Cosmetic Order
Oscar Floirendo, Claro Ramirez, Eric Zamuco
22 October – 20 November 2011
Curated by
22 October – 20 November 2011
Cosmetic Order is, admittedly, a demonstration of hubris. In invoking the language of contemporary art to speak on vapid exchanges and merely surface-level comprehension, this collaboration of Oscar Floirendo, Claro Ramirez, and Eric Zamuco is a gesture of faith. Particularly since over the past months, art, artists, and the lives they lead became the collective punching bag for quarters uninterested in discursive pursuits and wholly invested in trumpeting a notion of art that was only about un-problematized beauty; this present project is squarely in the realm of arguing for art that doesn’t fit the “one size fits all.”
Cosmetic Order takes from each of the artist’s fairly recent entanglements with superficiality—Floirendo’s and Ramirez’ desire to get beyond the knee-jerk pronouncements surrounding the censoring of an installation at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and Zamuco’s own painful negotiations with being pre-figured as an artist-in-diaspora, and thus, in-between states, alongside choosing to be a stay-at-home father to his newborn son. In a sense, Cosmetic Order could also hopefully be construed as an invitation to engagement beyond quickie encounters and from the hip ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ dualisms.
The exhibition itself is also an attempt at creating dialogue across geographic sites (Cagayan de Oro, Manila, and Quincy, MA), a palliative treatment of the globalized condition of false realities purporting themselves as naturalized truth and normalized codes of acceptable visuality.
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About the Artist
About the Artists
Eric Zamuco (b. 1970, Manila) is a multimedia artist who graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Fine Arts program in 1991 and took up a masters degree of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the University of Missouri in 2009.
Zamuco's body of work has been about filtering his own displaced experience. His body of work has been about filtering the ordinary and the unfamiliar. It has persisted to be about responding to objects, materials and circumstance, in a particular time and place. His themes run the gamut from views about dislocation, identity, post-colonial narratives, spirituality, geopolitics to the need for reclamation of space. His works, which are of a diverse range of media, include sculpture, installation, photography, drawings, video and performance, serve not only as social commentary but also as self-critique. The intention in transforming the commonplace is to pull the immaterial and possibly find knowledge for some kind of human order.
He received awards such as the Ateneo Art Award and he’s one of the recipients in the Thirteen Artists Award at Cultural Center of the Philippines.
Claro “Chitz” Ramirez is a curator and artist. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from the University of the Philippines and Commercial Arts from University of Santo Tomas. He was a former apprentice of the Philippines’ National Artist for Visual Arts Cesar Legaspi. From 2005 to 2013, he worked as a consultant for Lopez Memorial Museum in their exhibitions. He is also the Artistic Director of Back to Square Juan. Ramirez is a recipient of the Mex-Am Honorable Mention Grant from Vermont Studio (1996, 1999), the Thirteen Artists Awards (2000) and the Visual Arts Venue Grant (1999, 2002) from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, among others. He has participated in both group and solo exhibitions shown at various galleries, including the Red Mill Gallery in Vermont, USA, the Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, Poland, Surrounded by Water, West Gallery, Finale Art File, and the Lopez Memorial Museum. In 2009, he was the NCR Curator for the Sungdu-an National Visual Art Exhibition at the National Museum of the Philippines. Ramirez was also among the thirteen curators who were part of the International Video Exchange, which happened at Smallprojects in Tromso, Norway. He also worked as one of the co-curators of the 2013 Singapore Biennale. In the same year, he represented the Philippines as a curator for Goethe-Institut’s Riverscapes INFLUX.
Oscar Floirendo (b. 1970) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from University of the Philippines. He is currently the assistant curator at Museo de Oro - Xavier University. He is also the founder of the artist group, Siete Pesos. Oscar Floirendo is a recipient of the Juror’s Choice Award of Excellence for the Philippines Art Awards (2008), and the regional winner for the same award (2007, 2009). He participated in the group exhibition Sungduan 5 by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and the Singapore Biennale (2013) where Siete Pesos exhibited a collaborative work titled, “2243: Moving Forward.”
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Eric Zamuco (b. 1970, Manila) is a multimedia artist who graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Fine Arts program in 1991 and took up a masters degree of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the University of Missouri in 2009.
Zamuco's body of work has been about filtering his own displaced experience. His body of work has been about filtering the ordinary and the unfamiliar. It has persisted to be about responding to objects, materials and circumstance, in a particular time and place. His themes run the gamut from views about dislocation, identity, post-colonial narratives, spirituality, geopolitics to the need for reclamation of space. His works, which are of a diverse range of media, include sculpture, installation, photography, drawings, video and performance, serve not only as social commentary but also as self-critique. The intention in transforming the commonplace is to pull the immaterial and possibly find knowledge for some kind of human order.
He received awards such as the Ateneo Art Award and he’s one of the recipients in the Thirteen Artists Award at Cultural Center of the Philippines.
Claro “Chitz” Ramirez is a curator and artist. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from the University of the Philippines and Commercial Arts from University of Santo Tomas. He was a former apprentice of the Philippines’ National Artist for Visual Arts Cesar Legaspi. From 2005 to 2013, he worked as a consultant for Lopez Memorial Museum in their exhibitions. He is also the Artistic Director of Back to Square Juan. Ramirez is a recipient of the Mex-Am Honorable Mention Grant from Vermont Studio (1996, 1999), the Thirteen Artists Awards (2000) and the Visual Arts Venue Grant (1999, 2002) from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, among others. He has participated in both group and solo exhibitions shown at various galleries, including the Red Mill Gallery in Vermont, USA, the Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, Poland, Surrounded by Water, West Gallery, Finale Art File, and the Lopez Memorial Museum. In 2009, he was the NCR Curator for the Sungdu-an National Visual Art Exhibition at the National Museum of the Philippines. Ramirez was also among the thirteen curators who were part of the International Video Exchange, which happened at Smallprojects in Tromso, Norway. He also worked as one of the co-curators of the 2013 Singapore Biennale. In the same year, he represented the Philippines as a curator for Goethe-Institut’s Riverscapes INFLUX.
Oscar Floirendo (b. 1970) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from University of the Philippines. He is currently the assistant curator at Museo de Oro - Xavier University. He is also the founder of the artist group, Siete Pesos. Oscar Floirendo is a recipient of the Juror’s Choice Award of Excellence for the Philippines Art Awards (2008), and the regional winner for the same award (2007, 2009). He participated in the group exhibition Sungduan 5 by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and the Singapore Biennale (2013) where Siete Pesos exhibited a collaborative work titled, “2243: Moving Forward.”
Related Exhibitions
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