Category: art writing

  • Shara Francisco – ang mga bagay ay nakakaramdam

    Shara Francisco – ang mga bagay ay nakakaramdam

    May 17-24, 2025First United Building Community MuseumEscolta Street, Manila In this sensorial investigation, Shara Francisco began with a hypothesis: “objects can feel” (or as the exhibit title declares in Filipino: “ang mga bagay ay nakakaramdam”). Carrying her experience with visual programming and their interactions with sound artists, she then asked: “how?” More than anthropomorphizing (“how…

  • Jershon Pagilagan and Fort Molina – The World We Made

    November 23 – December 6, 2024First United Building Community MuseumEscolta Street, Manila In the depths of the forest, beneath its towering trees, a world we often overlook quietly thrives: the forest floor. This layer of life is teeming with mosses, ferns, and small plants, each playing a quiet but important role in the ecosystem. Conservationists…

  • Mae Aguinaldo-Mapa – Taghiyawat Na Naging Nunal

    Mae Aguinaldo-Mapa – Taghiyawat Na Naging Nunal

    November 9-30, 2024First United Building Escolta Street, Manila For children, imagination is second nature. As we grow older, we learn that not everything is possible. Our aptitude to imagine boundlessly eventually finds corners and walls as we get acquainted with reality. “Taghiyawat Na Naging Nunal” is an attempt to bring back our childlike way of…

  • Alvin Zafra – Miragen

    Alvin Zafra – Miragen

    October 17 – November 14, 2024ArtinformalMakati, Metro Manila In the depth of encompassing darkness, light persists in varying degrees. At times, it bounces faintly on surfaces; once in a while, it pierces brightly as a source. What can be seen is not only at the whim of what was made visible by light, but also…

  • Julius Redillas – Word on the Street

    Julius Redillas – Word on the Street

    May 4 – June 1, 2024Art Cube GalleryMakati, Metro Manila Word on the street whispers of the return of Julius Redillas’ sinewy enigmatic figures. In this latest collection, Redillas draws inspiration from the myriad details of everyday life that surround him. Within the sanctuary of his own home, the figures of the Virgin Mary and…

  • Christian Gonzales – Sonata

    Christian Gonzales – Sonata

    October 21-November 20, 2023Fifty One Collective Art HausMandaluyong, Metro Manila Music marked Christian Gonzales’s passage back to his childhood passion: painting. In 2015, he flew to Europe to sing for a company event. This vocal performance allowed him to express his creative spirit amidst the humdrum of his corporate day-to-day work. Four years after his…

  • Rick Rocamora’s Dark Memories: Burying texts under photos, and vice versa

    For a photography exhibition, the ones shot by Rick Rocamora for Dark Memories: Incarceration, Disappearance, and Death During Martial Law are actually not the main vehicle for the stories, but words. Dark Memories is part of the two-part show at Ateneo Art Gallery to continue to remember the country’s dark past that happened 50 years…

  • AI Art in Fredrik Jameson’s Postmodern World

    An art competition at a US state fair stirred the entire art world last September. The winning entry, ‘Théâtre D’opéra Spatial’, a work by Jason Allen created through Midjourney, sparked conversations online (mostly on the side of disapproval and/or alarm) about the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create art. In a rather simplistic and…

  • Guillermo’s Wind of Change

    It was 1981 when art critic Alice Guillermo published Endaya’s Wind of Change at the Observer magazine, a weekly supplement of The Times Journal. At that time, she was already an established art critic; from bagging the Art Association of the Philippines’ Art Criticism Award in 1976, to having her byline in multiple publications. It…

  • Illusion of lenticular printing and faith healing in Barrio Sagrado

    In Barrio Sagrado, Veejay Villafranca ventures to explore the different facets of Filipino faith through his lens. The impetus that launched this long-term project was personal: a newspaper clipping about his grandfather who was plausibly poisoned by a faith healer. In the 70s, journalist Vic Villafranca went to Baguio for an assignment to uncover psychic…