ALT Philippines 2024 21–25 February
Leonardo Aguinaldo Gus Albor Khriss Bajade Ben Cabrera Karl Castro Valeria Cavestany Sacha Cotture Jon Cuyson RM De Leon Isabel Diaz Martin Honasan Junyee Impy Pilapil Roberto M.A. Robles Rodel Tapaya Trek Valdizno Nestor Vinluan
ALT Philippines 2024 21–25 Febuary
Art Director Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz Gallery Manager Álvaro Talavera Exhibition Team Thess Ponce Roy Abrenica Mariela Araza Edgar Bautista Gabriel Abalos Jose Joeffrey Baba Graphic Designer Kyle Azarcon
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Exhibition Notes
Founded by Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz, Galleria Duemila is a longstanding player in the Philippine contemporary art scene. Established in 1975, it has consistently supported and showcased works by eminent artists who have as well greatly contributed to the history and legacy of art-making in the country. Galleria Duemila has also provided a platform for emerging artists with an engaged conceptual approach to their medium and process. With this impressive portfolio, Galleria Duemila has built a strong art industry profile locally and in the ASEAN region. For this edition of ALT Philippines, Galleria Duemila brings together a dynamic mix of artists spanning generations, persuasions, contexts, geographies, and processes, all representing the varying expressions of artmaking today. Through this selection of artists, Silvana seeks to understand, along with the viewing public, what’s new by actively exploring the artistic practices that have an impact on our society, reiterating her guiding maxim of constant renewal and forging ahead. Galleria Duemila, guided by a steadfast vision of currentness, remains vigilant to issues artists seek to capture and convey, especially in the prevailing political climate. Its goal is to raise awareness of prevalent sentiments and ideas, serving simultaneously as a repository of precedent artistic practices that record and exemplify excellence and innovation in the robust development of Philippine contemporary art. Many of these artists display a strong affinity with materiality and are keenly sympathetic to their properties. Artists such as Roberto M.A. Robles and Junyee utilize materials stripped down to their core elements, baring their primordiality and proximity to nature. These days, Junyee returns to his soot paintings inundated by bright splashes of color, harkening back to the days when he has burned all his material possessions to start from ground zero and rediscover a more organic approach to art-making. Meanwhile, Roberto M.A. Robles strips down works to their fundamental concepts.
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Similarly, zeroing in on bare essentials are Gus Albor’s minimalist paintings, resembling ghostly traces of basic forms. On the other hand, Nestor Vinluan distills earth, sky, water, light, and rock forms in explosive vivid colors, attempting to recreate the intangible effects of spectating dusk settling on a range of hills and other such natural phenomena. Drawn to nature and time’s scathing ravages on man-made surfaces are Martin Honasan’s co-makers of his huge portraits of psychological and moral introspections. In his portraits of his reallife muse and partner, singer-songwriter Barbie Almalbis, Honasan lays bare their dynamic as co-creators and the vulnerabilities inherent in such an intimate relationship. Collective identity and memory, as imprints and traces from an aggregate of material culture, are impressed upon the works of Karl Castro and Khriss Bajade. Karl Castro wittily deconstructs shipping packaging in a direct commentary on the late-capital global economy and its implications on geopolitics. As part of his series Unboxing Time, these cardboard carton collages are windows into the flows of mediation, labor, and other life processes by imprinting “patterns of consumption” and their by-products through a blend of scanography, ersatz printmaking, and photomontage. Castro weaves a seamless relationship of the domestically mundane and the hydra-like pull of systems and institutions over all forms of existence. In parallel means, Khriss Bajade’s assemblages of cut scrap metal hammers in the effects of advanced industrialization, piecing out footprints of humanity in the late Anthropocene era. Folklore, myth, and allegory intersect at the works of Leonardo Aguinaldo and Rodel Tapaya. Resembling sakla card figures, Leonardo Aguinaldo’s woodcut prints serve as a metaphor for the impact of deforestation in Baguio, his hometown increasingly undergoing massive urbanization. Meanwhile, Rodel Tapaya mines figures and motifs from folk and pre-colonial narratives, editorializing cycles of strife in continually besieged communities in rural Philippines. In a tangential discourse on visual culture and its history are the works of RM De Leon, whose deceptively whimsical forms cut out from the detritus of print and mass production intimates a coded language of sensuality and painterly bravura. The painterly gesture is ever present, laying dominion still over the machinemade and the digitally mediated, short of middle finger to the encroaching electronic automation of artistic creation. The elusive and the cosmological are divined through Trek Valdizno’s gestural abstracts and Impy Pilapil’s refined working of industrial materials such as metal and glass. Trek Valdizno weaves
