WORKS FROM
the 12 shortlisted exhibits for the annual Ateneo Art Awards are currently on view at the main atrium of the Shangri-La Plaza mall in Mandaluyong. The exhibition is on view at the mall until July 30 and will move to the Ateneo Art Gallery in Quezon City where they will be on view from Aug. 10 until Nov. 4. The shortlisted exhibits are:
• Becoming at Art Informal Mars Bugaoan transforms trash into art. He finds new meanings for plastic trash as he reshapes and restructures plastic bottles and plastic bags into installations, sculptures, and prints.
• Memento Obliviscere at MO_Space For artist Bea Camacho, memories can be massaged. She said: “Our memories define our experience, our reality, and our identity, but our memories are also fragile and vulnerable. They are malleable and easily manipulated.” This being said, she highlights objects — typewriter, old photographs, and newspaper dummy — that can serve both ways: help us remember and/or forget.
• Talim at Blanc Gallery Ronson Culibrina takes inspiration from his hometown, Talim Island in Laguna de Bay for this exhibit.
Talim, incidentally, also means sharp in Filipino. Taking these ideas, Mr. Culibrina suggests the sharp contrasts between industrial development and a sound ecosystem; images of busy fisher folks versus the quiet lakeside environment; and nature and the tools that change people’s lives. • Situation Amongst the Furnishings at Silverlens Dina Gadia makes collages in her all-painting exhibition. Most of her subjects are disfigured bodies in the wrong places or going through objects. • Makeshift at Blanc Gallery Johanna Helmuth grew up in a neighborhood where pedicabs were the sources of livelihood in the morning, and were turned into makeshift homes for the drivers come nighttime. This becomes the artist’s theme: how people adapt and survive to make ends meet. • Viral Automata at 1335 Mabini Ian Carlo Jaucian invents ways to integrate art and science. He presents this in an interactive exhibition that features robots that show light and movements as they are programmed by computer viruses. • Low Pressured Areas at the Cultural Center of the Philippines
KoloWn plays around the vicinity of the Cultural Center and makes these areas their canvas. The exhibition is site-specific, which lets the audience navigate their way around the building. It is also a critique of art institutions and art productions.
• Only Dog Can Judge Me at MO_Space In a world where judgments are easily given, sometimes without basis and regard, artist Robert Langenegger believes that dogs are the better judges than human beings because they have no biases and predispositions. He believes dogs are loyal, honest in their actions, have strong instincts, and are pure in spirit.
• … at Silverlens In …, artist Issay Rodriguez features a series of framed sheets of tracing paper, layered within each frame. The papers are punctured to produce dots, which looks and act like Braille signs, inviting the audience to “read” the images.
• Gray Horizon at the Cultural Center of the Philippines
Ciron Señeres presents scenes in Tondo, Manila, a populous district, through his depictions of dumps and deteriorating structures.
• Traces By Which We Remember at West Gallery Jel Suarez grew up in Caloocan near a construction site, and she has fond memories of collecting pieces of chipped cement. At the same time, she recollects the summers she spent in Batangas as she stacked stones and built mounds of rough stones. In Traces By Which We Remember, the artist constructs collages with layers of contrasts, images, and textures. She sees this layering as a form of remembering.
• What’s Left of It at the Pinto Art Museum Elias Miles Villanueva creates art through collected glass shards, which he painted, stacked, assembled, and given titles taken from books, movies, comics, and trends. Each glass shard is encased in a glass box.