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.

Pardo de Leon’s paintings are reminiscent of the style of the old European Masters, and she is known for her distinctive style of painting marked by a ‘sense of line, gesture, and touch.’ Belonging to a generation of painters whose works are mainly based on found photographic imagery, de Leon approaches painting both intuitively and methodically. Working adeptly in both abstraction and figuration, she confronts conventions in painting through the juxtaposition of images, the layering of different forms and motifs, or by zooming in on particular aspects and details of the subject.

Pardo de Leon graduated with a degree in Painting from the UP College of Fine Arts in 1987. She was a recipient of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 1988. She also received a studio residency grant from the Italian-Swedish Cultural Foundation in Venice, Italy in 1999, which was awarded the best show of the year by the state council. De Leon has had numerous solo and group exhibitions at various galleries and museums including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Blanc Gallery, Manila Contemporary, Valentine Willie Fine Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art – La Salle College of the Arts. She currently lives and works in Baguio City.

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.

It is with timelessness that Elaine Roberto-Navas (b. 1964) works her brush and palette over canvas. With subjects ranging from flowers to furniture, from the sky to water, she paints with oil in thick strokes; the object appears swathed in movement. Still life or landscape as they may be considered, they move with each glance, and if you stare, the motion starts to permeate outside the four corners of her paintings. What Roberto-Navas captures in her work is not merely an object in nature, but its spirit in movement, and together with her technique, artistry, and will, her paintings exist in a timelessness that might outlive us all, yet carry our humanity onwards.

Elaine Roberto-Navas graduated with BA in Psychology from Ateneo de Manila University (1985), and a Fine Arts degree, Major in Painting from the University of the Philippines (1991). Roberto-Navas has received various awards including the Jurors’ Choice Awards from the Art Association of the Philippines (1994, 1995), the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards (1995), and the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Singapore Art Awards (2002). She has shown at the Ayala Museum, Silverlens Gallery, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Art Informal, West Gallery, UP Vargas Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and Valentine Willie Fine Art in Singapore to name a few.

Luis Antonio Santos (b. 1985) lives and works in Quezon City as a visual artist working primarily with painting and photography. His practice revolves around the tension between contradictions and engages with themes relating to identity using time, space, and memory as points of departure. Oil painting, screenprinting, and digitally manipulated photography as aesthetic strategies are often employed along with the use of everyday utilitarian materials as subject matter to examine these ideas. He has been exhibiting since 2010 with solo shows at West Gallery, Silverlens Gallery, Blanc Gallery, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Artinformal and the Drawing Room. He has also been included in several group exhibitions in Manila, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong, Athens, and Malaysia. He has been shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards twice (2014, 2015) and has been nominated for the Signature Art Prize, Singapore Art Museum (2018).

Mona Santos (b. 1962), wife of Malang’s son Soler Santos, is among the Philippines’ premiere contemporary artists. Notable for her depictions of luscious flora in close, intimate proximity, which combine rigor of hand, with a feminine sensibility.

Santos’ mastery of the medium has in the past created an entire collection of floral paintings—technically adept and aesthetically delicate renderings that can instill a sense of wonder at the creations of nature. Her portrayals of blooms have long gone beyond the technically photorealistic. Instead, they capture the grace and luminosity of her floral subjects with sensual precision, in ways that not all photographs can.She documents not just a literal transition from one subject to another, but also merges two disparate images by consciously stripping the medium down to its barest essentials through lines. Such visual cues perhaps also hint at formal and stylistic transitions in Mona Santos’ process and repertoire of art-making.

Santos had various solo exhibitions in local galleries, and her works have been featured in various group shows and in publications such as 20th Century Filipino Artists, Homage to the Masters and 1+55: Perspective on Corporate Art Patronage among others.

Soler Santos (b. 1960) attended the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts from 1978-82. He is a painter and photographer. Santos founded West Gallery with his wife and fellow artist, Mona Santos, in 1989.

Santos has represented the Philippines in international events such as the 1st ASEAN Youth Painting and Workshop in Thailand (1983), the 2nd Asian Art Show in Japan (1985), and the 11th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2004). He is the recipient of the First Prize from the ASEAN Painting Competition (1983) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (1992).

Santos has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at spaces including the Luz Gallery, Blanc Gallery, Silverlens Galleries, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Artinformal, the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the ICA La Salle College of the Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

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.

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).

Micaela Benedicto is an architect, artist, and musician living and working in Manila. She set up the design firm MB Architecture Studio in 2007. The work of MB Architecture Studio places emphasis on thorough planning and form finding to achieve a distinct spatial quality, informed by site conditions in the tropical context and the project clients’ individual stories.

Benedicto’s art practice involves the construction of three-dimensional forms and the manipulation of materials in order to explore ideas of impermanence, memory and loss. Working across sculpture and the photogram method of photography, she creates forms and images that possess transformative properties and aim to engage the viewer’s perception. Her architecture and music backgrounds inform the language of her work in visual art, through the use of geometric form, sequence, and pattern. Her objective is to explore in architectonic form the combination of truth and individual imagination by which one constructs their perception of a structure, object, or image.