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a cat’s cradle-like ball of yarn in his spindly layering of acrylic paint that charts a cartography of a personal galaxy. Impy Pilapil casts glass in a vertical rivulet, an undulating prism of colors surreally cutting through space. Jon Cuyson’s deceptively sleek geometric horizontal bars are subtle evocations of the sea and the wayfaring nomadic being traversing media, platforms, and bi-localities, a plinth of resistance against verticality and rootedness. These lateral recumbent forms somehow parallel the migration and movements of populations and the isolating alienation of the perennial peregrine. Sacha Cotture and Isabel Diaz revel in the spirit of painting with complete abandon, a personal sanctuary in the space and being of creating itself. Swiss expat Sacha Cotture transforms the humble local phragmites reed broom (walis tambo) into a painterly tool, sweeping broad swathes of ink into elemental calligraphy. Isabel Diaz centers macroscopic scrutiny of mundane objects as studies in form and texture. Valeria Cavestany’s colorful, eclectic pieces encapsulate the joie de vivre and hyper hybridity of her Filipino-Spanish heritage. Her chair pieces are as joyfully eccentric as her own personality, fully embracing the sardonic and visual-linguistic play of puns often found in Pinoy humor. And, well, BenCab is BenCab, a mythic figure borne from the myth he’s made out of her quintessential muse Sabel, here wrought huge, swathed in broad colors of Philippine Tropicalia, the modern Mariang Makiling wandering in the collective diasporic dream. Here is but a sampling of this diverse menagerie of art that Galleria Duemila brings to the fore in this special fete for Philippine contemporary art, nonetheless inducing you to explore more beyond their iconic doors in the heart of Pasay City, a city that equally exemplifies this convivial heterogeneity of history, urbanism, modernity, the poly-cultural, and the pedestrian.
Lena Cobangbang February 2024
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COR - 20235 Leonardo Aguinaldo No Pressure (1/1) reduction woodcut print on japanese handmade paper mounted on canvas 190.00 x 113.00 cm / 74.86 x 44.52 in. 2023 COR - 20234 Leonardo Aguinaldo Disappearing Lands (2/3) reduction woodcut print on japanese handmade paper mounted on canvas 126.00 x 101.90 cm / 49.64 x 40.15 in. 2023
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COP - 20237 COP - 20236 Gus Albor Aurae Signal acrylic on canvas 121.70 x 121.70 cm / 47.95 x 47.95 in. 2024
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COS - 20246 Khriss Bajade Shift polyurethane on steel plates 122 x 152.50 x 10 cm / 48.07 x 60.09 x 3.94 in. 2024
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GDR - 10690 Ben Cabrera Man and Woman - Mono I a unique monoprint, oodcut, collograph, and etching on shaped stpi handmade abaca paper, printed from six woodblocks and two copper plates 167.50 x 238.57 cm / 66 x 94 in. 2022
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COR - 20196 Karl Castro Unboxing Time 10 mixed media collage on artist frame 125.73 x 143.57 cm / 49.54 x 56.57 in. 2020–2023 COR - 20197 Karl Castro Unboxing Time 11 mixed media collage on artist frame 113.03 x 151.13 cm / 44.53 x 59.55 in. 2020–2023
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COS - 20251 Valeria Cavestany Fat Green Woman medium wood and textile 120.00 x 80.00 x 63.00 cm / 47.28 x 31.52 x 24.82 in. 2023 COS - 20252 Valeria Cavestany The Fat Man medium wood and textile 132.00 x 75.00 x 50.00 cm / 52.01 x 29.55 x 19.70 in. 2023 COS - 20250 Valeria Cavestany Fat Pink Woman medium wood and textile 107.00 x 63.00 x 53.00 cm / 47.16 x 24.82 x 20.88 in. 2023
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COP - 20199 RM De Leon The Shadow Below is Me... Is in Front of You...The Love Below acrylic on canvas 141.00 x 112.50 cm / 55.55 x 44.33 in. 2023
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COP - 20232 Sacha Cotture Reveals 1 chinese ink and acrylic on canvas 160.00 x 267.00 cm / 63.04 x 105.20 in. 2023
