Considering Time Exposed
Varipuse Artists
Poklong Anading, Katrina Bello, Celine Lee, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Gerardo Tan, Miguel Uy, MM Yu
Poklong Anading, Katrina Bello, Celine Lee, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Gerardo Tan, Miguel Uy, MM Yu
19 September - 18 October 2026
Curated by
Gerardo Tan
19 September - 18 October 2026
With Hiroshi Sugimoto’s mesmerizing photographic work Time Exposed concurrently on display at MO_Space’s main gallery, seven Filipino artists respond to this iconic series with their own works in the adjacent space. Considering Time Exposed is a group exhibition that draws inspiration to what it directly proposes—to consider Sugimoto’s series of seascape photographs, fixed along the break in the horizon and taken between 1980 to 1991, and to enter into dialogue with the potency of this body of work.
This selection of artists takes cues from Sugimoto’s own incorporation of styles and approaches, ranging from process, duration, exposure, composition, restraint, and to an investigation of the properties of the sky, sea, and nature itself. Presenting a combination of old, new, and revisited works, the participating artists—Poklong Anading, Katrina Bello, Celine Lee, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Gerardo Tan, Miguel Uy, and MM Yu—have, in their own individual practices, already explored characteristics and concerns that resonate with those found in Sugimoto’s work.
By presenting works that vary in both medium and content, the exhibition provides an opportunity not only to find connections among the different responses to a single idea, but also to gain a deeper understanding of the unique forms and approaches each responding artist brings to the conversation.
For instance, in Poklong Anading’s single-channel video and graphite wall drawing titled, cover up (makalipas ang pagsasahimpapawid), we see two works in dialogue with each other as independently developed concepts, responding with Sugimoto’s work in retrospect. Anading’s cover up, which can be traced back to his earlier series of linedrawing exercises—of repeatedly drawing horizontal lines until they fill up the video frame, finds its affinity with Sugimoto’s own repeated exposures of the horizon until atmospheric changes also fill up his pictures, reducing them into a grey surface.
In another video, presented as a looped diptych, the artist Katrina Bello in a work called Consciousness Bloomed, Before We Sparked Fire, reflects the kind of attention that Sugimoto has placed into the seas to meditate on time and existence. In the same vein, Bello examines our relationship with this body of water, as a reflection on time, scale, vastness, mortality, and intimacy while considering the geological structures that shaped them and in how they ultimately became references in understanding the cosmos.
Celine Lee, on the other hand, while also drawing from a previous practice—using AI generated images to patinate over oxidized layers of copper sheets, elucidates on both the persistence and the disappearance of images over time. In an intriguing work where a fading image of a thing burning/set in flames is applied onto the copper sheet held by a stainless steel mesh, she provides a direct commentary on the use of AI-generated images and its vague functions in art and in society in general.
Meanwhile, Gary-Ross Pastrana, in a work using a found object, called Carrier, shifts his attention in the same way Sugimoto shifts his to focus on the divisive qualities of the horizon or the horizontal line. Using a multi-layered steel toolbox, Pastrana emulates the water line by also exposing the bottom half of the object into salt water. The different layers of the toolbox remind us of the rising and cycling of waves, while its empty content directs us back to the emptiness of Sugimoto’s seascapes.
In a book consisting of 100 pages of photographs printed on parchment paper, Gerardo Tan took photos of the sky from a camera in a fixed position that was directed upward with a sheet of clear glass above it. The lens of the camera was left open while the glass was left uncleaned, allowing dust to accumulate on them over the course of 100 days. This gradual obliteration of the image of the sky and trees as seen from the front yard of his studio is very reminiscent of Sugimoto’s ‘singular’ framing of the seas and its accumulation of the day's different conditions.
In another project that unfolds a different layer of dialogue with Sugimoto’s pictures, Miguel Lorenzo Uy chooses sound via mounting four miniature speakers across the space, emitting an improvised piano melody with high-pitched static noise in frequencies that are believed to become less audible as we age. Uy meditates on this phenomenon—that time and aging dictates the clarity of what we hear, or the notion that as we grow older, noise is eventually filtered. This entanglement of the physical body with the immaterial consciousness and the laws of time and nature have been a consistent concern in Uy’s several multimedia works.
