Space and Two Points
MM Yu, Nona Garcia
30 April – 29 May 2011
Curated by
30 April – 29 May 2011
In Space and Two Points at MO_Space, Nona Garcia and MM Yu collaborate, bringing into relief shared conceptual and material concerns. These include the detritus of life in Manila, public and personal histories, serialisation, and an engagement with the mediums of painting and photography—with Garcia being known for her use of x-rays and exactingly recreated photographs in paint, and Yu for dripping paint on canvas and transforming snapshots of everyday coincidences into abstracted bursts of high key colour, shape, and texture.
Across the exhibition, Garcia and Yu re-work images drawn from their respective archives to consider these sympathies, their points of difference, and the potential of collaborative practice. Their installation of light boxes combines photos by Yu of saints chanced upon on the city’s streets with x-rays by Garcia of valued holy statues loaned from family and friends. Brought together, the installation forms a subtle rumination on religion and consumption in contemporary Philippine life. Likewise, photographs by Yu of abandoned furniture and trash left to decay on Manila’s sidewalks are re-worked by Garcia with paper-tole, linking them to the series in which she first adopted this technique to render photos of Typhoon Ondoy’s damage with a three-dimensionality reminiscent of trompe l'œil. In-situ in MO_Space, these works playfully suggest the potential life to come of the objects sold next door.
While this confluence of both artists’ hand on a single surface serves to pinpoint Manila as a locus, it also highlights the divergent formal investigations that underpin their solo practices a cross painting and photography. Yu’s abstraction of the everyday is invested with Garcia’s investigation into the illusionistic possibilities of artistic techniques; while the muted tones favoured by Garcia are replaced by the verve for colour distinguishable as Yu’s. The grid of colour by Yu, placed alongside the accumulated mound of paint refuse by Garcia, speaks directly to these tensions. While Yu’s grid of colour made from photographed close-ups of hues found around Manila form a kaleidoscopic vision of the city, Garcia’s mound provides an accidental study of her muted tonal palette selected for its neutrality and ability to emphasise form in her photo-realistic approach to painting. Brought into conversation, these works articulate the larger dialogue between realism and abstraction pivotal in discussions of pictorial representation.
Across the works in Space and Two Points, the inherent dialogue that exists between artists of a particular place and time is laid bare. With many artists making a move to collaborate, Garcia and Yu’s exhibition considers the value of such a practice, articulating its ability to both map these relations and to define their differences, resisting the reduction to mere dichotomies through emphasising the space of exchange between people and positions.
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About the Artist
About the Artists
Nona Garcia (b. 1978) received a BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines (UP). Her work has been shown and collected extensively throughout the region. She was the recipient of the Grand Prize for the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Award (2000), the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Award (2003), and the residency program at Cross Currents, Bangkok (2004). Her work has been featured in numerous publications such as Post-Tsunami Art published by Damiani, Without Walls: A tour of Philippine Paintings at the Turn of the Millenium, and Phaidon’s Painting Today.
Garcia has shown at Finale Art File, West Gallery, the Prague Biennale (2009), G23 in Bangkok, the Primo Marella Milano, Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore, Osage Gallery Singapore, the Bencab Museum in Baguio City, ARNDT Berlin, and Blanc Gallery, to name a few.
MM Yu (b. 1978) lives and works in Manila, Philippines. Her photographs evoke the ever-changing cultural texture and topology of Manila as seen through its inhabitants, the city’s infrastructure and its waste product as it archives not only the economy but also the ecology of life in the myriad forms it takes in the city.
These recorded static scenarios show through their thematic variety the artist’s interest in discovering and valuing the fleeting moment present even in its simplest components. The diverse elements in her works not only underscore the inability of photography to account for fractured temporality. Through her ongoing interest in deciphering the enigma of the unseen landscape of ordinary things, they also force us to rethink what our minds already know and rediscover what our eyes have already seen.
The impact lies in how photography is employed to investigate another subject namely that of memory. By consolidating a series of routine snapshots traversing the streets of Manila. The hybrid and density of MM Yu’s subjects remind us of how objects and signs are not necessarily self-contained but take part in larger systems of interaction.
MM Yu received her BFA Painting from the University of the Philippines and completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila (2003), Common Room Bandung Residency Grant and Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France (2013). She is a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artist Award (2009), the Goethe Institute Workshop Grant (2014), and the Ateneo Art Awards (winner in 2007, shortlisted in 2011). She was also a finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2010).
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Nona Garcia (b. 1978) received a BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines (UP). Her work has been shown and collected extensively throughout the region. She was the recipient of the Grand Prize for the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Award (2000), the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Award (2003), and the residency program at Cross Currents, Bangkok (2004). Her work has been featured in numerous publications such as Post-Tsunami Art published by Damiani, Without Walls: A tour of Philippine Paintings at the Turn of the Millenium, and Phaidon’s Painting Today.
Garcia has shown at Finale Art File, West Gallery, the Prague Biennale (2009), G23 in Bangkok, the Primo Marella Milano, Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore, Osage Gallery Singapore, the Bencab Museum in Baguio City, ARNDT Berlin, and Blanc Gallery, to name a few.
MM Yu (b. 1978) lives and works in Manila, Philippines. Her photographs evoke the ever-changing cultural texture and topology of Manila as seen through its inhabitants, the city’s infrastructure and its waste product as it archives not only the economy but also the ecology of life in the myriad forms it takes in the city.
These recorded static scenarios show through their thematic variety the artist’s interest in discovering and valuing the fleeting moment present even in its simplest components. The diverse elements in her works not only underscore the inability of photography to account for fractured temporality. Through her ongoing interest in deciphering the enigma of the unseen landscape of ordinary things, they also force us to rethink what our minds already know and rediscover what our eyes have already seen.
The impact lies in how photography is employed to investigate another subject namely that of memory. By consolidating a series of routine snapshots traversing the streets of Manila. The hybrid and density of MM Yu’s subjects remind us of how objects and signs are not necessarily self-contained but take part in larger systems of interaction.
MM Yu received her BFA Painting from the University of the Philippines and completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila (2003), Common Room Bandung Residency Grant and Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France (2013). She is a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artist Award (2009), the Goethe Institute Workshop Grant (2014), and the Ateneo Art Awards (winner in 2007, shortlisted in 2011). She was also a finalist for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2010).
Related Exhibitions
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