Convoluted Universe

Cover Image Aphrodisiac Inside Cover Image Sacred Flower

Convoluted Universe 22 March–14 June 2025 Art Director Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz Gallery Manager Álvaro Talavera Exhibition Team Gabriel Abalos Roy Abrenica Patrocinio Aguirre Jr. Mariela Araza Jose Joeffrey Baba Thess Ponce Graphic Designer Daena Dizon Exhibition Notes Jonathan Olazo Curator Sandra Palomar

This publication © 2025 by Galleria Duemila is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Artist Statement

Convoluted Universe is my perspective on the world at large— my motivation and pressure in this time and age, where everything catapults an existence of disbelief into the world of fake narratives and falsehoods.

As an artist, I began questioning my own existence and defining what exists in my mind. This dreamlike, out-of-this-world abstraction wants to tell a story—a story in which abstraction creates familiarity, as depicted in the natural world. I try to narrate my abstract reality within a world of illusion and misunderstanding—that art, be it non-representational, can tell a story.

Trek Valdizno

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COP - 20530 Tango in Canary Yellow acrylic on canvas 182.88 x 182.88 cm / 72.05 x 72.05 in.

2025

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COP - 20531 Allegory of the Cave acrylic on canvas 182.88 x 182.88 cm / 72.05 x 72.05 in.

2025

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COP - 20532 Pink Fusion acrylic on canvas 182.88 x 182.88 cm / 72.05 x 72.05 in.

2025

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COP - 20533 The Mermaid acrylic on canvas 122.00 x 244.00 cm / 48.07 x 96.14 in.

2025

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COP - 20542 Green Turtle acrylic on canvas 122.00 x 183.00 cm / 48.07 x 72.10 in.

2025 COP - 20541 Sacred Flower acrylic on canvas 122.00 x 183.00 cm / 48.07 x 72.10 in.

2025

COP - 20540 Orange Sky acrylic on canvas 122.00 x 183.00 cm / 48.07 x 72.10 in.

2025

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The Artist Is a Fountain of Truth, Says Bruce

Trek Valdizno’s paintings are a visual feast: a polyphony of gestural shapes and forms thrives in a picture field environed by dazzling and mesmerizing color. In Convoluted Universe, the exhibition’s title, the suite of paintings becomes totemic—by way of allegory, they point to the artist’s soulful musings.

The abstract formations painted by Valdizno are uniquely his own. Albeit complete in themselves, it is noteworthy that these painterly entities complement the biomorphic forms of Filipino abstract painter H. R. Ocampo, one of the patriarchs of Philippine abstract painting, and the strong execution of these forms imbibes the expressionistic spirit of another Filipino master, Jose Joya. The use of color, likewise, is an integral component of the abstractions of both artists, and comparable also to Valdizno’s creative and unrestrained palette.

A tangent in dissecting Valdizno’s powerful use of line and color is to suggest a comparison to Art Nouveau, the artistic movement in Europe in the late 1800s. His shapes and forms are organic, perhaps culled from the natural world of living organisms and plants. His painter’s dibujo is relatively curvilinear and sinuous in expressing his abstract forms.

Valdizno’s masterful use of mesmerizing color combinations, in another unconventional comparison, is akin to the aesthetic of psychedelia that was popular in American art and culture in the 1960s. The bold and invigorating use of color in the art of the period reflected societal unrest and its subsequent response to protest.

It is the artist’s intention to highlight the prevalent misuse of information propagated through various mass media platforms.

Valdizno has allowed a few clues to redirect and contextualize his paintings’ pictorial juggernaut. The artist volunteers in his artist’s notes that his painting foray is a private response to his own experienced quagmire—his own coming to terms with the digression of truthful facts. These paintings are about “this time and age, where everything catapults an existence of disbelief into the world of fake narratives and falsehoods.”

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Abstract painting, in its more than a century-long period of practice by artists, has reflected the negative effects of the industrial and modern world. Valdizno’s sentiments may well echo the classical call by theorist Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message,” recognizing the power of the message’s carrier as more the point of inquiry, as these collective and exclusive groups or individuals have within their grasp the ability to manipulate, perhaps tamper with and edit information, or propagate another version altogether. The medium is the tool that shapes and forms our beliefs, which, in turn, dictate our everyday routines.