And finally, MM Yu’s previous series of photographs called Pulling Someone’s Hair Back, redirects our attention into the skyline and eventually, into re-imagining the horizon—as she deliberately obscures and crops her framing of pictures to favor the expansiveness of the blue sky, creating mysterious settings and contexts of subject matter and images in her photographs, as if these objects stood as lone monuments, alone in their moments, isolated from everything else below.
With these artists, either responding or reaffirming the concepts of their works through Sugimoto’s Time Exposed, we get a glimpse—and compendium, to the various and multi-dimensional ways art can interpret the processes that signify time, duration, exposure, and nature. And most importantly, how the persistence of concepts through an enduring art practice remains evident and compelling in the works by our local artists.
/CLJ
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About the Artist
About the Artists
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).
Born in the Philippines, Katrina Bello is a visual artist who lives and works in Montclair in New Jersey. Her drawing work is informed by observations and experiences of natural environments encountered during the course of her travels and migration. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and the Philippines, and has been awarded fellowships and residencies in the United States. She has been to residencies at the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Maine, Art and History Museums in Florida, and Brush Creek Foundation For the Arts in Wyoming. She has participated in exhibitions at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, El Museo Cultural in New Mexico, Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and West Gallery in the Philippines. She currently has a solo exhibition at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and recently completed a Sustainable Arts Foundation Studio Fellowship with Gallery Aferro in New Jersey.
Katrina received a BFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Maryland. She is the founder of North Willow, an artist-run space in New Jersey that is dedicated to site-specific installation projects.
Celine Lee (b. 1993, Philippines) is a visual artist based in Metro Manila.
With an interest in understanding the underlying structures that govern our world, Lee’s practice integrates the natural sciences to explore the metaphysical aspects of our contemporary human experience. This exploration is characterized by her diverse use of materials and media in her body of work including painting, sculpture, embroidery, installation, and multimedia works – focusing on process and materiality. Lee’s practice reflects on the potential of visual and spatial experiences to suggest meanings that extend beyond their form.
Two of Celine Lee’s solo exhibitions held in the Philippines, “The Brightest Part” and “The Length and Breadth of Depth” have been shortlisted in the 2023 and 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art, respectively. She received an award of merit in the 2020 Philippine Art Awards and participated in S.E.A Focus 2023 in Singapore.
Celine Lee graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in 2015 with a BFA degree, majoring in Painting.
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.
Gerardo Tan, also known as Gerry Tan, is a visual artist, curator, and art educator. He finished Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman College of Fine Arts (CFA) in 1982 and Masters of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1992 as a Fulbright Fellow. He was a professorial lecturer at UP CFA from 1993 to 2000 and the former dean of the University of the East College of Fine Arts from 2002 to 2005. Tan was awarded the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 1988.
As a conceptual artist, Tan explores the nature of art and how forms and materiality can be articulated in ideas and concepts, be it through painting, sculpture, found objects, artists books, or installations. Often referencing and revisiting his earlier work, Tan deals with aesthetic questions related to the reproducibility of images and the spatial and temporal authenticity of a work.
Tan has exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and Lopez Museum, among many more institutions in the Philippines. He has participated in several international exhibitions such as the 2nd Asian Art Show in Fukuoka Museum, 1982, the 1st Melbourne Biennale,1999, the 4th Gwangju Biennale, 2002, and the inaugural exhibition of The National Gallery of Singapore, 2016. He continues to work with contemporary artists making up the Bastards of Misrepresentation that is curated by Manuel Ocampo, which has aggressively and independently been exhibiting since 2010 in Berlin, Germany, Queens New York, and Sete, France.
In 2022, his work was featured at the Philippine Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale entitled Milk of Dreams, curated by Yael Buencamino and Arvin Flores.
Miguel Lorenzo Uy (b. 1993) lives and works in the Philippines.
As society continues to rapidly change, his artistic practice follows the phenomena that accompany it, exploring the roles and paradoxes of technology, media, culture, and globalization within the struggles of individuality, identity, and independence. The themes in his work stem from the social context in which he is situated, raising questions that address immediate concerns surrounding religious beliefs and conventions, media consumption and production, and the volatile possibilities of futures yet to unfold.
