This is Not MO_Space
Various Artists
Juan Alcazaren, Poklong Anading, Jan Balquin, Bea Camacho, Roberto Chabet, Pardo de Leon, Nilo Ilarde, Celine Lee, Lou Lim, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Issay Rodriguez, José Santos III, Gerardo Tan, Miguel Lorenzo Uy, MM Yu
Juan Alcazaren, Poklong Anading, Jan Balquin, Bea Camacho, Roberto Chabet, Pardo de Leon, Nilo Ilarde, Celine Lee, Lou Lim, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Issay Rodriguez, José Santos III, Gerardo Tan, Miguel Lorenzo Uy, MM Yu
27 August – 25 September 2022
Curated by
27 August – 25 September 2022
Celebrating 15 years, MO_Space gathers 15 artists whose works have challenged, provoked, redefined, and re-imagined the idea of exhibition space. These are works—past and present, by artists old and new—who at one point in their process havegenerated dialogue with the gallery’s space, or whose forms have made confinement within its walls central or even expandable to the idea. Consisting of paintings, sculpture, photographs, video, text, art installations of both site-specific and conceptual pieces, THIS IS NOT MO_SPACE, as a culmination of activities from the past fifteen years, is a reflection of the gallery’s own nature: of pioneering some of the most challenging ideas in contemporary local art.
Presenting works by Juan Alcazaren, Poklong Anading, Jan Balquin, Bea Camacho, Roberto Chabet, Pardo de Leon, Nilo Ilarde, Celine Lee, Lou Lim, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Issay Rodriguez, José Santos III, Gerardo Tan, Miguel Lorenzo Uy, and MM Yu, the event becomes an incredible witnessing of the space’s continuous journey and collaboration with the community it has engaged with since 2007. This is a testament to fifteen years of exploration, of consistently presenting artistic expressions that thrive against the idea of what is not—or what are the possible definitions of space.
This idea of negation started with Gerardo Tan’s 2014 work of the same title, This is not MO_. Using oil on canvas and video projection, this hybrid-media depicts a painted image of apart of MO_Space’s wall, to where the same work is mounted, and to which the same video of the painting is projected. This work serves as the exhibition’s nascent and emblematic form, on how the space becomes the subject of the work—and the work becomes subjected to the space’s structure. And through this interchange they cancel each other out. And takes away both specificities of space and subject; negates the function of all three in terms of conveying imagery: that of painting, video, and wall. From this juncture we can claim that space, if anything, has become dialogue:
Space as beginnings. In Roberto Chabet’s 2007 work, Untitled (lightbox), the space becomes the source for his ‘found object.’ Whether by accident or through careful observation, a work of art unfolds from the space’s own genesis—an image of a fluorescent lamp on the spot where it was found hanging, caught in its own line, during the gallery’s construction. The lamp knotted within its own cables, an inaugural ribbon.
Space as distance. In Poklong Anading’s Drawing Circle, the process of walking from one point to another generates circular markings on a wooden disk that accompanied him in his journey. The layers and strokes of pencil become the visualization of the distance between his origin and destination—while rolling the wooden disk from his studio in Quezon City to the gallery.
Space as artifact. José Santos III’s In Retrospect looks at space—particularly gallery spaces he has exhibited in—as time capsules that have also become records of his journey as an artist, and eventually, of our histories. Presenting his miniature model of MO_Space’s structure, he re-enacts his previous show in the gallery using cardboard, paper, clay, and other found objects as a kind of introspection–literally taking into account all the minute details that are involved in such undertaking.
Space as frame. Juan Alcazaren’s flipbook, Black Descending MO_Staircase, Red Descending MO_Staircase, presents a frame-by-frame animation by drawing on the photographs of two familiar sections on the way to the gallery space. These staircases become the subject for motion, as the sequence of drawings create the illusory conditions for a figure who is traversing these steps.
Space as document. From Pardo de Leon’s 2013 solo show, Monsoon Journal and the group show, Counterfeit Monochromes, suspended canvases are placed inside the gallery to serve as mementos or journals of her life in Baguio City where she relocated a few years back. The stains, discolorizations, and other perilous marks from the passage of time serve as record of the space it occupied–her home.