Valdizno is transparent in admitting that the misuse of information has rendered his private reality unstable and fearful. “As an artist, I began questioning my own existence and defining what exists in my mind. This dreamlike, out-ofthis-world abstraction wants to tell a story—a story in which abstraction creates familiarity, as depicted in the natural world.

I try to narrate my abstract reality within a world of illusion and misunderstanding—that art, be it non-representational, can tell a story.” Perhaps it is interesting to include here, as both counterpoint and agreement, a conclusive statement deduced more than a century ago by the Russian painter and godhead Vassily Kandinsky: “The more frightening the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.”

It is plausible to posit Valdizno’s abstraction, as it diverges into narratives while exploring the formalist attributes of painting, alongside the genealogies of Lyrical Abstraction—a breakaway from the more astute and pragmatic manner of abstraction that seeks to negate any semblance of sentiment and narrative. Proponents of said artistic direction must include the aforementioned Kandinsky, and moving down the canon of Western painting, the Spanish painter Antoni Tàpies and the American artist Cy Twombly. Abstract painting has its own language of delivering a narrative, as compared to photography and film, which offer a direct and literal representation. An abstract painting speaks through the emotive power of its presence, vis-à-vis a viewer.

Valdizno has long recognized the challenges and difficulties of creating an abstract painting, and has operated with panache in regurgitating his own artistic solutions. Gifted with a very talented drafting hand, he has his stylistic pulse in delivering the perfect “accidental” brushstroke. And thus, his genius lies in his natural disposition to abstract form.

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Part and parcel of Valdizno’s praxis is his vital manipulation of the painting’s ground and figure. He is very adept at reading the ground he is faced with and, perhaps, regards it as the “arena” in which to propagate an abstract shape formed in his psyche.

It can be likened to a palimpsest: his painted canvas, worked on through a period of time with a culmination of layers of brushwork, is a receptacle of constantly moving thoughts. It is his personal diary.

Waxing rhetorical and taking a sincere dive to romanticize the artist’s plight, the following descriptions are paraphrases of vital, existing landmark texts on the subject: The painter stands in the gap—between immateriality and materiality. He is a philosopher and poet at the same, writing his observations about the world in his own pictorial prose. He mulls over and rejects the evil in the world. His sensitivity allows him to empathize. His sensibilities allow him to organize his mental waverings and prevail in calming the quiver in his soul.

The painter’s method in the madness addresses the zeitgeist: a collective consciousness controlled by an invisible matrix.

Bono sang about the double reality and illusion of being “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” while Baudrillard noticed we are predisposed to invent a counterfeit and fantasy world to cope.

Piet proposed that a painting aspires to be a model for the Shangri-La. Is painting an illusion? Or is it more real than what is real—or what we perceive to be real?

He arms himself like the bullfighter in the arena, in his desire to conquer the blank expanse of the empty and foreboding canvas.

He risks everything when he steps in and faces the advance of the raging bull. Barthes proclaimed that the hand and the arm are instrumental extensions of the artist’s body, therefore tempered initially by his intellect, and ultimately his soul—in order to gain conquest of the expanse and asseverate his feelings.

Jonathan Olazo

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COP - 20537 Aphrodisiac acrylic on canvas 152.00 x 152.00 cm / 59.89 x 59.89 in.

2025

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COP - 20539 Full Circle acrylic on canvas 152.00 x 152.00 cm / 59.89 x 59.89 in.

2025

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COP - 20538 Venus acrylic on canvas 152.00 x 152.00 cm / 59.89 x 59.89 in.

2025

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COP - 20534 Gardens of Babylon acrylic on canvas 122.00 x 244.00 cm / 48.07 x 96.14 in.

2025

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COP - 20535 The Voyage acrylic on canvas 122.00 x 244.00 cm / 48.07 x 96.14 in.

2025

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COP - 20536 Betelgeuse acrylic on canvas 152.00 x 152.00 cm / 59.89 x 59.89 in.

