2008
Curated by
Nilo Ilarde
16 February – 23 March 2008
Paul Klee said drawing is “taking a line for a walk”: that line begins with a dot on a page. The line takes shape, becomes an object, and translates to ideas. Only, in this drawing exhibition, this walk becomes a labyrinthine journey of the mind. The exhibit becomes a virtual study of the anatomy of drawing—a forensic study of this exquisite corpse, as the surrealist game of chance would describe it. Idea as drawing and drawing as idea. Art that contemplates its own nature reexamines itself.
Eight artists create their own eccentric orbits set in motion by the curatorial design of conceptual artist Nilo Ilarde. Previously drawn in Ilarde’s mind long before the artists were assembled, the gallery retrofits this curatorial assemblage—an idea looking for a space to give it form and substance.
Ilarde’s germ for a conceptual drawing exhibit was sown almost a quarter of a century ago when then-fellow art student Danny Paz solicited the participation of prominent figures in Philippine art to execute simple drawing exercises that revolved around eight randomly spaced dots on a page for the artists to work on. Consisting of 60 pages to date, these drawings—some of them yellowed with age—are housed in cabinets in the heart of the exhibition. This show-within-a-show of curious artifacts is analogue to the main exhibit that clues you into the nature of the show.
Eight dots correspond to the eight artists in this exhibit. Like transitory satellites connected by an invisible thread, the works create endless permutations: an expansive migration of ideas ricocheting and colliding like accelerated particles in an atom chamber, enhancing, cancelling, or negating and negotiating with one another.
A dot magnified a billion times becomes a planet. Here, Poklong Anading reinvents his signature work: a rotating mandala or a game-show wheel where the pencil becomes the fixed point that draws on a revolving surface to create a hypnotic spiraling pattern. The actual piece has been exhibited in several shows, but in its latest avatar, the work literally becomes a shadow of its old self, an astral projection on the wall that assumes the appearance of an intangible celestial sphere. What appears as a still image is actually a protracted time lapse video of the spinning object—subtle, imperceptible changes suggestive of movement on a planetary scale.
Felix Bacolor creates a virtual landscape out of pencil parts, a mountain out of a mound of wood shavings spilling to the floor over a shelf of graphite sticks piled like a harvested forest of silver needles or pins; denuded—the idea stripped bare by the artist. And like the forest for the trees, we may fail to see the drawing for the pencils.
The installation addresses the drawing implement as the object in itself: pencil as drawing. Matter converted into gestures; the perspiration behind the inspiration or what is left after the drawing; tinder for a bonfire—entropy and nothingness.
Hubert San Juan’s giant ball of steel straps gives drawing sculptural dimensions and the suggestion of gravity, the object collapsing on its own weight and turning upon itself. Here, the lines or bands of metal become a sphere, but from a distance they become a speck, a point, a dot—solid. But in spite of its sheer presence and semblance of permanence, it hints at its ultimate disappearance; rust, in its perishability, etches its own imprint.
Gary-Ross Pastrana’s desktop objects might be dismissed as small insignificant bric-à-brac, were it not for the poetry and wry humor behind these tiny gestures. A cast of a thumb made from molten plastic rulers appears like gangrenous digits lost to frostbite, a pen-candle, a photograph of frozen India ink like a popsicle-shaped padlock, a kneaded eraser lumped into some minimalist toy. These modified drawing implements become dense, intimate objects of contemplation.
Jed Escueta trips on wisps of smoke rings caught on video at staggered intervals like spectral wanderers. The video installation documents the profound in an ephemeral, commonplace phenomenon. The fixation for the temporal captures the quality of automatist drawings which sift through elusive concepts or ideas drifting in ether.
Gerry Tan’s skateboard project documents a stacker’s whimsical intent and obsessive conceit, employing human kinetics to define its terrain; the preoccupation with the process looms in lieu of purpose. With the participation of Australian artist David Griggs, these calligraphic gestures point to nowhere in particular: the message is the medium.