Space as archive. MM Yu’s photographs account for the gallery’s years of exhibiting artworks. Objects and an assortment of materials-–unfinished or in their final stages; personalities–artists, curators, and gallery workers; audience and viewers alike–they all represent the collection of images Yu has amassed for over fifteen years and are here presented as postcards/photo albums that chronicle the community.
Space as transition. In Jan Balquin’s work, Again, the material used reflects the transition from object to image. As a kind of painting that is aware of itself—its nature, and its own processes–the painted image shows its transformation: from a roll of canvas and onto a painted surface. Likewise, in Celine Lee’s work from a recent show called The Brightest Part, another transition takes place–a transmutation–of light and shadows cast onto the gallery walls, coming from a reflective surface shaped by an image taken from inside the gallery itself. Miguel Lorenzo Uy on the other hand portrays the gallery as a computer-generated three-dimensional space. His work Mirage, which was shown in a group show called Liminal Spaces, features the transition to the digital, showing ghosts/illusions of images–an apparent theme during our own transitions to the so-called new normal.
Space as nature. Issay Rodriguez adorns the space with her ‘architectural drawings’—made from natural materials that take the form of the structure, fill the gap, and align with the contours of walls and passages. Exploring the nature of organic forms in art, she has developed a particular interest in bees and their influence on materials. In a similar vein, Lou Lim draws interest in bodily forms. Resembling the conditions of growth, like in a surface—and applying it in the context of the gallery. She uses hair as the ultimate consequence of site-specificity. In another approach, Gary-Ross Pastrana and his idiosyncratic take on space provides new light on how to occupy them. As if hidden, his compact works blend to the point of disappearance. Using nondescript objects such as feathers, straws, a clock’s hand, sand, and a tiny piece of plant, they are situated inside the gallery to evoke interaction as a kind of nuance, rather than spectacle.
Space as value. Bea Camacho’s 2007 work, Monochrome Painting, from the group show I Have Nothing to Paint and I’m Painting It, transforms the gallery as a kind of estate—a finished work that adheres to the same artistic values. By placing a title card on any part of the wall, this act becomes performance in itself as it reads: Housepaint on wall, dimensions variable.
And finally—Space as memory. Because for Nilo Ilarde, there is only the memory of it. And in his own words: only the activity of remembering—makes remembering possible.
Exhibition Documentation
Works
Works
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
Artist Name
Work Title
Medium
1000 x 1000 inches
YYYY
Collection of the Artist
- Black Descending MO_Staircase
Juan Alcazaren
Flipbook
2007 - Red Descending MO_Staircase
Juan Alcazaren
Flipbook
2007 - Drawing in Circle
Poklong Anading
Painted wooden disk with pencil markings
4'
2000 / 2017 - Again
Jan Balquin
3.5' x 5' oil painting attached to a roll of canvas
Variable dimensions
2022 - Monochrome Painting
Bea Camacho
House paint on wall
Variable dimensions
2007 - Untitled
Roberto Chabet
Lightbox
22" x 11"
2007 - Monsoon Journal
Pardo de Leon
Weather canvas panel
60" x 30" each
2013 - Good Morning
Celine Lee
UV print on glass, anodized aluminum, acrylic glass
18" x 27" (work); 15" x 22" x 9" (stand)
2022 - Walls grow a portrait
Lou Lim
Human hair, industrial paint, tulle, wall putty
38.5 x 11.5 cm (hair); 29 x 62 cm (base)
2022 - Murmurs
Gary-Ross Pastrana
Hour hand, dust
2022 - Murmurs
Gary-Ross Pastrana
Feathers, candle wax
2022 - Murmurs
Gary-Ross Pastrana
Found plant
2022 - Murmurs
Gary-Ross Pastrana
Broom fiber
2022 - Line Drawing (after native mongo-mongo bees)
Issay Rodriguez
Propolis discards, natural resins & oils, beeswax, edible metallic leaf, twigs & leaves from rubber tree in front of MO_Space
2022 - In Retrospect .9 cm:1 ft
Jose Santos III
Styrene, acrylic paints, sintra board, cast stone, screen wire, found objects, bakeable clay, paper and cardboard
17.2" x 15.5" x 4.5"
2019 - This is not MO_.
