Juan Alcazaren (b. 1960) is a sculptor, bricoleur, collagist and object maker who works with a wide variety of materials ranging from construction steel to industrial and household detritus to ubiquitous everyday things like plastic monoblock chairs, school supply materials and melaware plates. Everything is material to him. In the 90’s he learned steel welding from Napoleon Abueva, CCP National Artist for Sculpture and has since always come back to this medium attracted by the way steel only “knows” how it wants to be formed. He always maintains a patina of rust on his steel pieces to show earthly life’s steady march towards death.

He tries to coax profundity out the ephemeral and overlooked in the world of the permanent and covetable. Alcazaren’s faith informed sensibilities make him see humble material as a metaphor for our own material nature, being creatures created by the Uncreated one. Juan Alcazaren has a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture and studied sculpture the University of the Philippines where he also was a lecturer in 1995 at the College of Fine Arts. He was conferred the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 2000. He lives and works in Pasig City, Philippines and continues to actively exhibit in major galleries and art fairs in his home country and around the region.

Poklong Anading (b. 1975, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Manila) works with a wide range of mediums and is acclaimed for his pieces that investigate photography and travel. Fascinated with the process of creation and permutation, Anading explores different mediums to engage with a range of sociopolitical and environmental questions. Having begun his career as a painter, he is not driven by an overt agenda, but prefers to let his mind wander, thinking with and through his materials as they undergo their transformations. He frequently uses found objects and discarded materials that lead him to investigate notions of worth and value, and to explore what it means for art to exist inside and beyond capitalist production.

Anading has completed residencies with Big Sky Mind, Manila, Philippines (2003 to 2004), Common Room, Bandung, Indonesia (2008), Bangkok University Gallery, Thailand (2013), Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia (2013), Philippine Art Residency Program - Alliance Francaise de Manille in Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle in France (2014) and das weisse haus, Vienna Austria (2018). He had solo exhibitions in Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz, Austria (2010 and 2012), Taro Nasu in Japan and Athr Gallery in Jeddah (2016), 1335MABINI in Manila, Philippines (2013, 2015 and 2017). He has been included in notable group exhibitions such as: Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2002 and 2012), No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, the first exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS Map Global Art Initiative in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore (2013 to 2014), 5th Asian Art Biennial: Artist Making Movement, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2015), The Shadow Never Lies, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, Afterwork, Para Site, Hong Kong, China and in the Architecture Biennale for the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, Philippine Pavilion: Muhon: Traces of an Adolescent City at Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy (2016), Constellations, Photographs in Dialogue, SFMOMA, California, USA (2021), Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia at National Gallery Singapore (2022) and The Open World, Thailand Biennale (2023).

‍

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.

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). 

Patricia Perez Eustaquio (b. 1977) is based in Manila who works with shadows, fragments, discards, and detritus, taking on such marginalized themes in a language that is at once evocative and familiar. She works in a variety of media, exploring materials through painting, drawing, and installation. She fashions sculpture from fabric, shrouding objects with crochet or silk treated with resin and then removes the object allowing the fabric to retain the folds and drapes. The resulting ghost (-piano, -chair, -birdcage) examines ideas of memory and perception.

Her similar approach to painting translates the rigid pictorial square to a fragmented object, where its bounding frame is removed or cut away, resulting into ornately shaped canvases haunted by imagery of discards and detritus, wilted blooms and carcasses.

Eustaquio’s work recalls the domestic as well as perhaps the psychic lives of objects by the repeated rehashing of memory where the familiar or the banal takes on a new substance, where the material and the immaterial coexist. She has been the recipient of awards for emerging artists, and of artists’ residency grants such as Art Omi in New York. She has had solo shows in Manila, Taiwan, Singapore, and New York, and has been part of several, notable group exhibitions including shows at the Hong Kong Art Centre (HKAC) and the Singapore Art Museum.  Her work recently featured in The Vexed Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art & Design in Manila.

In 2016, she was commissioned to work on a site-specific installation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The exhibit ran from 23 June to 22 September.

