Four Tables and a Shelf (Objects by Bueza, Cordero, Ilarde, Olazo, and Yu)
Various Artists
Gino Bueza, Louie Cordero, Nilo Ilarde, Jonathan Olazo, MM Yu
Gino Bueza, Louie Cordero, Nilo Ilarde, Jonathan Olazo, MM Yu
05 – 08 February 2015
Curated by
05 – 08 February 2015
Objects and the Unknowable
For the third straight year, MO_Space has curated its section for Art Fair Philippines with an array of objects from a mixture of artists while relegating its intent to such inconspicuous markers as the gallery’s concept—beginning with the first show titled, Objects in 2013, followed by I, Object and presently—Four Tables and a Shelf… It is as if to downplay everything that is external from the actual thing: modifiers, metaphors, and ideologies from prose or poem alike. It hatches from this Chabetian denouement that, perhaps, the object-in-itself is enough (illuminated by a title that refers to objects themselves: tables and shelf), freeing itself from this rampant search for meaning or themes and that art objects can be almost anything and almost unknowable, all at once.
In Four Tables and A Shelf (Objects by Bueza, Cordero, Ilarde, Olazo, and Yu), the strange conditions of óbjet de art are presented through a variety of origins: through process, through construction, through recycling, through fantasy, and through direct contact with reality. These objects, formed along the premise of arriving at tactile and three-dimensional, telluric forms, gain a considerable distance from the severity of other modes of expression like paintings (although in strict usage of the term are also objects themselves), which are the dominant articles of such fairs. What these objet de arts present, aside from an all-encompassing point-of-view offered by a complete, 360-degree angle is the palpability of shape, surface, design, or even an idea that has been made concrete via a tangible end product.
In Nilo Ilarde’s work, “Erased Eraser,” for instance, the application of an idea is very much evident. We see an object that is the result of a given premise, or tactic: to attain disappearance through itself. He uses the eraser as a self-reflexive tool, and the result are objects which are molded by our past memory of it—resin replicas of a variety of erasers’ original shapes—while enclosed inside are these objects’ disappearances in their present form, their dusts or what’s left of them after fulfilling their function to the very end: to erase.
In Jonathan Olazo’s works, however, objects attain their distinctiveness not through their function but through the opposing concept of being non-utilitarian. Stemming from Olazo’s series of works from the past decade called “Idiot Paintings,” these “Idiot Objects” as he would now call them are ambiguous constructions of geometric and rectilinear shapes which are designed like contraptions and are even equipped with industrial materials like light fixtures and decals, only for us to realize that they serve no specific purpose and are only misleadingly functional.
Louie Cordero’s series of sculptures called “Meta,” on the other hand, represents the inner workings of fantasy, which is exclusively a phenomenon of the mind. Originally conceived as homage to Phillip Guston’s cartoonish, neo-expressionist work, “Painter’s Head,” Louie Cordero has metastasized the comic ideas of eyeball, head, and cigarette into a full-blown object of oddity, oozing with his trademark design of detestable networks of entrails and viscera.
Gino Bueza’s objects, on the other hand, draws from both fantasy and actuality. Incorporating imagination with articles that are very much close to an artist’s reality—his tools: paintbrush, palette, notebook, rulers, and liquor bottles and ashtrays, Bueza pushes further the idea of the readymade as an object that achieves transformation through the senses, and through the mind’s sensibilities, or in our way of looking through the mind’s eye. His objects, which are all recognizable articles, are either distorted or recycled in order to take on a different meaning, much like sentences that are whimsically rearranged and then are argued as poetry.
But in terms of objects having a direct connection with reality, the artist MM Yu has turned object making as an intriguing practice of critiquing the nature of objects themselves. What if an object, whose forms are standardized due to its arbitrariness in light of its function—like paperweights, postcards and such—is inserted with material that is able to evoke an argument for art? In MM Yu’s case, she uses the photograph as an insert to these mundane and often overlooked items, with images that combine the visual and cultural peculiarities of the city—her reality. In doing so, she goes back to raise questions about the nature of our thinking about art +objects: When does an object become art? And how does art (such as photography) become an object?
