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

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

Collage Drop-Outs is an ongoing exhibit curated by Mariano Ching and Isabel Ching (no relations!) on display in Finale‘s Tall Gallery. You can catch it until the end of the year. It was a good mix of different mediums, which was exciting for me since it sparked a lot of ideas for future (!) projects. I personally like working with found objects but I’ve only really explored the paper/pulp/wood variety, so it was nice to see such a big variation.

You can click on the photos to see details on works, or check the exhibit’s page on Finale’s website. I don’t have photos of the videos (there are at least three), so if you want to see those, you can go see it while it’s still up.

FINALE ART FILE
Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound,
2241 Pasong Tamo, Makati City

Mon. to Sat. 10AM to 7PM
Tels (632) 813 2310, 812 5034

Continue reading COLLAGE DROP-OUTS: FINALE….

It’s been ten days since my first solo show opened, and I don’t know why it took so long for me to wrangle up the time to post pictures. I think I was hoping people would go instead of just look at photos on blogs (hehe), but I realize that not a lot of people have access to the North, just because it’s so far away from everything else. Except my own house. In any case, these are the pieces I ended up putting up for display.

It was such a great night. Thank you for everyone who dropped by and made it super special. Thanks also to people who talked, tweeted, and wrote about it. I hope to see you in future shows that I am hoping to have. Links to people who wrote about this because I am super happy and thankful:

• TAG ALONG/Nante on Status magazine’s blog.
• Manila Art Blogger/Trickie Lopa. Mostly on Kaloy Sanchez’s.
• Candy magazine online/Macy
• Young Star/Ralph Mendoza
• Living Asia Channel/Chui
• Pilar
• Kat
• Hunter and Hoarder/Barby

More photos of the works and opening night under the cut. Again, it’s up until December 31 at West Gallery. Hope you can drop by and take a look.

Continue reading EXCAVATIONS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD, PT. 2….