Robert Langenegger’s eviscerated floor work, a meandering automatist graffiti, harnesses vandalistic tendencies and anarchist effacement that leaves imprints that seem to delineate the scene of a crime.
Drawing is a crucial yet overlooked process in an artist’s repertoire though the vital decisions, that moment of eureka in artmaking, are often arrived at through this process. This show attempts to capture the fugitive processing of these ideas. As the hand leads the mind, drawing becomes an extension of the body and the eye of the mind. In anthropology, the question is asked on the evolution of human intelligence: whether the hand or the brain takes precedence. It may as well ask if we draw because we are intelligent, or if we become intelligent because we could use the opposable thumb to hold an instrument to translate ideas and concepts into signs, symbols, representations, graphs, maps, charts, and drawings. Ultimately, these works are attempts to convey the sublime.
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About the Artist
About the Artists
Felix Bacolor (b. 1967) finished his BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. His works have been shown at different international galleries through solo and group exhibitions including, the Valentine Willie Fine Art Project Room, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, La Salle College of the Arts, Osage Gallery, Kwun Tong, Finale Art File, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Galleria Duemila, and Artinformal.
Gary-Ross Pastrana (b. 1977, Manila) received his Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines where he was a recipient of the Dominador Castañeda Award for Best Thesis. He was granted residency programs in Japan and Bangkok. Pastrana was awarded residencies in Japan and Bangkok, and received the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2006). He is one of the co-founders of Future Prospects Art Space (2005–2007), and has exhibited his work and curated shows both in his hometown and abroad, at galleries like Silverlens Singapore, Finale Art File, the Singapore Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, the Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines, and has participated in Art Basel Hong Kong (2013), the New Museum Triennale in New York, USA (2012), the Aichi Triennale in Japan (2010) and the Busan Biennale in Korea (2008). Pastrana has also authored publications such as New Museum Triennial: The Ungovernables (USA) and Tomorrow, Today: Contemporary Art from the Singapore Art Museum 2009–2011, both published in 2012.
Gerardo Tan, also known as Gerry Tan, is a visual artist, curator, and art educator. He finished Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman College of Fine Arts (CFA) in 1982 and Masters of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1992 as a Fulbright Fellow. He was a professorial lecturer at UP CFA from 1993 to 2000 and the former dean of the University of the East College of Fine Arts from 2002 to 2005. Tan was awarded the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 1988.
As a conceptual artist, Tan explores the nature of art and how forms and materiality can be articulated in ideas and concepts, be it through painting, sculpture, found objects, artists books, or installations. Often referencing and revisiting his earlier work, Tan deals with aesthetic questions related to the reproducibility of images and the spatial and temporal authenticity of a work.
Tan has exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and Lopez Museum, among many more institutions in the Philippines. He has participated in several international exhibitions such as the 2nd Asian Art Show in Fukuoka Museum, 1982, the 1st Melbourne Biennale,1999, the 4th Gwangju Biennale, 2002, and the inaugural exhibition of The National Gallery of Singapore, 2016. He continues to work with contemporary artists making up the Bastards of Misrepresentation that is curated by Manuel Ocampo, which has aggressively and independently been exhibiting since 2010 in Berlin, Germany, Queens New York, and Sete, France.
In 2022, his work was featured at the Philippine Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale entitled Milk of Dreams, curated by Yael Buencamino and Arvin Flores.
Poklong Anading’s (b. 1975, Manila, Philippines) practice utilizes a wide range of media from drawing, painting, video, installation, photography and object-making. Taking a more process-oriented and conceptual approach, his continuing inquiry takes off from issues on self-reflexivity, both of himself and others, and site-specificity in an ongoing discussion about society, time and territory.
