18 October – 22 November 2025
Art Director
Silvana Ancellotti-Diaz
Exhibition Team
Thess Ponce
Sarah Jean Ruales
Roy Abrenica
Gabriel Abalos
Jose Joeffrey Baba
Mariela Araza
Patrocinio Aguirre Jr.
Franco Zuñiga
Graphic Designer
Jean Isabel Magcamit
Exhibition Notes
Janine Go Dimaranan
Curator
Leslie de Chavez
by Janine Go Dimaranan
Breathing is the most essential of bodily processes, continuously facilitating the exchange between the body and the atmosphere. As air enters the nose, it is filtered and warmed, and travels downward until it reaches the tiny sacs in the lungs where true transmission occurs. Within these fragile sacs, oxygen passes and binds, while carbon dioxide, the waste of cellular metabolism, moves out to be expelled with the next exhalation. Here, the body transforms invisible air into the fuel of life, sustaining the constant labor of trillions of cells. Each breath, brief and often unnoticed, is a vital act that carries unfathomable depth. As the ancient saying goes, hanggang sa huling hininga; breath then is the fragile line that defines the final threshold where life gives way to death.
The exhibition To Carry More Than Air explores this phenomenon in its elemental and profound registers – breathing as a means of revitalization and release, and a way of taking in and engaging with the world. Primarily a physiological process, ten artists from diverse practices intervene in the course of breath through visual and spatial media, translating the rhythm of inhalation and exhalation into perceptible form. In this paradigm, the exhibition presents breath not only as a subject that generates meaning, but also as method and measurement.
The works of Jomar Galutera, inspired by the Bataan Death March; accord with Jelly Jimenez, whose work captures the almost breathless force of a typhoon; Renz Baluyot, with his covered and bound paintings that evoke asphyxiation; and Lymuel Bautista, with his precise rendering of a fence; find similar visual strategies with Joen S udlon, whose mythical image is molded by the influences of the past. All of these works signal limitations, boundaries, and struggle, yet through these intense and forceful images, one also senses the opposite – freedom, relief, and even transcendence. From the act of holding one’s breath arises the inevitable need to exhale or sigh. In the curator’s prompt, Leslie De Chavez refers to buntong-hininga as a kind of breath laden with tension and burden.
In contrast, the works of Alee Garibay depict religious images rendered silent and cathartic; while Lyn Patricio evokes light and flowing inner worlds; and Guenivere Decena bridges the cosmic and the finite with her cosmetic explorations. Their works speak of salvation and the unbound, where vast and expansive elements coexist with intimate details that signal the viewer to navigate between universality and personal reflection. They envision breath as a pathway inward, inviting viewers to enter the self, linger in suspended moments, and encounter the infinite within.
Lastly, the works of Janrey Llegue serve as a form of breathing exercise, a ceremony through which he honors the day by marking the cadence of his awareness and attentiveness. These are complemented by the works of Christopher Zamora, who celebrates the breath of everyday life by transforming mundane images into moments of careful observation. He draws attention to the subtle, and often overlooked patterns that sustain daily existence. Together, their works emphasize breath as both practice and perception, inviting viewers to see the ordinary as extraordinary and to experience the flow of life in the most immediate of forms.
Alee Garibay operates in the charged space between memory and immediacy, where personal history becomes universal through her distinctive painterly language. Her canvases capture fleeting moments with theatrical intensity—figures emerging from moody atmospheric grounds through expressive brushwork that alternates between bold gestural passages and meticulously built layers, while script-like abstractions weave through compositions like fragmentary whispers of half-remembered conversations.
COP - 20620
Deus Dormiens oil on canvas
40.50 x 38.00 cm / 15.96 x 14.97 in. 2025
Since 2005, she’s maintained eleven solo exhibitions while directing Artletics Inc, channeling art’s transformative potential into community engagement through the Linangan Art Residency. Garibay demonstrates how contemporary practice can be both deeply personal and socially engaged, creating work that resonates beyond gallery walls.
