Book Launch & Commemorative Show
Roberto Chabet
24 October – 22 November 2015
Curated by
24 October – 22 November 2015
King Kong Art Projects Unlimited is pleased to announce the publication of the first monograph on the life and art of Roberto Chabet (1937–2013). Arguably the most important Filipino artist, curator, and teacher of the postwar generation, Chabet laid the foundations of contemporary art in the Philippines with his conceptual works that critiqued the rigid conventions of Modernism. Using mostly readymades, found objects, and other everyday materials, he asserted a practice that is based on “the ephemeral, the fugitive, and the contingent” in art.
This landmark book edited by Ringo Bunoan clues readers into the complicit threads of truth and fiction that run through Chabet’s lifetime of work. It includes a personal foreword by Benjamin Bautista and several essays by Filipino artists and curators Ronald Achacoso, Ringo Bunoan, Lena Cobangbang, Cocoy Lumbao, Jonathan Olazo, Carina Evangelista, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, and Ma. Victoria Herrera. The book explores different aspects of Chabet’s practice and persona, offering multiple vantage points from which to view and understand his work. Drawing from Chabet’s extensive archive, it contains hundreds of images of artworks, exhibitions, and gatherings of artists, many of which are published for the first time. Supplementary texts including a comprehensive timeline and bibliography also provide further contextual information. The book is distributed worldwide by artbooks.ph.
Book Information
Editor Ringo Bunoan
Foreword by Benjamin Bautista
Essays by Ronald Achacoso, Ringo Bunoan, Lena Cobangbang, Cocoy Lumbao, Jonathan Olazo, Carina Evangelista, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, and Ma. Victoria Herrera.
Publisher King Kong Art Projects Unlimited, Philippines
Designer B+C Design, Philippines
Printer Solutions, Hong Kong
Publication Date 2015
Format Hardcover / 29 x 25 cm / 432 pages / Full Color
Language English
ISBN 978-971-95036-1-7
The book may be purchased at MO_Space or online through artbooks.ph
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About the Artist
About the Artists
Roberto Chabet (1937–2013) was a pioneering Filipino conceptual artist, curator, and teacher. Known for his experimental works, ranging from paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations made out of mostly ordinary and found material, Chabet insists on a more inclusive approach to art. In his works, abstraction and the everyday collide, creating spaces for new meanings.
Chabet was the founding Museum Director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) where he initiated the Thirteen Artists Awards in 1970 to support young artists whose works show “recentness and a turning away from the past.” After his brief tenure at the CCP, he led the alternative artist group Shop 6, and taught for over thirty years at the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts and at key artist-run spaces in Manila. Since the 70s until his death in 2013, he supported and curated exhibitions of young Filipino artists.
Chabet is the recipient of the JD Rockefeller III Fund Grant (1967–1968), the Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1972), the Araw ng Maynila Award for the Visual Arts (1972), and the CCP Centennial Award of Honours for the Arts (1998). He was posthumously awarded the Gawad CCP Para Sa Sining in 2015.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Roberto Chabet (1937–2013) was a pioneering Filipino conceptual artist, curator, and teacher. Known for his experimental works, ranging from paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations made out of mostly ordinary and found material, Chabet insists on a more inclusive approach to art. In his works, abstraction and the everyday collide, creating spaces for new meanings.
Chabet was the founding Museum Director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) where he initiated the Thirteen Artists Awards in 1970 to support young artists whose works show “recentness and a turning away from the past.” After his brief tenure at the CCP, he led the alternative artist group Shop 6, and taught for over thirty years at the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts and at key artist-run spaces in Manila. Since the 70s until his death in 2013, he supported and curated exhibitions of young Filipino artists.
Chabet is the recipient of the JD Rockefeller III Fund Grant (1967–1968), the Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1972), the Araw ng Maynila Award for the Visual Arts (1972), and the CCP Centennial Award of Honours for the Arts (1998). He was posthumously awarded the Gawad CCP Para Sa Sining in 2015.
Related Exhibitions
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