My brother, at an exhibit around Art East Island.

Me & Jeff Koons.

I’ve been going around Hong Kong, so I haven’t had a real chance to sit down and write about the art fair. The last day was yesterday, but I only went for one day. In case you weren’t following my Twitter feed, here are some photos I took while going around the fair.

Nedko Sokolav.

Tracy Emin.

Peter Liversidge. Favorite new discovery. He has a swell series of proposals that I will post about later.

Robert Rauschenberg! Old favorite, but I saw an oriental series that I never saw before.

Peter Blake’s “Homage to Joseph Cornell.” I love Joseph Cornell. His works inspired the anthology that Jonathan Safran Foer edited, A Convergence of Birds.

Andy Warhol’s photo of Jean-Michel Basquiat. So many inner explosions after seeing this little ID picture.

Alexander Calder’s “Fleur Jaune.” The first photo I took was cropped, and I looked over at the title and looked for the yellow flower. :)

Yoshimoto Nara. The fair had an interesting variety of Nara’s work, from full-size paintings, to rough sketches and pencil drawings. It was a nice change from seeing just the work that I am familiar with.

Mariano Ching.

Dina Gadia. I am in love with her collage work.

Jose Santos III.

Fiona Banner’s “The Greatest Film Never Made.” Made me laugh.

Louie Cordero.

Roberto Chabet.

Ricky Powell’s photograph of Basquiat and Warhol in NYC.

Keith Haring.

And finally, my work! For Zoe’s pop-up space for Lightbombs Contemporary over at Art East Island.

I’ll post about it soon, but Trickie Lopa has already posted about her findings in these three posts:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

Romeo Lee & the empty table of refreshments.

The roster of artists currently on display at West Gallery is infinitely interesting. Veering away from the typical four-show format, there were five solo exhibitions on display, with one show leaking out of Gallery two into the open space by the food. On Thursday, I experienced everything from talent envy to hoarse voice syndrome, having had to shout at Iris (sorry, Iris!) because of the music from Romeo Lee’s exhibit courtesy of one Jay Taruc.

I hadn’t been out to view exhibits in a while, but on that day, I remembered how fun it was to just mill around and talk to people, to look around and munch on free food—and drink alcoholic beverages your parents bought for other people.

Annie Cabigting’s Dietro Mona Lisa

Two paintings of the backs of the famed Mona Lisa, echoing works that I most know from Annie Cabigting. I’m a big fan of her “back portraits,” where she paints the backs of people who are looking for things. Nothing much else to say about this show that’s not already apparent from the photographs, but I do like it because it’s cheeky, well-rendered, and isn’t a great departure from the works of hers that had been familiar to me.

The history geek in me loves the idea of speculations of two Mona Lisas (which explains the two works), and I love that she painted both.

Sarah Geneblazo’s Escape

Click for photos of the rest of the exhibits

The past few weeks have been busy and even though sometimes I feel like I haven’t been doing enough, a review of events—I’d like to think—proves otherwise. So far, April has seen two art-related things, 16×16, which was for Young Star’s 16th birthday and a fundraising for Outerhope organized by Blanc Gallery.

For Young Star, 8 visual artists collaborated with 8 photographers, working on 16×16 canvases. I was partnered with Hannah Reyes, who is one of the most talented (and sunny!) people I know. It was such a great experience for the both of us and I think our styles worked really well together. Primer, a sponsor of the event, even chose our piece, “Keeping Things Whole,” as their favorite. :)

We decided to name our piece after a poem by Mark Strand called “Keeping Things Whole.” Hannah’s photos were mostly from her travels around the Philippines. Here’s the poem:

Keeping Things Whole
Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Stole some more pictures from the event, but click here for the rest of the album by Young Star.

Sarie, Joey, Martin, Becca, me and Tim.

Sarie, Therese, Nice, Joey, Leloy, Martin, Becca, me and my brother, Luis.

I didn’t get to go to the fundraising night for Outerhope, but you can see the piece I made by clicking here. I hope my contribution helped them, even a little bit, though I have no news if it did.