2025

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Trek Valdizno b. 1968, Bulacan, Philippines

Education Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Painting College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines Diliman Professional Experience 1998–2000, Art Instructor, International School of Manila, Makati City 1998, Art Instructor, Third Space Arts & Laboratory, Quezon City 1997, Art Instructor, Philippine Airlines (PAL) Sports Center, Pasay City 1995, Art Instructor, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1995, Apprenticeship, Museum Apprenticeship Program, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Manila 1995, Seminar, National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), NCCA Conference Hall, Intramuros, Manila 1995, Seminar, Preventive Conservation of Museum Artifacts, Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila Solo Exhibitions 2025, Convoluted Universe, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2023, Concentric Heavens, The Drawing Room, Makati City 2022, Beguiling Temptation, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2019, Temporal Dislocation, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2018, The Drawing Room, Makati City 2016, Space Dust, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2015, Give Me Space and Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Slot Gallery, Australia 2014, Plethora, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2014, Carpe Diem, The Drawing Room, Makati City 2012, Mutual Gravitation, The Drawing Room, Makati City

2011, Fortune Cookie, The Drawing Room, Makati City 2008, Urgent Paintings from San Rafael, Bulacan, Artist Corpus Gallery, Mandaluyong City 2007, Phantasmagoria, Mag:net Café, High Street, The Fort, Taguig City 2006, Reductio Ad Absurdum, Mag:net Gallery ABS-CBN, Quezon City 2005, Non-Geographic Specific Familiarity, Alliance Française de Manille, Makati City 2005, Blind Paintings, West Gallery, Quezon City 2005, Surface Tensions, Finale Art File, Mandaluyong City 2000, Recent Sculptures, The Drawing Room, Makati City 2000, Recent Sculptures, Butterfly Blue Bar, Quezon City 2000, Luna, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1999, Drawings and Sculptures, Matina Bar, Manila 1998, Bodies of Water, Bulwagang Fernando Amorsolo, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila 1998, Divination, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1998, Freedom, World Trade Center, Manila 1997, Earthly Paragon, Gallery 139, Alabang, Muntinlupa City 1997, Heaven and Earth, Old Mansion, Cagayan 1997, Climate, Weather, Seasons, Rainbows, Finale Art File, Mandaluyong City 1997, Revolution, Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City 1996, Transfiguration, Lopez Museum, Pasig City 1995, Polarity of the Oblivions, West Gallery, Quezon City 1995, Conversion, Alliance Française de Manille, Makati City 1993, Clouds Part I, Pasillo Carlos V. Francisco, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila 1993, Clouds Part II, Pasillo Carlos V. Francisco, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila 1993, Double Entendre, De La Salle University Gallery 1991, Bubblegum State, West Gallery, Quezon City 23

Group Exhibitions 2024, Xavier Art Fest 2024, Galleria Duemila, Fr. Cortina Sports Center, Xavier School, San Juan 2023, ALT Philippines 2023, Galleria Duemila, SMX Hall 4, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City 2023, Xavier Art Fest 2023, Galleria Duemila, Fr. Cortina Sports Center, Xavier School, San Juan 2022, It’s Casual Entertainment, We Aim to Please!, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2021, Pause to Reframe, ALT Philippines 2021, Finale Art File, Makati City 2020, Carpe Diem: Beyond Seizing the Day, ALT Philippines 2020, Taguig City 2018, Pasasalamat, Finale Art File, Makati City 2018, An Italian in Manila, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2018, Art Fair Philippines 2018, Makati City 2016, They Speak to You by Association, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2015, Art Fair Philippines 2015, Makati City 2013, Placebo Painting, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2011, Complete and Unabridged, Institute of Contemporary Art, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore 2010, Faith and Reason, Manila Contemporary, Makati City 2010, Lightning Show, Manila Contemporary, Makati City 2010, See You in My Next Dream, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2010, Ateneo Art Auction, Makati City 2010, China International Gallery Exposition, China 2009, Art Singapore, The Contemporary Asian Art Fair, Singapore 2009, Drawing Painting, Galleria Duemila, Pasay City 2009, China International Gallery Exposition, China 2009, Manila Art, World Trade Center, Manila 2009, Art Flood Auction 2009, Here Be Dragons, Manila Contemporary, Makati City 2009, Art Manila ‘09, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City 2009, Coloratura, MO_Space, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City