A punk and a pedestrian, Christopher Zamora learns from the multitude of truth and ways of life of the streets. He prefers being outside than in the convenience of structured spaces. He takes interest in the idea of transit, of shifts and movements and sets his beliefs and practice in collective actions. In his works, he borrows from print, television, and the Internet to visualize his observations and inquiries. His paintings favor a darker palette that insinuates a somber perspective. Zamora studied Fine Arts at the Philippine Women’s University. He has held several one-man exhibitions and participated in various group exhibitions in the Philippines and abroad since 2000 including participation in “Artriangle” Kuala Lumpur (2008), and “Art Beijing” China (2008), and “Tenggara” at Novas Gallery, Liverpool (2010). Zamora has also received artist residency grants from Project Space Pilipinas, Mandaluyong, Philippines (2008), NEAR Dangsang, Seoul, South Korea (2009), Goyang Studio, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea (2009-2010) and Southeast Asian Art Group Exchange, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines (2011).Every breath you take is Zamora’s 11th solo exhibition held at HOM Art Trans in Malaysia (2016).
COP - 20635
Pabalat oil on canvas
122.00 x 76.00 cm /
48.07 x 29.94 in. 2025
Guen considers herself a traveler of the psyche, focusing on the poetry and science of interconnections. Her practice spans various forms of visual arts and music. She served as the regional curator for Region 6 during VIVA ExCon 2020 – Kalibutan: The World in Mind. Her solo exhibitions include Take Cover (2018) and The Will of Becoming (2015) at Rebels for Life Galerie, Seon, Switzerland; Fragile (2014) at HOM Art Trans, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Intersections (2013) at NOVA Gallery, Makati City; and Suspend the World (2012) at Alliance Française de Manille, Embassy of France, Philippines. From 2022 to 2025, Guen taught Fine Arts at La Consolacion College, Bacolod. She is currently a full-time artist and cultural worker engaged in community initiatives within and around Negros Occidental.
COP - 20629 Just Embrace Me, No Matter Where You Are
Jan Llegue, born in 1992 in Silay City, Negros Occidental, is a visual artist and graphic designer. Coming from a working-class background, Jan offers a unique perspective on the dignified struggles of everyday life. Transitioning from a career in graphic design and advertising, he turned to painting during the pandemic, focusing on themes of Philippine culture, society, labor, and religion. Since 2020, he has actively participated in numerous group exhibitions, showcasing his evolving style and steadfast dedication to storytelling through art. Llegue’s paintings serve as poignant invitations to explore the intricacies of Philippine society, prompting viewers to confront oftenoverlooked realities. Through his art, he sparks dialogue, nurtures empathy, and inspires positive change within his community and beyond.
[Artwork details to be updated soon]
Angelee (Jelly) Jimenez (born 2002, Pangasinan) is a self-taught visual artist whose work seamlessly blends elements of magical surrealism and expressionism. Her creative process is deeply intuitive, often beginning without preliminary sketches as she paints directly onto the canvas. This instinctive approach allows her to explore raw emotion and dreamlike imagery, resulting in artworks that feel both deeply personal and otherworldly. Guided by feeling rather than formal technique, Jimenez visual narratives that blur the line between reality and fantasy, reflecting her unique inner world.
Jelly’s artwork combines artistic expression with a revolutionary spirit. After completing her residency in Linangan, she conceived the idea of creating an avenue to support her fellow artists and foster creative freedom. This initiative, named the “Kulay Gabay Project,” aims to provide an alternative learning space in Pangasinan. It is an artist-driven effort that promotes the growth of art through a series of free discussions and workshops, involving individuals, communities, and organizations. Inspired by the sense of community she experienced in Linangan, she hopes this project will offer valuable opportunities for local members to nurture and expand their creativity.
COP - 20622
Joen Sudlon is a Manila-based artist born in Aklan. He graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Eulogio Amang Rodriguez Institute of Science and Technology, and has been exhibiting in both local and international group shows since 2012. In 2020, Sudlon became an alumni artist of the Linangan Art Residency under the mentorship of Emmanuel “Manny” Garibay, and was awarded a “Tuklas” grant at Eskinita Art Gallery, where he was guided by Alfredo Esquillo. He remains active in national art competitions, consistently refining his artistic practice.
Since 2014, Sudlon has worked primarily with dry media such as graphite and charcoal. His distinct mode of figuration—rooted in memory and imagination—sets him apart from his contemporaries. Much of his inspiration stems from Aklan, where he grew up amid coastal landscapes, practices of sustainable living, and the rhythms of local fishermen who spend their days at sea in pursuit of the “big catch.”