On to the exciting part (as if these things weren’t enough)! Two great things are coming up this May. My friend Zoe has been working her butt off for Lightbombs Contemporary and has kindly invited me as one of the artists she wants to represent in Hong Kong. This May, Lightbombs is going to be part of Art East Island, which occurs parallel to Art HK, the International Hong Kong Art Fair.

I’ll be showing a few pieces along with Zeus Bascon, Michael De Feo, Jed Escueta, Dex Fernandez, Dan Findlay, David Griggs, Jonathan Jay Lee, Maya Muñoz, Christina Quisumbing Ramilo, Marc Standing and Pancho Villanueva. If you’re interested, here are some more details!

I’m so excited because I’ll be able to catch the art fair this year. The day after we get back, another group show will open! Through The Looking Glass: Jose Rizal opens on the 26th of May at Manila Contemporary.

I’ll be showing alongside Jacob Lindo! Who is extremely talented, and towards whom I feel talent envy. If you recall, I fangirled like a lunatic over his solo show at our gallery a couple of months back. He is amazing, and I am both excited and scared (that I’ll make crap!) but I’m really thankful that I’ll be a part of this show.

Things are falling into place (I think). I have a couple more news but I’ll save those for another entry. Once these things have taken a more discernible shape. Sometimes, I feel listless and down, but then when I sit down and think about my life, really think about it, I find that there are tons of things that are worth working hard for.

Lomography LC-A+, Solaris Ferrania 400

For the April 2012 issue of Rogue magazine, I wrote about artist, Arturo Sanchez. On a drizzly day last February, Joseph and I went to Art’s studio in Angono for the interview. When it was time for Joseph to take his pictures, I took a few behind-the-scenes ones, too.

In other news, make sure you grab a copy of that issue! Aside from writing this, Sarie wrote a feature on Vincent Moon (photos of which my brother took), plus there’s a really good visual contribution from Kris. The rest of the content—I’ve only skimmed through it thus far—seems excellent, too.

Also, just so you know, the cover is an AR incarnation of Solenn Heussaff.

Ah! I’ve been looking forward to Jacob Lindo’s show ever since I learned of it. He always seems to come up with really great ideas and compositions for collages, and a part of me definitely envies that, as someone who makes collages as well. The first of his works I’ve seen were the ones he made for ManilArt, and I guess I was expecting work more similar to that. For Partial Proof, he went into another direction, but retained a certain similarity to his previous work.

I posted about an exhibit on Roberto Chabet’s collages, and someone made a comment saying that he couldn’t really relate to it. The opposite happens with me, because I’m extremely drawn to collages. When someone, in my head, gets it right, I’m just going to keep talking about it and gush. Jacob Lindo has managed to craft three arresting series, all in one show.

More pictures & the rest of the West shows

On the last day of Imagining Identity, Sarie and I passed by Finale. Good thing we went when we did! They were taking down the exhibit already; the video room’s display was completely gone when we got there. We made a quick pass of the pieces, and Sarie lent me her Canon S95 as we hurriedly made rounds. It was so overwhelming because there were so many. Imagining Identity is a selection of Paulino Que’s collection of artists’ self portraits. Most are commissioned, I think, but some of them were acquired posthumously.

He released a book, too. These are just one hundred pieces, chosen from his entire collection. I’m not sure how many there are in total, but isn’t that crazy? There are quite a few stand-outs, but I didn’t care for a lot of them either. I wonder how he picks people to make art for him.

MM Yu and Nona Garcia

The exhibit’s sadly down already; I’m kind of regretting that I put it off until the very last minute, because I would have totally written about it if I had gone earlier, just so that more people will have (hopefully) stopped by to see the collection. Really quite a few were stunning and clever. It’s hard for some artists to render self portraits or just figures of people in general, because their style does not permit or because it’s hard to just sit down and make a likeness of yourself.

I think part of my awe also comes from the fact that one person owns all of these works. And it’s not even the entire collection. Amazing. Personally, I think it’s a really good idea for a collection. The book, “Imagining Identity,” was published under Finale, but last I heard, it’s sold out already. I’m not sure if it’s a limited edition run, but if it isn’t maybe they can do a second printing if people really want it in their lives. It’s pretty hefty.

You can read more about the show on Finale’s website.

Click here for the rest of the photos