DESTRUCTURE
Various Artists
Juan Alcazaren, Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Felix Bacolor, Mariano Ching, Idan Cruz, Kawayan de Guia, Nona Garcia, Nilo Ilarde, Marta Lovina, Jonathan Olazo, Mawen Ong, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Yasmin Sison, Oca Villamiel, Pancho Villanueva, MM Yu, Reg Yuson
Juan Alcazaren, Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Felix Bacolor, Mariano Ching, Idan Cruz, Kawayan de Guia, Nona Garcia, Nilo Ilarde, Marta Lovina, Jonathan Olazo, Mawen Ong, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Yasmin Sison, Oca Villamiel, Pancho Villanueva, MM Yu, Reg Yuson
15 December 2018 – 13 January 2019
Curated by
Christina Quisumbing Ramilo
15 December 2018 – 13 January 2019

DESTRUCTURE originally started as an exploration of its root word, structure, which means anything built or constructed; an organization or pattern. Adding the prefix “de,” which suggests a removal, negation, or adismantling of the word to which it is attached, freed the thematic choice from constraints and restrictions. The show’s curator, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, relinquished her authority to give the participants free rein, the act by itself (with Ramilo circumventing traditional gallery protocols) expressing the spirit of the show.
All in all, nineteen artists responded to the theme in a variety of modes and media, throwing the doors wide open to a rich discourse that allowed DESTRUCTURE’s tonal character to shift from room to room.
Juan “Johnny” Alcazaren humors the viewer with a sculpture made from found metal objects (“Hard Parts,” 2018), its form seemingly devoid of order, though the artist insists there is structure in-the-making. “It is about behavior as structure,“ he said, “specifically creative behavior. Even if the artist ‘makes it up as he goes along’ he needs to show up day in and day out, 24-7.”
Kawayan de Guia’s fantastically scaled wood and metal high chair (“Diagram,” 2018) appears playful until the viewer realizes the deeper meanings of its minutiae. “I was making the suggestion that we, as human beings, are structures,” de Guia explained. “It starts with our upbringing and education until we have our own philosophical backbone and take on things.” The artist saw the old chair (that once belonged to a Chinese restaurant in Baguio), as a sculpture, to which he added the shelves that resemble the steps of a ladder “to imply the stages of one’s short existence.” Dark humor lurks nearby where Gary-Ross Pastrana installed a convex mirror (“Untitled, Blind Corner,” 2018) collaged almost entirely in black. The piece is commonly found in public spaces where it is used as a safety device. With Pastrana’s manipulation, the viewer is disoriented, unable to see what he needs, or is expected, to be seen.
The show has its quiet moments delivered by artists who explored the idea of religion or spirituality, as well as nostalgia. Mawen Ong takes the viewer on a pilgrimage to Sri Lanka with a blurry image of the Jetavanaramaya stupa (“Stupa 1,” 2018). It is a composite of multiple shots which the artist took every two or three steps while circumnavigating the holy structure, agesture of respect and at the same time a retracing of Buddha’s life path. Pancho Villanueva “made an observation and personal inquiry into the phenomena of faith as a cure-all medicine.” A roleta (“The Good Luck Machine,” 2018) is raised above ground, its frontage lined with a bed of salt. Nearby, bamboo totems (“Congregation,” 2018) in loose formation await their turn to spin the roleta in a game of chance, an allegory of the act of praying or wishing. Tender moments are immortalized in Oca Villamiel’s shrine (“Sewer,” 2018) which the artist built as a homage to his mother who mended clothes instead of buying new ones. The memory is reverentially staged with the artist elevating a glass-enclosed pin cushion—its surface covered with needles—with the use of a humble wooden stand.