Heidegger once said “All the work of the hand is rooted in thinking.” If that is the case, then all objects, which were forged through the hands of men and women, are extensions of each individual’s thinking and belief. Handmade objects become projections of its maker’s thought. It is a trajectory fired, or otherwise thrown, not in the manner of light and hues such as films or paintings in walls or canvases, but elements that are hurled and that land along the same space we are occupying—in our footpaths, in our desks, drawers, armchairs, tables or shelves.
It is probably why the origins of the word object goes back to the Medieval Latin term object um—a thing put before, and obicere (ob + jacere), which meant to cast in the way of, or to throw against. And the other meaning of the word object, which is a verb and was partially alluded to in the previous year’s title (I, Object)remains in tandem with its present meaning as tangible things; that they began as oppositions, objections that are brought forward to ‘mind and sight.’
In 1969, Roberto Chabet made a piece for PRINT Gallery’s group show entitled “Words and Pictures.” The show’s concept revolved around the possibilities of role-reversal in ekphrasis; and for his work, Chabet situated three empty bell jars on the gallery’s floor and began assigning it with the title “Unknown Objects.” While other works by other artists for the show had texts from corresponding writers and poets as accompaniment, Chabet had none, claiming that it was a work “in search of a text—a yet to be written poem.” Later on, he would comment again incisively on this work, adding that: perhaps the title or label was text enough.
Yet, the unknown in Chabet’s “ Unknown Objects” does not terminate the tangibility of objects offered as artworks, but ironically expands across indefinite boundaries the possibility of art in objects, and circumscribes for us the effort that is needed in understanding not only the rich discourse inherent in terms of materializing the artist’s mind, but also the questions raised about the ‘object-hood’ of things, as the critic Michael Fried would differentiate ordinary items from artistic works.
What makes an object a work of art? What makes it mere objects? These are the questions that delve deep into art’s historical arena and we are to do better with acknowledging the fact that the unknown, the unidentified, the desired—articles that seek texts and understanding—will always latch themselves in the concept of objects—something which will always be tangible, tactile, and real.
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About the Artist
About the Artists
Gino Bueza (b. 1987, Binangonan, Rizal) graduated with a degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He is a recipient of the Grand Prize from the 40th Shell Students’ Art Competition (Oil/Acrylic category), and an artist residency at Light and Space Contemporary (2012–2013). He is also a finalist Tanaw: Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Painting Competition (2011), and Shell Art Competition (2005, 2006). In 2017, Bueza has been shortlisted at the Ateneo Art Awards for his exhibition at West Gallery, Systems of Control. He has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at Blanc Gallery, TAKSU Singapore, Finale Art File, West Gallery, Artinformal, and Light and Space Contemporary.
Painter and sculptor Louie Cordero began an active exhibiting career while pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. After graduating in 2001, he became a core member of the painting collective Surrounded by Water and artist-in-residence with the artist-run initiative Big Sky Mind. His work explored imagery and narratives at the nexus of Philippine Catholicism, politics, mass culture, mining the collective consciousness of the Pinoy everyman with a humorous edge. He won the Grand Prize (Painting), 8th Annual Freeman Foundation Vermont Studio Centre in 2002-3. In 2005, he co-founded Future Prospects alternative art space. He is the creator of Nardong Tae, the underground comics of cult status in the Philippines.
Fascinated with kitschy outsider aesthetics and colonial-era leftovers, acrylic has become Cordero's medium of choice in painting since 2005 as he turned towards the super-flat aesthetics of spray-painted Philippine jeepneys and other waning commercial art forms. He received the Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Awards in 2006 and earlier. Solo exhibitions overseas include DELUBYO (Giant Robot, Los Angeles, 2008), Actuality/Virtuality (3 Sogoku Warehouse, Fukuoka, 2003), Soft Death (Osage, Hong Kong and Singapore, 2009) and Sacred Bones (Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York, 2010). The recent years display an intensity in the bricolage-method of image construction that takes us through a thrill ride through unbridled imaginations and rerouted libidos, coupled with awkward rendering and visionary courage. His work has been included in World of Painting, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Australia, 2008; Coffee, Cigarettes and Pad Thai, Eslite Gallery, Taipei, 2008; Singapore Biennale 2011; the 14th Jakarta Biennale, 2011; and PANORAMA, Singapore Art Museum, 2012.