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting from the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines (1999). He completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila, Philippines (2003 to 2004), Common Room, Bandung, Indonesia (2008), Bangkok University Gallery, Thailand (2013), Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2013), Philippine Art Residency Program - Alliance Francaise de Manille in Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle in France (2014) and das weisse haus, Vienna Austria (2018). He had solo exhibitions in Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz, Austria (2010, 2012 and 2020), Taro Nasu in Japan and Athr Gallery in Jeddah (2016), 1335MABINI in Manila, Philippines (2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019). He has been included in notable group exhibitions such as: Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2002 and 2012), No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, the first exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS Map Global Art Initiative in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore (2013 to 2014), 5th Asian Art Biennial: Artist Making Movement, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2015), The Shadow Never Lies, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, Afterwork, Para Site, Hong Kong, China and in the Architecture Biennale for the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, Philippine Pavilion: Muhon: Traces of an Adolescent City at Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy (2016), disco nap, ‘We Didn’t Mean To Break It (But It’s Ok, We Can Fix It), Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2019), Far Away But Strangely Familiar’, Danubiana Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia (2019), Normal scheduling will resume shortly, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019) and Arts in Common Artjog MMXIX, Jogya Nationa Museum, Jogyakarta, Indonesia (2019),
Anading lives and works in Manila.
Robert Langenegger (b. 1983, St. Gallen, Switzerland) lives and works in Manila, Philippines. His art has deliberately gone against moral conformity and academic technique, using images as carnivalesque allegory.
Taking up Fine Arts at UP Diliman and Kalayaan College, Langenegger first exhibited his paintings at the artist-run space Big Sky Mind in 2003. By 2008, he was cited as one of the finalists for the Sovereign Art Prize. During that same year his one-man show Irish Bull of the Mother and Child, held at Finale Art File in 2007, was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards. Soon after, his show at MO_Space, ONLY DOG CAN JUDGE ME, was also shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards in 2018. His works have been shown in various art galleries in Manila, Malaysia, Australia, Austria, Germany and New York. Through the years, he had various solo exhibitions in both local and international galleries such as Finale Art File in the Philippines and Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Graz, Austria. He participated in group exhibitions as well that showed at Artesan Gallery (Singapore) and Goliath Visual Space in Brooklyn (New York), to name some.
Jed Escueta graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Philippines. He was part of the Green Papaya Art Projects Residency Program Wednesdays Open Platform funded by Arts Network Asia Singapore in 2009. Escueta has participated in both solo and group exhibitions at Silverlens Gallery, Light and Space Contemporary, Osage Gallery in Hong Kong, Green Papaya Art Projects, Post Gallery, Photo Bangkok, Vinyl on Vinyl, and Art Dubai.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Felix Bacolor (b. 1967) finished his BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. His works have been shown at different international galleries through solo and group exhibitions including, the Valentine Willie Fine Art Project Room, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, La Salle College of the Arts, Osage Gallery, Kwun Tong, Finale Art File, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Galleria Duemila, and Artinformal.
Gary-Ross Pastrana (b. 1977, Manila) received his Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines where he was a recipient of the Dominador Castañeda Award for Best Thesis. He was granted residency programs in Japan and Bangkok. Pastrana was awarded residencies in Japan and Bangkok, and received the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2006). He is one of the co-founders of Future Prospects Art Space (2005–2007), and has exhibited his work and curated shows both in his hometown and abroad, at galleries like Silverlens Singapore, Finale Art File, the Singapore Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, the Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines, and has participated in Art Basel Hong Kong (2013), the New Museum Triennale in New York, USA (2012), the Aichi Triennale in Japan (2010) and the Busan Biennale in Korea (2008). Pastrana has also authored publications such as New Museum Triennial: The Ungovernables (USA) and Tomorrow, Today: Contemporary Art from the Singapore Art Museum 2009–2011, both published in 2012.
Gerardo Tan, also known as Gerry Tan, is a visual artist, curator, and art educator. He finished Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman College of Fine Arts (CFA) in 1982 and Masters of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1992 as a Fulbright Fellow. He was a professorial lecturer at UP CFA from 1993 to 2000 and the former dean of the University of the East College of Fine Arts from 2002 to 2005. Tan was awarded the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 1988.