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COP - 20191 Jon Cuyson SOS Vessels acrylic on canvas on wood panel 65.18 x 183.00 cm / 25.68 x 72.10 in. 2023
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SASP - 20107 Isabel Diaz Greens I oil on canvas 176.00 x 244.00 cm / 69.34 x 96.14 in. 1997
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COP - 20203 Martin Honasan Boundaries acrylic, aerosol paint, shaped fabric on canvas 152.40 x 121.92 cm / 60.05 x 48.04 in. 2023
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COP - 20214 Junyee Rainbow Squared soot and paint on aluminum metal sheet 121.83 x 121.83 cm / 48 x 48 in. 2023
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COS - 20255 Impy Pilapil Kelp Forest Series steel, glass, acrylic 274.32 x 60.96 x 60.96 cm / 108.08 x 24.02 x 24.02 in. 2023
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COS - 20231 Roberto M.A. Robles Cross+ teresa beige ph marble 11.75 x 11.75 cm / 4.63 x 4.63 in. 2023
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SASP - 19980 Rodel Tapaya The Generous Man acrylic on canvas 244.00 x 181.00 cm / 96.14 x 71.31 in. 2019
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COP - 20244 COP - 20245 Trek Valdizno Incantation Bliss The Cornucopia of Demeter acrylic on canvas 121.75 x 152.30 cm / 47.97 x 60.01 in. 2024
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COP - 20254 COP - 20253 Nestor Vinluan Copper Spreading Between Turquois and Umber with Blue and Purple From the Flowing Form Series in Black and White acrylic on canvas 182.88 x 182.88 cm / 72.05 x 72.05 in. 2024
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Artist Biographies
Khriss Bajade received his BFA from the University of the Philippines. His works express themes that may embody introspection and expressions of his philosophical, aesthetic, human, and artistic reactions to his immediate environment. His art process involves techniques of cutting and forming metal sheets into a variety of shapes and spaces and attaching these, in several layers, to the box frame base of traditional painting. Ben Cabrera is widely hailed as a master of contemporary Philippine art. A painter and printmaker, he has exhibited widely in the Philippines and in Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 1992, he received the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining. In 2006, he was conferred the Order of National Artist for Visual Arts by President Gloria MacapagalArroyo in Malacañan Palace.
Leonardo Aguinaldo is a Baguio-Benguetbased artist. He roots his work in carving images on wood or rubber and having it printed or worked further as mixed media, which serves as vivid records of local culture. His works are recognized for championing ethnographic art, notable not only for how his chosen subject matter pays homage to the story of a people but also for how his technique and medium hark back to the place where they are made. Gus Albor is a painter and sculptor known for his minimalist abstraction works. A graduate of the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts and a recipient of a British Council study grant to the West Surrey College of Fine Art, his works have been shown in exhibitions in Germany, Italy, Japan, France, and the United States, to name a few. Albor’s distinct partiality for minimal color registers, with extreme subtlety, soft transitions, and muted harmonies.
Karl Castro helps cultivate conversations and interventions across various creative fields, with a focus on art, design, and cinema. He creates art in various media, including painting, weaving, photomedia, and exhibition-making. He is an acclaimed book designer for cultural and scholarly volumes and a poster designer for diverse works of Philippine cinema. He is currently a lecturer at the Department of Fine Arts, Ateneo de Manila University. Valeria Cavestany divides her life between Spain and the Philippines, drawing upon the historical bond between both places. Her artistic journey began with studies in Textile Design in Barcelona, influencing her fascination with patterns, which she incorporates into her montage pieces. She later returned to painting on canvas, drawing from her education in Chinese painting and Asian history at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. Sacha Cotture is a Swiss architect who fosters introspection through nonintellectual processes. This spontaneity is mirrored in his choice of media, with Chinese ink revealing a fresh interpretation of a centuries-old tradition. Through a discipline offering total freedom, Cotture continues to explore the depths of his consciousness, expressed dynamically through his chosen media.
