Year: 2014
-
Jason Tecson/ Eroded Myths
This article I wrote in anticipation of Jason Tecson’s two man show with Syrian artist Thaer Maarouf at Sana Gallery – Singapore. The sculptures of Jason Tecson speaks about reality in the same way nightmares do: through concrete manifestation of symbols found in them. His works are not images but fabrications, which in an analogous…
-
Jigger Cruz Superstar
Jigger Cruz is among the country’s 30-something superstars but can he live up to the hype? Jigger Cruz, the latest darling of Philippine painting, owes his success to several factors. Foremost is his ability to carve a distinctive middle ground in contemporary painting, balancing conservative and avant-garde ambitions. His works, while appearing untamed and fresh,…
-
The Shift of Desires
Review of ‘It’s about the end that keeps on coming’ by Jay Ticar at West Gallery It’s a distressing and shattered world, if you read into the paintings of Jay Ticar, but one that is not without hope or room for contemplation. In his paintings and drawings the Manila-born, Toronto-based artist unravels a surreal world of…
-
Agnes Arellano eating a pizza
Agnes Arellano’s Flying Dakini at MO_Space Tonight was the opening of Agnes Arellano’s Flying Dakini at Mo_Space in the Fort. One of my favorite spaces for the reason that when I used to go there, you can get a doughnut downstairs at Krispy Kreme, sometimes for free. I had such fond memories of MO_Space, not…
-
Don Dalmacio and the manual of painting
Review of Don Dalmacio’s Condensed and Evaporated at BLANC I vividly remember going to the Cultural Center of the Philippines in July 2009 to see the works of the latest 13 Artists Awardees at that time. By now I have forgotten most of the works in that show but the paintings of Don Dalmacio are…
-
Max Balatbat a.k.a. MaxBal and his Action Star Paintings
Artists represented by Silverlens are some of the most successful names in Philippine art today. By virtue perhaps of good business practices or critical choices made by its proprietors or the fact that the gallery takes hold of their artists like no mama bear can. In spite of this, I never gave anyone who…
-
Paintings that look at you
A Blank Stare Dear Abstract Yason Banal Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines- Diliman His works are preoccupied with lives of outsiders nurtured and broken apart by interaction with the rest of the world giving them the touch of a perceptive wanderer. I have followed his works since I was in college where Banal also…
-
Chocolate Ruins by Rodel Tapaya in ARNDT BERLIN
Rodel Tapaya’s main piece at ARNDT’s primary location in Berlin resists blatant interpretation. In his expansive painting, The Chocolate Ruins, the blend of thematically related images impresses a conflated disquiet and a sense of simultaneous ironies. Speaking in the reconstructed and often esoteric language of folklore¬ – myths and legends and their transfer in barbershop…
Geronimo Cristobal 