Gerardo Tan
Oil on canvas, video
1980 x 2690 mm
2014 - Mirage (MO_Space)
Miguel Lorenzo Uy
Single-channel video loop
Edition of 5
7m 54s
2020 - sum of its parts
MM Yu
Photographs
2007-2022
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.
Poklong Anading’s (b. 1975, Manila, Philippines) practice utilizes a wide range of media from drawing, painting, video, installation, photography and object-making. Taking a more process-oriented and conceptual approach, his continuing inquiry takes off from issues on self-reflexivity, both of himself and others, and site-specificity in an ongoing discussion about society, time and territory.
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting from the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines (1999). He 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, 2012 and 2020), Taro Nasu in Japan and Athr Gallery in Jeddah (2016), 1335MABINI in Manila, Philippines (2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019). 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), disco nap, ‘We Didn’t Mean To Break It (But It’s Ok, We Can Fix It), Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2019), Far Away But Strangely Familiar’, Danubiana Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia (2019), Normal scheduling will resume shortly, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019) and Arts in Common Artjog MMXIX, Jogya Nationa Museum, Jogyakarta, Indonesia (2019),
Anading lives and works in Manila.
Jan Balquin works across different traditional media ranging from paintings to collages often exploring the conventional notions of material and subject matter. Dealing with concepts of value, materiality, and banality, Balquin’s paintings expand to sculptural forms from traditionally two-dimensional materials. Recently, she’s been exploring ways of representing the blank canvas often focusing on its qualities of being an object.
Balquin (b.1989) works and lives in Quezon City. She studied Fine Arts and majored in Studio Art at the University of the Philippines Diliman and received a grant for her thesis. She has been joining exhibitions since middle school at the Philippine High School for the Arts in 2007. Balquin has been actively exhibiting since 2010 with having had 9 solo exhibitions within and outside the Metro including Art Informal, Drawing Room, West Gallery, Finale, to name a few.
Bea Camacho (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines) is a visual artist who works in installation, performance, and video. She received her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she was awarded the Albert Alcalay Prize for Outstanding work in Studio Art and the David McCord Prize for Achievement in the Arts.
She is a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines. She was also selected as an exhibiting artist for the 2006 Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York City and for the 2009 International Women Artists Biennale in Incheon, Korea. Recently, her exhibition at MO_Space, Memento Obliviscere, was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards 2018.
Her work has been exhibited in galleries internationally, including the Japan Society (New York), Osage Gallery (Hong Kong and Singapore), Ikkan Art Gallery (Singapore), Valentine Willie Fine Arts (Kuala Lumpur and Manila), Silverlens (Manila), Finale Gallery (Manila), MO_Space (Manila), and Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila). She has also shown her work in institutions including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, National Museum of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila, the Musee d'Art Moderne in St. Etienne, Kyoto Art Center, Hangaram Museum, EuGon Museum of Photography, Triennale di Milano Design Museum, Queens Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Tate Modern.
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.
Celine Lee (b. 1993, Philippines) is a visual artist currently based in Manila, Philippines. Lee’s body of work revolves around fundamental scientific and mathematical concepts and principles in an attempt to understand the present.
Since the beginning of her artistic career, Lee has been producing works with the use of different materials and media; often focusing on process and materiality. Whether in the form of a painting, a sculpture, an embroidery piece, or multimedia work, Lee explores the ability of visual perception and spatial recognition to invoke concepts that extend beyond form.
Celine Lee graduated with honors from The University of Santo Tomas in 2015 with a BFA degree Major in Painting. Lee’s fourth solo exhibition entitled, The Length and Breadth of Depth held at Underground Gallery in 2020, was shortlisted in the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art. She has also recently won an award of merit in the 2020 Philippine Art Awards. She has held four solo exhibitions to date, and is actively participating in group exhibitions within and outside of Metro Manila.
Lou Lim (b. 1989) invests in the connection between the corporeal and the spiritual, between materiality and notions of permanence, between objects and visual imagery, and in what these relations articulate. Her works examine and appropriate the processes of different art forms to further investigate sculpture, creating new contexts for the familiar by exploring ideas and potentialities of surface and touch.