Lara de los Reyes (b. 1980) currently lives and works in the Philippines. She graduated from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, and from Assumption College with a Bachelor of Science in Commerce and Entrepreneurship. De los Reyes has participated in solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including Richard Koh Fine Arts, Malaysia, Green Papaya Art Projects, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Mag:net Gallery, and Silverlens Gallery.

Dex Fernandez (b. 1984) lives and works in the Philippines. He studied Fine Arts at the Technological University of the Philippines and first worked as a graphic artist and a muralist abroad before becoming a full time artist upon his return to the Philippines in 2007. Years of experience in the advertising industry is evident in his art known for its pop imagery. A multimedia artist, he works on a variety of media which include drawing, painting, murals, posters, and graffiti. He was one of the recipients of the Thirteen Artists Award of the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2013.

Dex Fernandez's art is informed by everyday experiences and the people he meets and encounters. He sees his art as a means to trigger an audience into thinking about social and political issues around them. Often, he uses elements of fun and humor as satire to open up critical reflections on pressing issues. He is best known as the creator of Garapata, a character resembling a multiple-legged head. The name translates to the Filipino word for tick or flea from which the character is based. He conceptualized the Garapata as an embodiment of the resiliency of the Filipino people.

Fernandez has participated in solo and group exhibitions at various galleries including Owen James Gallery, Brooklyn New York, Vermont Studio Center, Vermont, USA, West Gallery, Sete Museum, France, and Altro Mondo Gallery.

Victor Balanon (b. 1972, Manila) graduated from the University of the East with a degree in Dental Medicine and in Fine Arts, with a major in Advertising. A self-taught artist, he later pursued film and animation at the Mowelfund Film Institute in Manila, where he produced two short animated films. Balanon was part of the seminal art collective, Surrounded by Water. He has since participated in various solo and group shows at galleries such as Blanc Gallery, Silverlens Gallery, Secret Fresh Gallery, Lightbombs Contemporary in Hong Kong, Artesan Gallery in Singapore, Mind Set Art Center in Taipei, The Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, Finale Art File, Osage Gallery Hong Kong, Artinformal, House of Matahati in Malaysia, and Akibatamabi21, 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Japan, to name a few.

Electrolychee is a local design & illustration studio in the Philippines. Their works play within the realms of slick, computer-generated vector art and organic, hand-drawn imagery. Electrolychee are also full-time visual artists who frequently showcase their pop-inspired artworks in the metro’s alternative galleries. Besides painting, participating in design conferences and collaborating with both local and foreign artists, their studio also produces a do-it-yourself endeavor Electrolychee-branded Strange Creations merchandise.

Ayka Go (b. 1993, Philippines) is a BFA graduate of UP Diliman. She has early on been part of numerous noteworthy group exhibitions held in galleries Kaida, West, Finale, Ayala Museum, and in a site-specific exhibit curated by Mark Justiniani in Manila North Cemetery. Most recently, she has held 2 solo exhibits in West Gallery and Finale Art File in 2017. Invoking memories of home and childhood, she uses paper sculptures to reconstruct the spaces of such intimate habitation. Turning to film and photographic imagery, her mnemonic device of remembering is layering with each pale wash of watercolor an image that’s been captured instantaneously by light, each stroke a strobe of memory flashing.

Isabel Santos (b. 1991) is an artist and illustrator based in Manila, Philippines. She graduated at Ateneo de Manila University and Carls Duisberg Centruim, Germany. Santos had various group and solo exhibitions at Silverlens Gallery, West Gallery, Univers, Secret Fresh Gallery, and also participated in Art Fair Philippines. She also had artist residencies in New York, France, and Germany in 2016.

Carina Santos (b. 1988, Manila) is an artist, writer, and designer. She finished her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in Information Design from Ateneo de Manila University in 2010. She also finished her Master of Research on Art in Theory & Philosophy at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London in 2019. Santos has written numerous articles and contributions for local / international media such as Rogue Magazine, Esquire Philippines, CNN Philippines Life, The Philippine Star, and Warner Music Philippines.

As an artist, Santos had solo and group exhibitions since 2009 at West Gallery, Secret Fresh Gallery, Lightbombs Contemporary (Hong Kong), Silverlens Galleries, Finale Art File, and Blanc Gallery to name a few. She has also participated at the Art Fair Philippines.