Cordero’s puzzling, imploring, and visually striking juxtapositions are often punctuated by blood and gore, as if to imply the history of violence and bloodshed that his nation and people have sustained. Cordero’s artwork makes references to his native Philippines, a nation rich with diversity—the result of multiple changes in political regime and subjugation throughout its history. With a complex mixture of eastern and western influences, the cultural fabric of The Republic of The Philippines is a unique combination of ethnic heritage and traditions, composed of indigenous folklore, Asian customs and Spanish legacy reflective in the names and religion.
Figures from Filipino mythology and its strong oral tradition are referenced through the artist’s gruesome monsters and zombies, while another source of inspiration derived from his nationality involves the Jeepney (U.S. military vehicles abandoned after WWII, and converted by locals to use as public transportation). Each Jeepney, unique and elaborately decorated in vibrant colors, features an ornate mash-up of pop and religious iconography. By combining these elements, varied and obscure (to Westerners), with imagery appropriated from Cordero’s assorted interests including kitsch, Indian advertising, cult American b-movies, and pulp horror, the contrasting influences reflect the complex diversity of the artist’s heritage itself.
Nilo Ilarde (b. 1960) is a conceptual artist and curator whose works navigate the intersections between image and word, drawing and writing, and surface and painting. Using both found and constructed objects, he assembles amalgams of image and text that comment on both the formal and conceptual conditions of art and language. He strips and mines his subjects to reveal their history and materiality and in the process creates forms of both declaration and negation.
Ilarde studied Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. Since the 80s, he has been exhibiting his works and curating exhibitions at various galleries and alternative spaces in Manila, including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, The Pinaglabanan Galleries, Finale Art File, West Gallery, Mag;net, MO_Space, Art Informal, and Underground. His works have also been featured in several international exhibitions and art fairs including solo presentations at Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Stage Singapore, both in 2015 and at Art Fair Philippines in 2018. He is also the co-founder of King Kong Art Projects Unlimited and was one of the lead curators of ‘Chabet: 50 Years’ in various venues in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manila from 2011–2012.
Jonathan Olazo (b. 1969, Manila) graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, where he now teaches. He is a recipient of the Grand Prize from the Philippine Association of Printmakers Open Graphic Arts Competition and Exhibition (1987), the Thirteen Artists Awards by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1994), the Voted Artist of the Year with Roy Halili for Art Manila Newspaper Art Awards (2003), and an artist residency in Fukuoka, Japan by an independent curator, Mizuki Endo (2004). Olazo has had solo and group exhibitions both in local and international spaces, including the Tetra Art Space, Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, Manila Contemporary, Now Gallery, the Vargas Museum at UP, the Drawing Room, and Paseo Gallery.
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
Gino Bueza (b. 1987, Binangonan, Rizal) graduated with a degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He is a recipient of the Grand Prize from the 40th Shell Students’ Art Competition (Oil/Acrylic category), and an artist residency at Light and Space Contemporary (2012–2013). He is also a finalist Tanaw: Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Painting Competition (2011), and Shell Art Competition (2005, 2006). In 2017, Bueza has been shortlisted at the Ateneo Art Awards for his exhibition at West Gallery, Systems of Control. He has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at Blanc Gallery, TAKSU Singapore, Finale Art File, West Gallery, Artinformal, and Light and Space Contemporary.