Lim earned her BFA from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts and has been actively exhibiting work since 2011. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations “For the Land that Laments” at Silverlens Galleries and “Rest” at CCP in 2022. She was resident at Palais de Tokyo in Paris under the Pavillon Neuflize OBC 2015-2016 program. This participation resulted in a collaborative performance at the Opera Garnier and in group exhibitions at ICA Singapore and the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea, as well as in a publication with INA [Institut National Audiovisuel]. She was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Awards 2021.
José Santos III (b. Manila, Philippines, 1970) lives and works in Pasig, Philippines. Santos has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore; The Armory Show, New York, USA; Vargas Museum, Quezon City, Philippines; The Drawing Room, Manila, Philippines; Artinformal, Mandaluyong, Philippines; A3 Arndt Art Agency, Berlin, Germany; Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong. In 2000, he was one of the Thirteen Artist Awardees by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. His works have been exhibited in Malaysia, China, Bangladesh, Denmark, Berlin, Paris, New York, and London. Santos is the first Southeast Asian artist to have his work housed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
Gerardo Tan (b. 1960) works across various media from painting, collage, artist books to video, found objects, and installation to deal with conceptual plays and issues of representation. He recreates images culled from the world of art and mass media in order to subvert hierarchies and give way to new itinerant meanings.
Tan took his BFA at the University of the Philippines and his MFA at the State University of New York in Buffalo, USA. He has participated in several international exhibitions including Pause (4th Gwangju Biennial, 2002), Signs of Life (First Melbourne Biennial, 1999), The 3rd Asian Art Biennial Bangladesh (Osmani Memorial Hall, Dhaka, 1986), and The 2nd Asian Art Show (Fukuoka Art Museum, 1982). His recent solo exhibitions are Points of Departure (Noestudio, 2013 Madrid, Spain), Hablon Redux and Other Transcriptions (Random Parts, Oakland, USA, 2016) and Visualizing Sound (Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Philippines, 2019).
He was conferred the 13 Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1988. His other distinctions include the Fulbright-Hays Grant at SUNY Buffalo (1990-92), the Barbara Schuller’s Art Associates Award in Buffalo, NY (1992) and the Juror’s Choice at the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Competition in 1997.
As society continues to rapidly evolve, his artistic practice follows the phenomena that go with it as well, currently exploring the role and paradoxes of technology, media, and globalization within the struggles of individuality, identity, and independence. The themes found in his work stem from the society in which he lives in, forming questions that address immediate concerns with regard to (religious) beliefs and conventions, (media) consumption and production, and the volatile possibilities in the future that have yet to unfold.
His works shift between different mediums: from painting to photography, sculpture to video, and digital to installation. His 2021 solo exhibition ‘I Am That I Am’ was shortlisted in the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zobel Prize for Visual Art.
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).
Issay Rodriguez’ (b. 1991, Philippines) current art practice revolves around projects that deal with themes on humanism and ecology. Through archival research and community engagements enabled by artist residencies and interdisciplinary collaborations, she works on projects that allow oneself to think about how thoughts, emotions, and values can be explained or expressed through art and technology.
Recent projects and residencies include: Fête De la Science - “MOI COMME MER: Hybrid Open Studio and VR Painting Workshop with Lycée René-Josué Valin and Centre Intermondes, France (2022); AQUARIUM Poetry Workshop with Association of Visual Arts Taiwan (2022); SACRED BEE Open Studio with Gasworks, London Artist Residency Program (2022); DOON AR/VR Project, art n/23 AFP incubator space, (2020); B+ Open Studio and Workshops with Zhuwei Elementary School and Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taipei (2019); VANISHING IN THE PROCESS: Exploration of Dream States and Symbolism, between LIR Space, Yogyakarta, and 98B Manila; Bellas Artes Projects in Bataan (both 2017-18); and a collaborative project for Viva Arte Viva! 57th Venice Biennale (2017).
Her works were shortlisted for Fernando Zobel Visual Arts Prize (2018); awarded Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan for Visual Arts (2017); First Grantee: Portfolio Art Prize | 10 Artists Supporting Artists (2020); and was chosen as the 7th Filipino to participate in PARP 2022 artist residency in La Rochelle, France (2022).
