Camille Ver's 'Five Projects' at Galerie Stephanie
Through her 10 solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibits in the US, South Korea, Japan and the UAE, female abstractionist Camille Ver has transformed Manila’s blight into beautiful abstract landscapes of paint and ink. A 2003 graduate of the UP Fine Arts, Ver mounts “Five Projects,” her 11th solo exhibition presented by Galerie Stephanie.
The artist explains, “It was quite serendipitous. I was actually thinking of creating bodies of work inspired by people I hold dear. This was not my usual subject, as often, I work on expressing the beauty I see in our city. I usually look at groups of buildings in disrepair and see the beauty in them — how light strikes form, how light breaks into color. That’s how I usually get inspiration for my work. But for this exhibition, I focus on how I remember people who are dear to me. Some of whom are far from me when I made the works.”
Working on her memories of persons important to her, Ver painted with visions no longer inspired by outer stimuli as she has done in the past, but rather, with pure inspiration swelling from within. Groups of artworks with similar color combinations and line work were created forming “projects” and are laid out in the gallery to form biographic paintings that hint at inscapes of memory and devotion.
Projects were also created in aggrupation of canvas shapes. Some individual works are actually a mass of smaller pieces that make a whole, giving faceted impressions of the subject, much like how cubist works would probably look like if they depicted intangible emotions instead of the different planes of three-dimensional objects. Connecting the five projects are bands of color drawn at the base of the paintings. These bands of color hint at another aspect of color, the rainbow; a symbol of hope, and of a Biblical covenant made after a flood that supposedly destroyed much of the world.
Perhaps, like the rainbow which appeared as a new world was born, these new works hint at renewal; if not in the artist’s body of work which has clearly grown through these explorations, then perhaps in other aspects of her being.
“Five Projects” by Camille Ver opens tomorrow at 6 p.m. and runs until Sept. 6 at Galerie Stephanie, Unit 1B, Parc Plaza Bldg., 183 E.Rodriguez Jr. Ave., Libis, Quezon City.
For inquiries, call 709-1488 or email inquiry.galeriestephanie@gmail.com.