In mid-2023, he expanded his practice by incorporating oil and acrylic, adding color as a means to deepen his narratives and sharpen the resonance of his concepts. His first solo exhibition, Salamangka, at Eskinita Art Farm, reintroduced storytelling as a way of confronting the fractures of a dysfunctional nation. Here, Sudlon assumed the role of chronicler, decoding the surreal and the macabre and transforming them into allegorical parables. His second oneman show titled Salamin, at Vantage Contemporary, turned inward, reflecting on his primal bond with the natural world and its transformations across generations. At the same time, the works served as a mirror to society, intertwining reflections of both past and present in a contemplative dialogue.
COP - 20623
Impluwensya oil on canvas
142.00 x 111.50 cm / 55.95 x 43.93 in. 2025
Galutera (b. 1981, Balanga City) is a Filipino visual artist. His practice interrogates the structures of power—and the power of structures—to uncover contentious histories and unfinished narratives of the nation. His works also explore themes of memory, as well as personal and historical trauma. He works across various media, including painting, drawing, photography, and moving images. Since 2014, he has been part of the independent artist-run initiative Project Space Pilipinas.
COP - 20637
To Live Is To Die acrylic and oil on canvas, TV monitor
(60.96 x 60.96 cm each panels and 21-inches TV monitor) 2025
Jenny Lyn Patricio is a mixed media and tattoo artist from Nasugbu, Batangas, who works primarily with water-based media such as watercolor, ink, and coffee pigment. Her abstract surrealist work is distinguished by its ethereal, fluid quality, where organic forms and faces emerge with a delicate, dreamlike presence.
An artist deeply guided by intuition and a raw, instinctive approach to creation, she believes that art is a gateway to something beyond the visible. She has a deep fascination with watching watercolors and inks spread their colors spontaneously, a process that reflects her approach to seeing and creating art.
She is a fellow at the acclaimed 2025 Linangan Art Residency in Alfonso, Cavite, and a member of the Philippine Guild of Watercolorists. In 2024, she was named a finalist in the GSIS National Art Competition.
COP - 20624
Moment of Stillness
acrylic and ink on satin
60.80 x 45.80 cm /
23.96 x 18.05 in.
2025
COP - 20625
Reflection
acrylic and ink on satin
60.80 x 45.80 cm /
23.96 x 18.05 in.
2025
- 20626
60.80 x 45.80 cm / 23.96 x 18.05 in. 2025
- 20627
60.80 x 45.80 cm / 23.96 x 18.05 in. 2025
Let’s
COP - 20628
Lymuel Bautista (b. 1994) grew up in San Jose, Calumpit, Bulacan. He studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in Visual Communication at Bulacan State University. Bautista had won several art competitions, such as in 2018, when he won the Grand Prize award in Vision Petron National Art Competition. In 2021, he became shortlisted in Ateneo Art Gallery MarcianoGalang Acquisition Prize. He also placed as a semi-finalist in 2016 and 2018 in Metrobank Art and Design Excellence, and in 2021, he won the Grand Prize in the water-based division of the same national contest. He also became a “Tuklas” awardee under the mentorship of two well-known artists, Renato Habulan and Alfredo Esquillo, as part of Eskinita Art Gallery’s year long mentoring program for young artists in 2019. Bautista’s works fearlessly focus on social ills, human rights narratives, and his own personal experiences. He is best known for distorted, warped figures stressing struggle in its most crucial definition. As an artist, among his many influences are music and his experience as a student journalist. Both had a great impact on his explorations in creating striking surreal works.
Renz Baluyot (b. 1989, Saudi Arabia), a Filipino visual artist based in the Manila, Philippines, focuses his art practice on the relevance of the past to the present, specifically in socio-political narratives situated within present-day urban realities. His work centers on urban decay (rust, tarpaulins, and objects) and artifacts, alongside traditional still life and landscapes. From these elements, he questions the temporality of urban destruction and investigates how these marks of the past have influenced the present under oppressive political and economic systems.
While primarily a painter, Renz Baluyot has worked on sculpture, textiles, and installations aiming to redefine relations with communities and collective memory. Inspired by craft practices and traditions from local artisans, he explores his identity within postcolonial societal structures. He weaves archives with oral histories in order to amplify marginalized perspectives. Baluyot discovers ways in which alternative knowledge manifests through his practice.
Baluyot received his BFA from the University of the Philippines, Diliman and completed artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (US), Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency (US), Rimbun Dahan (MY), Orange Project (PH), Bellas Artes Projects (PH), YOD AIR Program (JP), and was selected for a fellowship grant at the Vermont Studio Centre (US). In 2019, he was one of the artists presented at the exhibition Living Earth: Contemporary Philippine Art, curated by Luca Beatrice and Patrick Flores in Milan, Italy.