As a conceptual artist, Tan explores the nature of art and how forms and materiality can be articulated in ideas and concepts, be it through painting, sculpture, found objects, artists books, or installations. Often referencing and revisiting his earlier work, Tan deals with aesthetic questions related to the reproducibility of images and the spatial and temporal authenticity of a work.
Tan has exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and Lopez Museum, among many more institutions in the Philippines. He has participated in several international exhibitions such as the 2nd Asian Art Show in Fukuoka Museum, 1982, the 1st Melbourne Biennale,1999, the 4th Gwangju Biennale, 2002, and the inaugural exhibition of The National Gallery of Singapore, 2016. He continues to work with contemporary artists making up the Bastards of Misrepresentation that is curated by Manuel Ocampo, which has aggressively and independently been exhibiting since 2010 in Berlin, Germany, Queens New York, and Sete, France.
In 2022, his work was featured at the Philippine Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale entitled Milk of Dreams, curated by Yael Buencamino and Arvin Flores.
Poklong Anading’s (b. 1975, Manila, Philippines) practice utilizes a wide range of media from drawing, painting, video, installation, photography and object-making. Taking a more process-oriented and conceptual approach, his continuing inquiry takes off from issues on self-reflexivity, both of himself and others, and site-specificity in an ongoing discussion about society, time and territory.
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting from the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines (1999). He completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila, Philippines (2003 to 2004), Common Room, Bandung, Indonesia (2008), Bangkok University Gallery, Thailand (2013), Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2013), Philippine Art Residency Program - Alliance Francaise de Manille in Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle in France (2014) and das weisse haus, Vienna Austria (2018). He had solo exhibitions in Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz, Austria (2010, 2012 and 2020), Taro Nasu in Japan and Athr Gallery in Jeddah (2016), 1335MABINI in Manila, Philippines (2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019). He has been included in notable group exhibitions such as: Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2002 and 2012), No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, the first exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS Map Global Art Initiative in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore (2013 to 2014), 5th Asian Art Biennial: Artist Making Movement, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2015), The Shadow Never Lies, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, Afterwork, Para Site, Hong Kong, China and in the Architecture Biennale for the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, Philippine Pavilion: Muhon: Traces of an Adolescent City at Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy (2016), disco nap, ‘We Didn’t Mean To Break It (But It’s Ok, We Can Fix It), Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2019), Far Away But Strangely Familiar’, Danubiana Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia (2019), Normal scheduling will resume shortly, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019) and Arts in Common Artjog MMXIX, Jogya Nationa Museum, Jogyakarta, Indonesia (2019),
Anading lives and works in Manila.
Robert Langenegger (b. 1983, St. Gallen, Switzerland) lives and works in Manila, Philippines. His art has deliberately gone against moral conformity and academic technique, using images as carnivalesque allegory.
Taking up Fine Arts at UP Diliman and Kalayaan College, Langenegger first exhibited his paintings at the artist-run space Big Sky Mind in 2003. By 2008, he was cited as one of the finalists for the Sovereign Art Prize. During that same year his one-man show Irish Bull of the Mother and Child, held at Finale Art File in 2007, was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards. Soon after, his show at MO_Space, ONLY DOG CAN JUDGE ME, was also shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards in 2018. His works have been shown in various art galleries in Manila, Malaysia, Australia, Austria, Germany and New York. Through the years, he had various solo exhibitions in both local and international galleries such as Finale Art File in the Philippines and Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Graz, Austria. He participated in group exhibitions as well that showed at Artesan Gallery (Singapore) and Goliath Visual Space in Brooklyn (New York), to name some.
Jed Escueta graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Philippines. He was part of the Green Papaya Art Projects Residency Program Wednesdays Open Platform funded by Arts Network Asia Singapore in 2009. Escueta has participated in both solo and group exhibitions at Silverlens Gallery, Light and Space Contemporary, Osage Gallery in Hong Kong, Green Papaya Art Projects, Post Gallery, Photo Bangkok, Vinyl on Vinyl, and Art Dubai.
Related Exhibitions
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