At a time of record-breaking temperatures searing and freezing different parts of the world simultaneously, MM Yu and Marta Lovina demand attention to the matter. Yu’s assemblage of framed urban discards is accompanied by two videos, one of which captures a street scene outside the artist’s home, the sounds of a jackhammer providing the jarring music bed. It alludes to the cycle of building and destruction, one leading to the other in a continuous loop. The idea is echoed by Marta Lovina’s viewing box (“We See the World,” 2009) protruding from a wall, an assertive presence compelling viewers to confront a reality that most choose to ignore. Mounted on the contraption is a photo of lush greenery juxtaposed against an image of piles of wood, their immediate proximity amplifying the urgency of the artist’s message.
While Yu and Lovina wrestle with the issue of overbuilding, Idan Cruz articulates the consequences of the lack of structures in a series of photographs titled “Fleet” (2018). The images depict Manila’s denizens—curled or blanketed against the cold—about to sleep, or deep in slumber on Roxas Boulevard’s famed seawall. Beyond them, the insistent presence of the blue waters alludes to a metaphorical great divide between a gleaming white boat in the horizon and the reality waiting by the shores.
To extend the narrative, another one of Cruz’s photos (depicting people asleep atop a concrete drainage pipe) is mounted somewhere in the gallery, leading viewers to a concrete pipe partially covered with the silver material commonly used as bedding by Manila’s homeless. The concrete pipe’s location—outside the gallery, two floors below—disrupts the newly-built privilege of its surrounds to suggest alienation and a sense of displacement that also inhabits another work featured in the show. Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’s collage (“#107,” 2017), or construction as they prefer to call their works, is made from used Balikbayan boxes to insinuate a collective unhinging and the ensuing fragmentation of families, as well as the attendant restructuring of a migrant worker’s life.
The presence of Mariano Ching and Yasmin Sison’s miniature houses (“Turtles All the Way Down A–D,” 2018) provide a cruel twist to Cruz’s narrative. The artists crafted utopian imaginations of a house—its skin painted in storybook colors, the whole structure raised on flimsy stilts—which express an illusory ideal grounded to a precarious foundation.
Nearby Cruz’s images are Ramilo’s own works, two miniature concrete stairways that she says “leads to nowhere.” Discreet in scale and purposely staged on the floor, they appear as solid and stable structures, if not for the absence of handrails which convey tension and a feeling of insecurity. In contrast, Reg Yuson’s fluid sculpture seems confident, graceful, and calming despite the fact that it rises unsupported from its base. According to Yuson, “the sculpture is based on rigid tubular steel which I intended to transform into a sculpture that seems to defy its own structure.” When viewed from afar, Cruz’s images come into play to give Ramilo’s and Yuson’s works new meanings. The stairs leading to nowhere speaks to the defeated and marginalized, while Yuson’s piece stands as a symbol of resilience.