Baluyot received the Juror’s Choice Award of Merit in the 25th Philippine Art Awards (2020) and was one of the finalists in the Ateneo Art Awards – Fernando Zóbel Prizes for Visual Art (2021) for his exhibition, Empire at West Gallery.
COP - 20633
Within Stillness I acrylic and ink on satin oil on canvas
76.00 x 61.00 cm / 29.94 x 24.03 in.
2025
COP - 20634
Within Stillness II oil on canvas
76.00 x 61.00 cm / 29.94 x 24.03 in.
2025
- 20632
Soft Weight of Silence oil on canvas
152.50 x 152.50 cm / 60.09 x 60.09 in. 2025
Manila-born Filipino artist Leslie de Chavez has been widely recognized for his incisive and sensible forays into history, cultural imperialism, religion, and contemporary life. Responding to urgent material conditions through his deconstructions of master texts, icons, and the symbols of his times, de Chavez strikes a balance between iconoclasm and an affirmative outlook to the relevance and accountability of art to one’s milieu. Leslie de Chavez has held several solo exhibitions in the Philippines, China, Korea, Singapore, UK, and Switzerland. He has also participated in several notable exhibitions and art festivals, which include the Singapore Biennale 2013, 3rd Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan 2011, 3rd Nanjing Triennial in China 2008, First Pocheon Asia Biennale in South Korea 2007. A two-time award winner (2010/2014) of the Ateneo Art Awards for Visual Art, Leslie de Chavez is also the director/founder of the artist-run initiative Project Space Pilipinas, in Lucban, Quezon.
Janine Go Dimaranan was born and raised in San Pablo City, Laguna. She studied Theater Arts at the Philippine High School for the Arts and earned a B.A. in Language and Literature from the University of the Philippines Baguio. An independent writer and researcher, she coedited Danas: Mga Pag-aakda ng Babae Ngayon (Gantala Press, 2017), a literary anthology of women’s writings, and has published the poetry collections IO (Gantala Press, 2020) and Banahaw (self-published, 2024).
She has adapted, edited, and translated children’s books for Southern Voices Printing Press, including Sayaw ng Pantaron (2021), Mahiwagang Tungkod ni Lolo Jose (2021), Datu Birang (2023), Sabik (2025), Si Oktopunas sa Dagat ng Isla Manlanat (2025), and Gustong Maglala ni Berto (forthcoming). Her English translation of Nakikisilong (2023, 2025) was supported by the National Book Development Board’s Translation Grant Program.
She has also edited art publications such as Pinto Art Museum Collection Monograph Series: Emmanuel Garibay (Pinto, 2025) and Art History as the Evolution of the Sacred by Emmanuel Garibay (Artletics Inc., 2025), a recipient of the NCCA Competitive Arts Grant. She is currently working with Mark Justiniani on a book about his artistic practice spanning more than 25 years.
While breath is a pathway to the essential activity that sustains life, it also serves as a measure of presence and a method that defines the dimensions of human experience. In this exhibition of paintings, drawings, and mixed-media pieces, this duality of breath is reflected in the works themselves. Pieces marked by wild, expansive strokes and unrestrained motions enact a kind of exhalation, where a release of energy and emotion onto the surface is translated into the materiality of the medium. Conversely, meticulously controlled works, in which every line, mark, and color is carefully calibrated and composed, perform an inhalation, a deliberate intake of focus and restraint that produces a visual experience as attentive as the drawing in of air.
Breath also functions as a metric in terms of scale and spatial appearance, as each piece occupies its own dimensional field with size and proportion. Larger canvases call for a witnessing that echoes expansive breath, while smaller works invite close scrutiny and subtler modulation of respiration. In both, the artist’s breathing is inscribed through the sweep of grand gestures or the precision of concentrated strokes.
This is how breath structures and forms, integral in the meaning, method and measure of the definitions of art and life. As breath traces the intimate links between time, the body, and the environment, this exhibition offers space to contemplate the fragility, continuity, and intensity of life itself.
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.
210 Loring Street
1300 Pasay City, Metro Manila
+63 908 307 9972
+63 2 8831 9990
+63 2 8833 9815
gduemila@gmail.com art@galleriaduemila.com www.galleriaduemila.com
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)