Mariano Ching (b. 1971) graduated from the Fine Arts Program of University of the Philippines (UP) and studied at the Kyoto Arts University, Japan as a Research Student, Major in Printmaking. He has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various galleries and institutions worldwide, such as the Singapore Art Museum, Valentine Willie Fine Art in Kuala Lumpur, Art Taipei, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Owen James Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, the Voice Gallery, Kyoto, Silverlens Manila and Singapore, as well as Finale Art File, among others.

Gale Encarnacion’s work is characterized by a scathing awareness of impermanence. Her intermedia pieces call attention to the frailty of the human body, as she makes use of ubiquitous / ordinary materials such as bread, salt dough, and bubble gum. Gleaning themes and subject matter from the organic, the scientific, and the fleeting, she paints and sculpts biological entities—insects, body parts, roadkill—and uses them in narratives that outline the persistence of time. Her work is the result of a fascination with our flesh and breath and spit and the accompanying guarantee that eventually we all will be gone.

Eugene Jarque is a Cavite-based artist. He graduated from the Technological University of the Philippines and is a faculty member of its Fine Arts Department. He was recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Awards (2006), and twice recognised in the Top 50 artists of the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards (2002, 2005). He was among the Philippine artists involved in the third leg of the Wahana series, The Wahana Project (2005) held at the Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines. He has shown in solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including Blanc Gallery, Avellana Art Gallery, West Gallery, Mag:net Gallery, Finale Art File, and Republikha Art Gallery.

Hitoshi Kanamura (b. 1969, Kyoto, Japan) is a Post War & Contemporary artist that lives and works in Japan. He had various solo exhibitions that are mostly held in Kyoto and Osaka, but Kanamura also exhibited them at West Gallery in the Philippines and Wood Side Church Troy in New York. He participated in group shows such as, Siren’s Hall at MO_Space, ART ON BOOK at Gallery Yamaguchi Kunst-Bau Kaohsiung,Taiwan, and COMPLEX-edition & multiple at Gallery Nomart, Osaka. His works were also shown at Art Fair Philippines 2018 in the MO_Space booth.

Kanamura has a public collection of his artworks at the Museum of Modern Art in Shiga, Japan.

Christina Quisumbing Ramilo (b. 1961) examines and reimagines objects and their contexts through comprehension of material and site specificity. Her artistic practice involves an interest in and respect for the life and history of objects. With minimal intervention on their surfaces, she arranges them or reconfigures their parts, presenting other perspectives to their forms and functions. Often using unconventional materials (construction discards, architectural fragments, casts, recycled paper), and utilizing objects themselves as material (mirrors, bottles, old frames, clothing), most of which have been collected for years, she constructs the works in parts over long periods of time, never completely finished. Conferred with titles that employ wit and humor, they ultimately express her personal poetries.

Ramilo lives and works in the Philippines as a full-time artist and curator.

Structures are often perceived as notions, as abstract principles that constitute a larger body, and given this it can inspire a feeling of order and standard. However, this does not take away from its potential to also stimulate conceptual chaos and absurdity by inquisition. Julio San Jose’s works can stand as visual studies of this very nature of structures. Focusing to interpret the individual self or a collective consciousness framed by society, the artist sheds light on facets like its creation and disintegration. He is also keen on dissecting and presenting the very elements that make up the structure, as well as exploring the significance of details to the absolute. 

San Jose’s work is likely to strike a sense of familiarity in form and is almost very straightforward, but just like the character of a structure, it calls for deliberate and analytical inquiry. San Jose’s work occurs minimally and elementally in both 2- and 3- dimensional forms. The artist adheres to a palette that will likely not overshadow the work’s formalistic value. He works often with paper as medium, material, subject, and impression, implementing a firm awareness of space and outline.

Yasmin Sison (b. 1972) graduated from the University of the Philippines, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities and then in the Fine Arts, Major in Painting. She was a member of the collective Surrounded by Water, and is the recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2006). She was also shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards (2007).  

Sison has shown in both solo and group exhibitions locally and abroad since 1996, in spaces such as West Gallery, Valentine Willie Fine Arts in Malaysia, Artesan Gallery in Singapore, Artinformal, Manila Contemporary, Silverlens Gallery, Blanc Gallery, and the Owen James Gallery in New York, to name a few. She has participated in international group exhibitions in Belgium (2000), Singapore (2002), and Italy (2009). 

Mac Valdezco is a recipient of the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the 56th Art Association of the Philippines Annual Art Competition, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2006). She was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards (2005, 2007, 2008), and was a featured artist in the Karen H. Montinola Selection (2016), where her work was shown at a special exhibition space at Art Fair Philippines. She has participated in both solo and group exhibitions at galleries including Finale Art File, the Pasig City Museum, West Gallery, Manila Contemporary, and Osage Hong Kong to name a few.