2009, Recurring Fancies, Artis Corpus Gallery, Mandaluyong City 2008, Inaugural Show, Mag:net, Makati City 2008, Christmas Show, Mag:net, Katipunan, Quezon City 2008, 12 x 9 Show, West Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 2007, Nostalgia Is Not What It Used to Be, Mag:net, Katipunan, Quezon City 2007, Christmas Show, Mag:net, Katipunan, Quezon City 2006, On Paper, Mag:net, ABS-CBN, Quezon City 2005, Unna, Galeria Esperanza, San Pablo City 2005, Christmas Show, Mag:net, Katipunan, Quezon City 2005, Zone, Mag:net Gallery, Makati City 2004, Christmas Show, West Gallery, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 2004, Christmas Show, West Gallery, West Avenue, Quezon City 2004, Christmas Show, West Gallery, Glorietta, Makati City 2004, Trip, The Drawing Room, Makati City 2004, Inventory, Cubicle Gallery, Pasig City 2004, The Sedimentation of the Mind Is a Jumbled Museum, Jorge Vargas Museum, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City 2002, Reflecting Skin, Pinto Art Gallery, Antipolo City 2001, True Confessions: Words, Thoughts, Acts, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 2000, Drawings, Starbucks Café, Makati City 2000, Butterflies, Butterfly Blue Bar, Quezon City 1999, Drawings in Color, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1999, Recent Drawings, The Drawing Room, Makati City 1999, Lightning Show, Big Sky Mind Gallery, Quezon City 1998, Illuminated Pleasures, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1998, Ten: Recent Paintings, Lopez Museum, Pasig City 1998, UP Alumni Association, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1998, Et al, Soumak, Makati City 24

1998, Drawings, Finale Art File, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1998, Kata Kata, Third Space, Quezon City 1997, The Inner Child, Gallery 3, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1997, Personal Holidays, Mai Room, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1997, Art in the Park, Greenbelt Park, Makati City 1997, Conversational Piece, Gallery 3, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1997, The Miter Box, The Plumbing Trap, God and Other Matters, West Gallery, Quezon City 1997, Ground Zero, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1997, Dividing Line, West Gallery, Quezon City 1997, Hakut, Junk Shop Gallery, Quezon City 1996, Dangerous Metaphor, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1996, Images, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1996, Wall Bound, Gallery 3, Ayala Museum, Makati City 1996, Measure and Metaphor, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1995, Journey to the Void, De La Salle University Gallery, Manila 1995, Paintings by Numbers, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila 1995, Recent Works, Finale Art File, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1994, Pleasure of Painting, Art Center, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City 1993, Fear and Desire, Bulwagang Juan Luna, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila 1993, Large Animal Surgery Lab, West Gallery, Quezon City 1993, Narrative and Allegory, Alliance Française de Manille, Makati City 1992, Recent Paintings, Thesis Exhibition, UP College of Fine Arts, Quezon City 1991, Embargo, UP Faculty Center, Quezon City 1991, Dog Days, Alliance Française de Manille, Makati City Touring Exhibitions 2001, Faith in the City, ABN AMRO House, Penang, Malaysia

2001, Faith in the City, Valentine Willie Fine Arts, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2000, Faith in the City, Earl Lu Gallery, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore Collaborative Projects 2004, Terrain Games, collaboration with Sandra Palomar, Magnet Paseo, Makati City 1998, Sightings (Le Corbeau Rouge), performance and installation with Sandra Palomar, Third Space Arts and Laboratory, Quezon City 1998, Earthly Paragons, collaborative painting exhibition with Popo San Pascual, Gallery 139, Alabang, Muntinlupa City 1997, Box, collaborative works with Sandra Palomar and others, Salle Stratis Andreadis (Mediatheque), École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France Awards 1998, Shell Philippines, Shell Art Competition Finalist 1994, Philip Morris International, Philippine Art Awards, Juror’s Choice Commissioned Works 1997, MTV Philippines 1997, LG Collins Philippines 1997, Movies, Television, Rating and Classification Board (MTRCB) 1997, Philippine Airlines Lobby Lounge 1997, Kai Tak International Airport, Hong Kong Art Auctions 2011, Asian Cultural Council 2010, Ateneo Art Auction 2010, Asian Cultural Council 2009, Art Flood Auction 2002, Blue Print Auction

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Galleria Duemila was established in 1975

by Italian born Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz.

Duemila means “twentieth century” and it was this vision that inspired the gallery’s advocacy in promoting and preserving Philippine contemporary art. To date, it is the longest-standing commercial art gallery in the Philippines maintaining a strong international profile.

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, Galleria 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.

Galleria Duemila is a presumed important cultural property through Article III of the National Heritage Act of 2009 (R.A. 10066) and is listed as a local cultural property of Pasay under City Ordinance No. 4624 series of 2019.

Gawad Parangal para sa mga Alagad ng Sining ng Pasay (2023) Plaque of Local Cultural Property (2023)

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