Some of the works are self-referential, such as Nona Garcia’s collage, “Untitled Pine Tree (Study)” (2018), which is a departure from her usual output, implying a restructuring of her own personal practice. Felix Bacolor’s work, a neatly mounted piece of graphite paper with the words “liquid paper on graphite sheet” written on it, hark to the major influences in the artist’s oeuvre, foremost among them French philosopher Jacques Derrida (a chief proponent of the idea of deconstruction) and American conceptual artist John Baldessari.
For two artists, the show was an opportunity to scrutinize the art world’s inherent structures. Jonathan Olazo’s “The Bone Collector” (2018) and “Bone Anatomy” (2018) are, according to the artist, “equivocal of the issues discussed during our Fine Art classes way back in the 90s,” which included “the Western grand narrative and how people developed a distrust for it.” “I grew up in an environment that celebrated modernity, but on the other hand, we want it cannibalized and regurgitated in our manner.” Nilo Ilarde’s “RULERS OF ART (red, blue, and yellow),” (2018) a composition that features a Japanese bamboo ruler and toy blocks in Piet Mondrian’s trio of primary colors, can be construed as a satirical take on Mondrian’s own work, “Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow.” But it can also mean anything if viewed with the show’s theme in mind.
The curator’s carte blanche is extended to the DESTRUCTURE’s viewers, who are free to interpret or respond to the works in the context of their own existence.
Exhibition Documentation
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- Hard Parts
Juan Alcazaren
Steel
Variable dimensions (approx. 8' in height)
2018 - #107
Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan
Collage, balikbayan box, packing tape, gesso, compressed charcoal, acrylic
6.4' x 4.6'
2018 - liquid paper on graphite sheet
Felix Bacolor
Liquid paper correction fluid, graphite paper
29" x 11.4"
2018 - Turtles All the Way Down A
Mariano Ching & Yasmin Sison
Encaustic, paper, wood
29" x 11.4"
2018 - Turtles All the Way Down B
Mariano Ching & Yasmin Sison
Encaustic, paper, wood
11" x 11" x 21.7"
2018 - Turtles All the Way Down C
Mariano Ching & Yasmin Sison
Encaustic, paper, wood
15" x 8.3" x 29"
2018 - Turtles All the Way Down D
Mariano Ching & Yasmin Sison
Encaustic, paper, wood
27.5" x 11.8"
2018 - Fleet
Idan Cruz
Installation of found concrete pipe, C-print, metallised film, rocks
2018 - Fleet
Idan Cruz
Installation of found concrete pipe, C-print, metallised film, rocks
2018 - Fleet
Idan Cruz
Installation of found concrete pipe, C-print, metallised film, rocks
2018 - Diagram
Kawayan de Guia
Wood and metal
22" x 21" x 98.5"
2018 - Untitled Pine Tree (Study)
Nona Garcia
Paper
41" x 81" (triptych)
2018 - RULERS OF ART (red, blue, and yellow)
Nilo Ilarde
Japanese bamboo ruler, toy blocks
28" x 22"
2018 - We See the World
Marta Lovina
8x10 C-print on Kodak semi matte paper
9.5" x 10.5" 13.8"
2009 - Bone Anatomy
Jonathan Olazo
Wood and object
48" x 19" x 35"
2018 - The Bone Collector
Jonathan Olazo
Wood and objects
39.5" x 30" x 28.5"
2018 - Stupa I
Mawen Ong
Lightbox Duratrans
34" x 24"
2018 - Untitled (Blind Corner)
Only Triangles; Black Series
Gary-Ross Pastrana
Collage on convex security mirror
Ø2'
2018 - Step I
Christina Quisumbing Ramilo
Concrete
3.5" x 4.7" x 7.5"
2018 - Step II
Christina Quisumbing Ramilo
Concrete
3.5" x 4.7" x 7.5"
2018 - Sewer
Oca Villamiel
Found object
13" x 11" x 46"
2018 - The Good Luck Machine
Pancho Villanueva
Mixed media construction
Variable dimensions
Undated - Congregation
Pancho Villanueva
Bamboo with image transfer
Variable dimensions
2018 - Untitled Collage
MM Yu
Prints on wood, videos
Variable dimensions
2008–2018 - Untitled
Reg Yuson
Steel and automotive paint
Variable dimensions (approx. 7.3' in height)
2018
Exhibition View
360° View
Video Catalogue
About the Artist
About the Artists