Painter and sculptor Louie Cordero began an active exhibiting career while pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. After graduating in 2001, he became a core member of the painting collective Surrounded by Water and artist-in-residence with the artist-run initiative Big Sky Mind. His work explored imagery and narratives at the nexus of Philippine Catholicism, politics, mass culture, mining the collective consciousness of the Pinoy everyman with a humorous edge. He won the Grand Prize (Painting), 8th Annual Freeman Foundation Vermont Studio Centre in 2002-3. In 2005, he co-founded Future Prospects alternative art space. He is the creator of Nardong Tae, the underground comics of cult status in the Philippines.
Fascinated with kitschy outsider aesthetics and colonial-era leftovers, acrylic has become Cordero's medium of choice in painting since 2005 as he turned towards the super-flat aesthetics of spray-painted Philippine jeepneys and other waning commercial art forms. He received the Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Awards in 2006 and earlier. Solo exhibitions overseas include DELUBYO (Giant Robot, Los Angeles, 2008), Actuality/Virtuality (3 Sogoku Warehouse, Fukuoka, 2003), Soft Death (Osage, Hong Kong and Singapore, 2009) and Sacred Bones (Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York, 2010). The recent years display an intensity in the bricolage-method of image construction that takes us through a thrill ride through unbridled imaginations and rerouted libidos, coupled with awkward rendering and visionary courage. His work has been included in World of Painting, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Australia, 2008; Coffee, Cigarettes and Pad Thai, Eslite Gallery, Taipei, 2008; Singapore Biennale 2011; the 14th Jakarta Biennale, 2011; and PANORAMA, Singapore Art Museum, 2012.
Cordero’s puzzling, imploring, and visually striking juxtapositions are often punctuated by blood and gore, as if to imply the history of violence and bloodshed that his nation and people have sustained. Cordero’s artwork makes references to his native Philippines, a nation rich with diversity—the result of multiple changes in political regime and subjugation throughout its history. With a complex mixture of eastern and western influences, the cultural fabric of The Republic of The Philippines is a unique combination of ethnic heritage and traditions, composed of indigenous folklore, Asian customs and Spanish legacy reflective in the names and religion.
Figures from Filipino mythology and its strong oral tradition are referenced through the artist’s gruesome monsters and zombies, while another source of inspiration derived from his nationality involves the Jeepney (U.S. military vehicles abandoned after WWII, and converted by locals to use as public transportation). Each Jeepney, unique and elaborately decorated in vibrant colors, features an ornate mash-up of pop and religious iconography. By combining these elements, varied and obscure (to Westerners), with imagery appropriated from Cordero’s assorted interests including kitsch, Indian advertising, cult American b-movies, and pulp horror, the contrasting influences reflect the complex diversity of the artist’s heritage itself.
Nilo Ilarde (b. 1960) is a conceptual artist and curator whose works navigate the intersections between image and word, drawing and writing, and surface and painting. Using both found and constructed objects, he assembles amalgams of image and text that comment on both the formal and conceptual conditions of art and language. He strips and mines his subjects to reveal their history and materiality and in the process creates forms of both declaration and negation.
Ilarde studied Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. Since the 80s, he has been exhibiting his works and curating exhibitions at various galleries and alternative spaces in Manila, including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, The Pinaglabanan Galleries, Finale Art File, West Gallery, Mag;net, MO_Space, Art Informal, and Underground. His works have also been featured in several international exhibitions and art fairs including solo presentations at Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Stage Singapore, both in 2015 and at Art Fair Philippines in 2018. He is also the co-founder of King Kong Art Projects Unlimited and was one of the lead curators of ‘Chabet: 50 Years’ in various venues in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manila from 2011–2012.
Jonathan Olazo (b. 1969, Manila) graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, where he now teaches. He is a recipient of the Grand Prize from the Philippine Association of Printmakers Open Graphic Arts Competition and Exhibition (1987), the Thirteen Artists Awards by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1994), the Voted Artist of the Year with Roy Halili for Art Manila Newspaper Art Awards (2003), and an artist residency in Fukuoka, Japan by an independent curator, Mizuki Endo (2004). Olazo has had solo and group exhibitions both in local and international spaces, including the Tetra Art Space, Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, Manila Contemporary, Now Gallery, the Vargas Museum at UP, the Drawing Room, and Paseo Gallery.
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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