She has recently joined the Department of Studio Arts faculty as Lecturer for Electronic Arts I & II and Civic Welfare & Training Service (CWTS I & II) for the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts.
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.
Poklong Anading’s (b. 1975, Manila, Philippines) practice utilizes a wide range of media from drawing, painting, video, installation, photography and object-making. Taking a more process-oriented and conceptual approach, his continuing inquiry takes off from issues on self-reflexivity, both of himself and others, and site-specificity in an ongoing discussion about society, time and territory.
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting from the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines (1999). He 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, 2012 and 2020), Taro Nasu in Japan and Athr Gallery in Jeddah (2016), 1335MABINI in Manila, Philippines (2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019). 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), disco nap, ‘We Didn’t Mean To Break It (But It’s Ok, We Can Fix It), Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, Portugal (2019), Far Away But Strangely Familiar’, Danubiana Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia (2019), Normal scheduling will resume shortly, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2019) and Arts in Common Artjog MMXIX, Jogya Nationa Museum, Jogyakarta, Indonesia (2019),
Anading lives and works in Manila.
Jan Balquin works across different traditional media ranging from paintings to collages often exploring the conventional notions of material and subject matter. Dealing with concepts of value, materiality, and banality, Balquin’s paintings expand to sculptural forms from traditionally two-dimensional materials. Recently, she’s been exploring ways of representing the blank canvas often focusing on its qualities of being an object.
Balquin (b.1989) works and lives in Quezon City. She studied Fine Arts and majored in Studio Art at the University of the Philippines Diliman and received a grant for her thesis. She has been joining exhibitions since middle school at the Philippine High School for the Arts in 2007. Balquin has been actively exhibiting since 2010 with having had 9 solo exhibitions within and outside the Metro including Art Informal, Drawing Room, West Gallery, Finale, to name a few.
Bea Camacho (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines) is a visual artist who works in installation, performance, and video. She received her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she was awarded the Albert Alcalay Prize for Outstanding work in Studio Art and the David McCord Prize for Achievement in the Arts.
She is a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines. She was also selected as an exhibiting artist for the 2006 Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York City and for the 2009 International Women Artists Biennale in Incheon, Korea. Recently, her exhibition at MO_Space, Memento Obliviscere, was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards 2018.
Her work has been exhibited in galleries internationally, including the Japan Society (New York), Osage Gallery (Hong Kong and Singapore), Ikkan Art Gallery (Singapore), Valentine Willie Fine Arts (Kuala Lumpur and Manila), Silverlens (Manila), Finale Gallery (Manila), MO_Space (Manila), and Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila). She has also shown her work in institutions including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, National Museum of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila, the Musee d'Art Moderne in St. Etienne, Kyoto Art Center, Hangaram Museum, EuGon Museum of Photography, Triennale di Milano Design Museum, Queens Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Tate Modern.
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.
Celine Lee (b. 1993, Philippines) is a visual artist currently based in Manila, Philippines. Lee’s body of work revolves around fundamental scientific and mathematical concepts and principles in an attempt to understand the present.
Since the beginning of her artistic career, Lee has been producing works with the use of different materials and media; often focusing on process and materiality. Whether in the form of a painting, a sculpture, an embroidery piece, or multimedia work, Lee explores the ability of visual perception and spatial recognition to invoke concepts that extend beyond form.
Celine Lee graduated with honors from The University of Santo Tomas in 2015 with a BFA degree Major in Painting. Lee’s fourth solo exhibition entitled, The Length and Breadth of Depth held at Underground Gallery in 2020, was shortlisted in the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art. She has also recently won an award of merit in the 2020 Philippine Art Awards. She has held four solo exhibitions to date, and is actively participating in group exhibitions within and outside of Metro Manila.
Lou Lim (b. 1989) invests in the connection between the corporeal and the spiritual, between materiality and notions of permanence, between objects and visual imagery, and in what these relations articulate. Her works examine and appropriate the processes of different art forms to further investigate sculpture, creating new contexts for the familiar by exploring ideas and potentialities of surface and touch.