Juan Alcazaren (b. 1960, Quezon City) graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Architecture with a Bachelor’s Degree in Landscape Architecture and took foundation courses in Sculpture from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He is an animator and director at Alcazaren Bros. Production. His film, Vexations, won second prize at the Gawad CCP for Video from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1996), and it was shown in several international film and video festivals. He is also a recipient of the Juror’s Choice award for Sculpture from the Art Association of the Philippines (1993) and the Thirteen Artists Award from the CCP (2000). Alcazaren has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including Finale Art File, Utterly Art Singapore, Manila Contemporary, West Gallery, Museo Iloilo, Ayala Museum, Vargas Museum at UP, Big Sky Mind, Surrounded by Water, Pinto Gallery, Galleria Duemila, Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain, and the CCP.

Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan (b. 1965, Manila) and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan (b. 1962, Cagayan Valley, the Philippines) have lived and worked in Brisbane Australia since 2006. The artists have worked collaboratively for over a decade and their projects use the processes of collecting and collaborating to express ideas of migration, family, home, and memory. Often working with local communities, the Aquilizans bring together personal items and found objects to compose elaborate, formal installations reflecting individual experiences of dislocation and change. They have also used the materials of migration such as packing boxes, referencing the Philippine tradition of the Balikbayan. They have been selected for large exhibitions internationally, including the Havana Biennale (1997, 2000), the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1999 & 2009), 50th Venice Biennale (Zones of Urgency, 2003), Biennale of Sydney (2006); the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale in Japan (2006), Singapore Biennale (2008), Adelaide Biennial (2008); the Liverpool Biennal in the UK (2010), the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and the Sharjah Biennale in the United Arab Emirates (2013), among others. They have also exhibited in numerous international institutions, such as the Singapore Art Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) in Sydney, Australia, Asian Arts Museum in Fukuoka, Japan, the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan, and more.

Felix Bacolor (b. 1967) finished his BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. His works have been shown at different international galleries through solo and group exhibitions including, the Valentine Willie Fine Art Project Room, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, La Salle College of the Arts, Osage Gallery, Kwun Tong, Finale Art File, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Galleria Duemila, and Artinformal.

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.

Kawayan de Guia (b. 1979), son of the well-known local filmmaker and National Artist for Cinema Kidlat Tahimik (Eric de Guia) and German stained-glass artist Katrin de Guia, is a painter, installation and performance artist based in Baguio City, Philippines. He finished his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines (UP). In 2011, de Guia initiated AX(iS) Art Projects—a biennial gathering of artists from different fields working on the idea of transience, site-specific and community-based works. He is a recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards (2008), the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2009), and the First New York Arts Project Residency Grant (2008). He has had solo exhibitions in the Philippines, Australia, Japan, China, and Germany, in spaces such as the Vargas Musuem at UP, the Soka Art Center in Beijing, ARNDT Singapore, Rossi & Rossi Ltd. in London, The Luggage Store in San Francisco, California, The Drawing Room, Singapore Art Museum, the Lopez Memorial Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Artinformal, and MCAD Manila. He was also one of the curators for the Singapore Biennale in 2013. De Guia has participated at the Art Fair Philippines and the recent Manila Biennale.

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.

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.

Through Long form photography and its representations of reality, Marta Lovina delves into the questions relating to photography and the role it plays in the forming and/or framing of how we see the world. Working mainly with the themes of appropriation, authorship, memory, power, surveillance, illusion, and the complexities of identity.
Lovina had joined various group exhibitions such as Not Visual Noise at Ateneo Art Gallery, Taboo at Vinyl on Vinyl, Destructure at MO_Space, and participated in Art Fair Philippines.

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.

Mawen Ong (b. 1964) is an artist and gallery director in Manila. She is a member of King Kong Art Projects Unlimited, an initiative dedicated to archiving and preserving the works of Roberto Chabet. She obtained 2 business degrees at St. Scholastica’s College and eventually studied Painting at the University of the Philippines - College of Fine Arts. She has been exhibiting since 2005 in both solo and group exhibitions at Future Prospects, Green Papaya Art Projects, West Gallery, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Blanc Gallery, and Silverlens Manila, among others.

Gary-Ross Pastrana (b. 1977, Manila) received his Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines where he was a recipient of the Dominador Castañeda Award for Best Thesis. He was granted residency programs in Japan and Bangkok. Pastrana was awarded residencies in Japan and Bangkok, and received the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2006). He is one of the co-founders of Future Prospects Art Space (2005–2007), and has exhibited his work and curated shows both in his hometown and abroad, at galleries like Silverlens Singapore, Finale Art File, the Singapore Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, the Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines, and has participated in Art Basel Hong Kong (2013), the New Museum Triennale in New York, USA (2012), the Aichi Triennale in Japan (2010) and the Busan Biennale in Korea (2008). Pastrana has also authored publications such as New Museum Triennial: The Ungovernables (USA) and Tomorrow, Today: Contemporary Art from the Singapore Art Museum 2009–2011, both published in 2012.