His practice traverses and intersects across multiple mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, video, sound, and installation. His works have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2025), S.E.A. Focus, Singapore (2024), and his 2021 solo exhibition I Am That I Am was shortlisted for the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zóbel Prize for Visual Art.
He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Arts from De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde.
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).
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
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).
Born in the Philippines, Katrina Bello is a visual artist who lives and works in Montclair in New Jersey. Her drawing work is informed by observations and experiences of natural environments encountered during the course of her travels and migration. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and the Philippines, and has been awarded fellowships and residencies in the United States. She has been to residencies at the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Maine, Art and History Museums in Florida, and Brush Creek Foundation For the Arts in Wyoming. She has participated in exhibitions at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, El Museo Cultural in New Mexico, Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and West Gallery in the Philippines. She currently has a solo exhibition at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and recently completed a Sustainable Arts Foundation Studio Fellowship with Gallery Aferro in New Jersey.
Katrina received a BFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Maryland. She is the founder of North Willow, an artist-run space in New Jersey that is dedicated to site-specific installation projects.
Celine Lee (b. 1993, Philippines) is a visual artist based in Metro Manila.
With an interest in understanding the underlying structures that govern our world, Lee’s practice integrates the natural sciences to explore the metaphysical aspects of our contemporary human experience. This exploration is characterized by her diverse use of materials and media in her body of work including painting, sculpture, embroidery, installation, and multimedia works – focusing on process and materiality. Lee’s practice reflects on the potential of visual and spatial experiences to suggest meanings that extend beyond their form.
Two of Celine Lee’s solo exhibitions held in the Philippines, “The Brightest Part” and “The Length and Breadth of Depth” have been shortlisted in the 2023 and 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art, respectively. She received an award of merit in the 2020 Philippine Art Awards and participated in S.E.A Focus 2023 in Singapore.
Celine Lee graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in 2015 with a BFA degree, majoring in Painting.
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.
Gerardo Tan, also known as Gerry Tan, is a visual artist, curator, and art educator. He finished Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman College of Fine Arts (CFA) in 1982 and Masters of Fine Arts, Major in Painting, at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1992 as a Fulbright Fellow. He was a professorial lecturer at UP CFA from 1993 to 2000 and the former dean of the University of the East College of Fine Arts from 2002 to 2005. Tan was awarded the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 1988.
As a conceptual artist, Tan explores the nature of art and how forms and materiality can be articulated in ideas and concepts, be it through painting, sculpture, found objects, artists books, or installations. Often referencing and revisiting his earlier work, Tan deals with aesthetic questions related to the reproducibility of images and the spatial and temporal authenticity of a work.
Tan has exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and Lopez Museum, among many more institutions in the Philippines. He has participated in several international exhibitions such as the 2nd Asian Art Show in Fukuoka Museum, 1982, the 1st Melbourne Biennale,1999, the 4th Gwangju Biennale, 2002, and the inaugural exhibition of The National Gallery of Singapore, 2016. He continues to work with contemporary artists making up the Bastards of Misrepresentation that is curated by Manuel Ocampo, which has aggressively and independently been exhibiting since 2010 in Berlin, Germany, Queens New York, and Sete, France.
In 2022, his work was featured at the Philippine Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale entitled Milk of Dreams, curated by Yael Buencamino and Arvin Flores.
Miguel Lorenzo Uy (b. 1993) lives and works in the Philippines.
As society continues to rapidly change, his artistic practice follows the phenomena that accompany it, exploring the roles and paradoxes of technology, media, culture, and globalization within the struggles of individuality, identity, and independence. The themes in his work stem from the social context in which he is situated, raising questions that address immediate concerns surrounding religious beliefs and conventions, media consumption and production, and the volatile possibilities of futures yet to unfold.
His practice traverses and intersects across multiple mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, video, sound, and installation. His works have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila (2025), S.E.A. Focus, Singapore (2024), and his 2021 solo exhibition I Am That I Am was shortlisted for the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zóbel Prize for Visual Art.
He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Arts from De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde.
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).
Related Exhibitions
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