Jon Cuyson is an artist and filmmaker from the Philippines. He received his MFA from Columbia University in New York in 2010 and has participated in both local and international exhibitions. His works investigate and claim horizontality as a form of resistance to verticality. The artist builds layers of acrylic paint and marks on the canvas, repeating and revising in order to build densities on the surface resulting in an interplay of receding and advancing geometric abstract compositions. RM De Leon is best known for his works on paper and collage constructions that intersect social commentary with personal reflection. Trained under the tutelage of Roberto Chabet, De Leon himself is both an educator and practicing artist. While not unique, De Leon’s dual role as an artist and teacher is significant. His classes serve as dialogues, inviting deeper reflection on his own practice.
Impy Pilapil is a sculptor, serigraphist, muralist, and stage designer. She works and moves through various media (stone, glass, steel, wood, and paper) without the burden of hesitation or loss of identity. The evolution of her work has progressed towards large-scale relief and freestanding sculptures, which has made her name synonymous with monumental art commissions. Pilapil’s art centers around themes of solace, tranquility, and the spirit. Roberto M.A. Robles was profoundly influenced by his four-year experience studying and living in Japan. An accomplished artist, Robles is both a painter and sculptor. His work has been exhibited internationally. In 2011, he had a retrospective at the Ateneo Art Gallery.
Rodel Tapaya is celebrated as one of Southeast Asia’s most important contemporary painters. His paintings feature visionary narrative tableaus that Isabel Diaz is a Filipino-born, New Yorkblend folklore, historical references, based artist specializing in oil on canvas. and personal narratives into painterly She is known for her ability to distill entities figurations. Tapaya’s artistic journey began down to their essence and rebuild them at the College of Fine Arts, University of the in a minimalist yet expressive style. Diaz Philippines, where he won the Nokia Art received most of her formal training in Prize in 2001, granting him the opportunity California, where she studied at Chouinard to study at Parsons School of Design and School of Arts and earned a bachelor’s the University of Helsinki. degree in interior design at Woodbury College in Los Angeles. Trek Valdizno is a renowned artist holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting Martin Honasan is a graduate of the Ateneo from the University of the Philippines. de Manila University with a Bachelor of Valdizno’s versatility is showcased through Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. numerous solo and group exhibitions, He is a Philippines-based mixed media earning him recognition such as the Jurors artist working mostly with acrylic paint and Choice from Philip Morris International shaped fabrics on canvas. He has done in 1994 and being a Shell Philippines individual and group exhibitions in the Shell Art Competition Finalist in 1998. His Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, commissioned works for MTV Philippines the USA, and France. and Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong highlight his diverse talents. Junyee is the first of his generation of artists who braved mounting an exhibition Nestor Vinluan is an abstractionist and of works made out of indigenous materials educator who has garnered recognition and in a wide scope of areas. Being the for his finely-crafted and deeply personal father of Installation Art and Indigenous Art depictions of nature. Vinluan’s influence in the country, nature was both his canvas extends into academia, holding the title and material. Junyee emerged as a social of Most Outstanding Fulbright Alumni in realist artist fighting for the preservation Arts and Humanities (2008) and serving and conservation of the environment and as Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the a voice of the oppressed by the dictatorial University of the Philippines and Chair of regime. the Subcommittee for Fine Arts.
Galleria Duemila was established in 1975 by Italian born Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz. Duemila means “twentieth century” and it was this vision that inspired Duemila’s advocacy in promoting and preserving Philippine contemporary art. To date, it is the longest running commercial art gallery in the Philippines maintaining a strong international profile. With the vision to expose its artists locally and within the ASEAN region, Duemila complements its exhibits with performances, readings, and musical events in its custom-built gallery in Pasay City, Manila.
Galleria Duemila takes pride in being the only local gallery to publish and mount retrospectives of artists as part of its advocacy in pursuing art historical research and scholarship. With the collaboration of institutions, Duemila has mounted the retrospectives of Roberto M.A. Robles (Ateneo Art Gallery, 2011), Duddley Diaz (Vargas Museum, 2009), and Julie Lluch Dalena (Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2008). It has also published a book on Diosdado Magno Lorenzo (National Library of the Philippines, 2009) and produced a major Pacita Abad exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2004. The gallery maintains close ties with museums throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States. Its futurist vision keeps it at the cutting-edge of PhiIippine art, making and archiving history as it happens. Services: Conservation and restoration of paintings, consultancy services, commissions
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