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.

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).

Oscar Villamiel (b. 1953) studied Fine Arts at the University of the East (UE). He is a multi-media artist who produces large scale installation works through the collation and collecting of found materials from urban and rural environments. Villamiel has worked as a set designer and entrepreneur the past two decades and went back to his first vocation as a studio artist in 2006, starting with group exhibitions.
Villamiel held his first one-man exhibition, a large-scale installation titled Wounded Spirit, in 2009 at the Art Center of SM Megamall in Mandaluyong, featuring large-scale multimedia paintings. His second solo show, Mourning Glory, was held at the Crucible Gallery in 2010, while his third solo show, titled Stories of our Time, was organized at Light and Space Contemporary in 2012.
Villamiel’s large-scale installation, titled “Payatas,” was exhibited as part of the Singapore Biennale exhibition, If the World Changed (2013) at the Singapore Art Museum. He continued to produce installation works for his solo exhibitions in 2014 at the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum and Light & Space Contemporary, in Quezon City. Villamiel currently lives and works in Marikina City.

Pancho Villanueva (b. 1973) is a licensed architect turned visual artist living in Manila, Philippines. He is currently pursuing an MFA at UP College of Fine Arts. Since 2004, he has focused on his art practice, first through abstract expressionism, and then figurative realism, eventually combining the two genres. His work is attuned to the sensory experience, to memory and to the desires that permeate our everyday lives as we navigate shared and conflicting space. The way the city seeps into our bones, how our past is etched onto the landscape of the body, the possibility of forgetting (for better or worse) as everything changes around us. Much of his abstract expressionism explores contrasts in the landscape through colour and composition, marking spaces of here and there from a familiar distance. His earlier abstracts perceive the landscape as a blueprint or a map of the city, paying attention to the texture of feeling, the confluence, and the haphazard—a reflection, perhaps, of the God-like perspective of architecture. His figurative works attempt to reconcile this macro view with the minute details that matter. Figures and imagery appear amid the texture and colour. Here the whimsical and the allegorical stir awake and we find ourselves in place, made meaningful, perhaps, by our sentimentality, our humanness that perceives always in the subjective. Currently, his practice draws inspiration from found objects, wood constructions, and other discarded materials. These assemblage and 3D works reflect his love/longing for the environment and our relationship to place and everyday life.
He produced a series entitled “The Violence of Mouths” and had his first solo show in 2010. Since then–although he has continued to make abstracts, detailed drawings in ballpoint pen, acrylic and mixed media works–Villanueva has diverted his focus on three-dimensional work.

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).

Reg Yuson is a sculptor and creative director of Spacespecific. He was a former member of the Committee on Visual Arts, from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (1996–2001), and the Society of Philippine Sculptors (1993–1998). He received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award in 2003.
Yuson has made commissioned pieces in public spaces, including the University of the Philippines (UP) Sculpture Garden, Greenbelt 3 in Makati City, the Mind Museum and in Bonifacio High Street, Taguig City, Resorts World Genting Club, and the Manila Hotel. He has exhibited in both solo and group shows at galleries and institutions such as the UP Vargas Museum, West Gallery, Pinto Art Gallery, Finale Art File, Mag:net Gallery, ART FORUM Gallery Singapore, Manila Contemporary, Galleria Duemila, and the Cultural Centre of the Philippines, among others.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Juan Alcazaren (b. 1960, Quezon City) graduated from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Architecture with a Bachelor’s Degree in Landscape Architecture and took foundation courses in Sculpture from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. He is an animator and director at Alcazaren Bros. Production. His film, Vexations, won second prize at the Gawad CCP for Video from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1996), and it was shown in several international film and video festivals. He is also a recipient of the Juror’s Choice award for Sculpture from the Art Association of the Philippines (1993) and the Thirteen Artists Award from the CCP (2000). Alcazaren has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including Finale Art File, Utterly Art Singapore, Manila Contemporary, West Gallery, Museo Iloilo, Ayala Museum, Vargas Museum at UP, Big Sky Mind, Surrounded by Water, Pinto Gallery, Galleria Duemila, Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain, and the CCP.

Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan (b. 1965, Manila) and Alfredo Juan Aquilizan (b. 1962, Cagayan Valley, the Philippines) have lived and worked in Brisbane Australia since 2006. The artists have worked collaboratively for over a decade and their projects use the processes of collecting and collaborating to express ideas of migration, family, home, and memory. Often working with local communities, the Aquilizans bring together personal items and found objects to compose elaborate, formal installations reflecting individual experiences of dislocation and change. They have also used the materials of migration such as packing boxes, referencing the Philippine tradition of the Balikbayan. They have been selected for large exhibitions internationally, including the Havana Biennale (1997, 2000), the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1999 & 2009), 50th Venice Biennale (Zones of Urgency, 2003), Biennale of Sydney (2006); the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale in Japan (2006), Singapore Biennale (2008), Adelaide Biennial (2008); the Liverpool Biennal in the UK (2010), the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and the Sharjah Biennale in the United Arab Emirates (2013), among others. They have also exhibited in numerous international institutions, such as the Singapore Art Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) in Sydney, Australia, Asian Arts Museum in Fukuoka, Japan, the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa, Japan, and more.

Felix Bacolor (b. 1967) finished his BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. His works have been shown at different international galleries through solo and group exhibitions including, the Valentine Willie Fine Art Project Room, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, La Salle College of the Arts, Osage Gallery, Kwun Tong, Finale Art File, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Galleria Duemila, and Artinformal.

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.

Kawayan de Guia (b. 1979), son of the well-known local filmmaker and National Artist for Cinema Kidlat Tahimik (Eric de Guia) and German stained-glass artist Katrin de Guia, is a painter, installation and performance artist based in Baguio City, Philippines. He finished his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines (UP). In 2011, de Guia initiated AX(iS) Art Projects—a biennial gathering of artists from different fields working on the idea of transience, site-specific and community-based works. He is a recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards (2008), the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2009), and the First New York Arts Project Residency Grant (2008). He has had solo exhibitions in the Philippines, Australia, Japan, China, and Germany, in spaces such as the Vargas Musuem at UP, the Soka Art Center in Beijing, ARNDT Singapore, Rossi & Rossi Ltd. in London, The Luggage Store in San Francisco, California, The Drawing Room, Singapore Art Museum, the Lopez Memorial Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Artinformal, and MCAD Manila. He was also one of the curators for the Singapore Biennale in 2013. De Guia has participated at the Art Fair Philippines and the recent Manila Biennale.

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.

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.

Through Long form photography and its representations of reality, Marta Lovina delves into the questions relating to photography and the role it plays in the forming and/or framing of how we see the world. Working mainly with the themes of appropriation, authorship, memory, power, surveillance, illusion, and the complexities of identity.
Lovina had joined various group exhibitions such as Not Visual Noise at Ateneo Art Gallery, Taboo at Vinyl on Vinyl, Destructure at MO_Space, and participated in Art Fair Philippines.

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.

Mawen Ong (b. 1964) is an artist and gallery director in Manila. She is a member of King Kong Art Projects Unlimited, an initiative dedicated to archiving and preserving the works of Roberto Chabet. She obtained 2 business degrees at St. Scholastica’s College and eventually studied Painting at the University of the Philippines - College of Fine Arts. She has been exhibiting since 2005 in both solo and group exhibitions at Future Prospects, Green Papaya Art Projects, West Gallery, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Blanc Gallery, and Silverlens Manila, among others.