Lim earned her BFA from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts and has been actively exhibiting work since 2011. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations “For the Land that Laments” at Silverlens Galleries and “Rest” at CCP in 2022. She was resident at Palais de Tokyo in Paris under the Pavillon Neuflize OBC 2015-2016 program. This participation resulted in a collaborative performance at the Opera Garnier and in group exhibitions at ICA Singapore and the Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea, as well as in a publication with INA [Institut National Audiovisuel]. She was a recipient of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Awards 2021.
José Santos III (b. Manila, Philippines, 1970) lives and works in Pasig, Philippines. Santos has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore; The Armory Show, New York, USA; Vargas Museum, Quezon City, Philippines; The Drawing Room, Manila, Philippines; Artinformal, Mandaluyong, Philippines; A3 Arndt Art Agency, Berlin, Germany; Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong. In 2000, he was one of the Thirteen Artist Awardees by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. His works have been exhibited in Malaysia, China, Bangladesh, Denmark, Berlin, Paris, New York, and London. Santos is the first Southeast Asian artist to have his work housed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
Gerardo Tan (b. 1960) works across various media from painting, collage, artist books to video, found objects, and installation to deal with conceptual plays and issues of representation. He recreates images culled from the world of art and mass media in order to subvert hierarchies and give way to new itinerant meanings.
Tan took his BFA at the University of the Philippines and his MFA at the State University of New York in Buffalo, USA. He has participated in several international exhibitions including Pause (4th Gwangju Biennial, 2002), Signs of Life (First Melbourne Biennial, 1999), The 3rd Asian Art Biennial Bangladesh (Osmani Memorial Hall, Dhaka, 1986), and The 2nd Asian Art Show (Fukuoka Art Museum, 1982). His recent solo exhibitions are Points of Departure (Noestudio, 2013 Madrid, Spain), Hablon Redux and Other Transcriptions (Random Parts, Oakland, USA, 2016) and Visualizing Sound (Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Philippines, 2019).
He was conferred the 13 Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1988. His other distinctions include the Fulbright-Hays Grant at SUNY Buffalo (1990-92), the Barbara Schuller’s Art Associates Award in Buffalo, NY (1992) and the Juror’s Choice at the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Competition in 1997.
As society continues to rapidly evolve, his artistic practice follows the phenomena that go with it as well, currently exploring the role and paradoxes of technology, media, and globalization within the struggles of individuality, identity, and independence. The themes found in his work stem from the society in which he lives in, forming questions that address immediate concerns with regard to (religious) beliefs and conventions, (media) consumption and production, and the volatile possibilities in the future that have yet to unfold.
His works shift between different mediums: from painting to photography, sculpture to video, and digital to installation. His 2021 solo exhibition ‘I Am That I Am’ was shortlisted in the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zobel Prize for Visual Art.
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).
Issay Rodriguez’ (b. 1991, Philippines) current art practice revolves around projects that deal with themes on humanism and ecology. Through archival research and community engagements enabled by artist residencies and interdisciplinary collaborations, she works on projects that allow oneself to think about how thoughts, emotions, and values can be explained or expressed through art and technology.
Recent projects and residencies include: Fête De la Science - “MOI COMME MER: Hybrid Open Studio and VR Painting Workshop with Lycée René-Josué Valin and Centre Intermondes, France (2022); AQUARIUM Poetry Workshop with Association of Visual Arts Taiwan (2022); SACRED BEE Open Studio with Gasworks, London Artist Residency Program (2022); DOON AR/VR Project, art n/23 AFP incubator space, (2020); B+ Open Studio and Workshops with Zhuwei Elementary School and Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taipei (2019); VANISHING IN THE PROCESS: Exploration of Dream States and Symbolism, between LIR Space, Yogyakarta, and 98B Manila; Bellas Artes Projects in Bataan (both 2017-18); and a collaborative project for Viva Arte Viva! 57th Venice Biennale (2017).
Her works were shortlisted for Fernando Zobel Visual Arts Prize (2018); awarded Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan for Visual Arts (2017); First Grantee: Portfolio Art Prize | 10 Artists Supporting Artists (2020); and was chosen as the 7th Filipino to participate in PARP 2022 artist residency in La Rochelle, France (2022).
She has recently joined the Department of Studio Arts faculty as Lecturer for Electronic Arts I & II and Civic Welfare & Training Service (CWTS I & II) for the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts.
Related Exhibitions
Share