Gary-Ross Pastrana (b. 1977, Manila) received his Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from the University of the Philippines where he was a recipient of the Dominador Castañeda Award for Best Thesis. He was granted residency programs in Japan and Bangkok. Pastrana was awarded residencies in Japan and Bangkok, and received the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2006). He is one of the co-founders of Future Prospects Art Space (2005–2007), and has exhibited his work and curated shows both in his hometown and abroad, at galleries like Silverlens Singapore, Finale Art File, the Singapore Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of the Philippines, the Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines, and has participated in Art Basel Hong Kong (2013), the New Museum Triennale in New York, USA (2012), the Aichi Triennale in Japan (2010) and the Busan Biennale in Korea (2008). Pastrana has also authored publications such as New Museum Triennial: The Ungovernables (USA) and Tomorrow, Today: Contemporary Art from the Singapore Art Museum 2009–2011, both published in 2012.

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.

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).

Oscar Villamiel (b. 1953) studied Fine Arts at the University of the East (UE). He is a multi-media artist who produces large scale installation works through the collation and collecting of found materials from urban and rural environments. Villamiel has worked as a set designer and entrepreneur the past two decades and went back to his first vocation as a studio artist in 2006, starting with group exhibitions.
Villamiel held his first one-man exhibition, a large-scale installation titled Wounded Spirit, in 2009 at the Art Center of SM Megamall in Mandaluyong, featuring large-scale multimedia paintings. His second solo show, Mourning Glory, was held at the Crucible Gallery in 2010, while his third solo show, titled Stories of our Time, was organized at Light and Space Contemporary in 2012.
Villamiel’s large-scale installation, titled “Payatas,” was exhibited as part of the Singapore Biennale exhibition, If the World Changed (2013) at the Singapore Art Museum. He continued to produce installation works for his solo exhibitions in 2014 at the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum and Light & Space Contemporary, in Quezon City. Villamiel currently lives and works in Marikina City.

Pancho Villanueva (b. 1973) is a licensed architect turned visual artist living in Manila, Philippines. He is currently pursuing an MFA at UP College of Fine Arts. Since 2004, he has focused on his art practice, first through abstract expressionism, and then figurative realism, eventually combining the two genres. His work is attuned to the sensory experience, to memory and to the desires that permeate our everyday lives as we navigate shared and conflicting space. The way the city seeps into our bones, how our past is etched onto the landscape of the body, the possibility of forgetting (for better or worse) as everything changes around us. Much of his abstract expressionism explores contrasts in the landscape through colour and composition, marking spaces of here and there from a familiar distance. His earlier abstracts perceive the landscape as a blueprint or a map of the city, paying attention to the texture of feeling, the confluence, and the haphazard—a reflection, perhaps, of the God-like perspective of architecture. His figurative works attempt to reconcile this macro view with the minute details that matter. Figures and imagery appear amid the texture and colour. Here the whimsical and the allegorical stir awake and we find ourselves in place, made meaningful, perhaps, by our sentimentality, our humanness that perceives always in the subjective. Currently, his practice draws inspiration from found objects, wood constructions, and other discarded materials. These assemblage and 3D works reflect his love/longing for the environment and our relationship to place and everyday life.
He produced a series entitled “The Violence of Mouths” and had his first solo show in 2010. Since then–although he has continued to make abstracts, detailed drawings in ballpoint pen, acrylic and mixed media works–Villanueva has diverted his focus on three-dimensional work.

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).

Reg Yuson is a sculptor and creative director of Spacespecific. He was a former member of the Committee on Visual Arts, from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (1996–2001), and the Society of Philippine Sculptors (1993–1998). He received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artist Award in 2003.
Yuson has made commissioned pieces in public spaces, including the University of the Philippines (UP) Sculpture Garden, Greenbelt 3 in Makati City, the Mind Museum and in Bonifacio High Street, Taguig City, Resorts World Genting Club, and the Manila Hotel. He has exhibited in both solo and group shows at galleries and institutions such as the UP Vargas Museum, West Gallery, Pinto Art Gallery, Finale Art File, Mag:net Gallery, ART FORUM Gallery Singapore, Manila Contemporary, Galleria Duemila, and the Cultural Centre of the Philippines, among others.
