Vargas Museum Acquires Sculptures by Gary-Ross Pastrana and Stanley Ruiz

The collaborative work of Silverlens Represented Artist Gary-Ross Pastrana and New York-based designer Stanley Ruiz has been acquired by the Vargas Museum with the support of Silverlens Galleries, Blanc Gallery, and the Japan Foundation.

With the support of the Japan Foundation, Blanc, and Silverlens Galleries, the U.P. Vargas Museum acquires sculptural pieces by 13 Artist grant recipient Gary-Ross Pastrana and New York-based Filipino Designer Stanley Ruiz. The sculptures will be formally presented on March 4, Tuesday, 4:00PM at the museum grounds and will coincide with the reception of the Curatorial Workshop organized by Vargas Museum and Japan Foundation.

Both artists are graduates of the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts and have exhibited locally and internationally in the field of design and contemporary art practice. Originally created as a collaborative installation for a design laboratory initiated by the Japan Foundation, the sculptures were created in response to the Berg Space at First United Building (formerly Perez-Samanillo Building), a building designed by Juan Luna’s son, Architect Andres Luna de San Pedro. Both artists were inspired by the art deco elements of the architecture and lines of the building, in addition to the historical elements of Escolta.

Gary-Ross Pastrana is an artist/curator who is known for his installations, while Stanley Ruiz is an industrial designer whose work encompasses design, function and artistic practice.

The sculptures created by Pastrana and Ruiz complement the modernist elements of the U.P Vargas Museum building as well as its growing outdoor sculpture collection alongside the works of Abdulmari Imao, Cian Dayrit, Florante Caedo and Duddley Diaz and in the wider context of the other sculptural pieces around U.P. Diliman campus by National Artists Guillermo Tolentino and Napoleon Abueva. Ildefenso Marcelo, and Renato Rocha.

U.P. Vargas Museum Roxas Avenue, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101 Philippines Tel +63 928 1927; +63 981 8500 local 4021, 4022 or 4024. Hours: Tues – Sat 9:00 am to 5:00 pm email: vargasmuseum@gmail.com web: www.vargasmuseum.upd.edu.ph

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About the Artists

Gary-Ross PASTRANA (b. 1977) graduated with his BFA from University of the Philippines. Known for his sculptural installations, he was the Philippine representative to Busan Biennale in Korea (2008) and participated in Aichi Triennial (2010). He is a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines(2006), and was also the co-founder/curator of Future Prospect, an alternative art space in Cubao, Philippines. Pastrana’s works are about things broken apart, and the sudden space between the separated parts. In Busan Biennale (2008), he showed Collapsible Stream, a boat airmailed from Japan to Korea in pieces, created during his artist residency in Kyoto. He has exhibited in cities such as Manila, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bangkok, and Hong Kong among others. He lives and works in Manila.

Stanley Ruiz (b. 1976, Quezon City) is an industrial designer and media artist whose works are primarily expressed through objects that lie within the domains of design, craft, sound performance, and media arts. His works explore the synthesis of the natural and the man-made, human and object interaction, hardware hacking and customization, with a deliberate bent towards craft as a method of production. He has exhibited extensively in the USA, Europe, and Asia. He was the Philippine delegate to the 4th Asia-Europe Artcamp in Helsinki, Finland, where he presented his work Sound Economy.Ph (1976-2006) - a project that used Philippine economic data as an algorithm in audio-visual composition. Born and raised in Quezon City, he published the independent punk ‘zine Voice Out! and played in several underground bands in Manila from the early to late-90’s. He moved to Brooklyn, New York in 2004 and the following year founded the folk-inspired experimental noise group Gunung Sari.

Source: http://goo.gl/gJ2O4G

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Paparazzo With A Paintbrush

Paparazzo with a paintbrush

Janet Balbarona captures the zeitgeist of her generation in Rollercoaster Relationshift Ride—a story of hookups, breakups, and love connections set in smoke-filled clubs and flickering lights. Her depictions of relationships are stroboscopic in effect: they freeze moments in the frenetic, partying lifestyle of today’s hip, cool crowd.

With anthropological curiosity, Balbarona documents modern mating rituals and fucked-up relationships. She is a chronicler of the “true now” and one will find the sexual fluidity and openness of the 2000s depicted in predatory glances over bottles of beer and DJ rigs, open-mouthed kisses, men loving men, women loving women, and mornings after.

Cavorting on her canvases are the adult versions of Blur’s “girls who are boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they're girls who do girls like they're boys.”

Like a paparazzo with a paintbrush, Balbarona catches hipsters, scenesters, and fashionistas in the wild—their natural habitat being Manila’s “happening places.” Smears of oil-stick color on otherwise gray emo backgrounds mimic party lights caught through a digital camera.

Her subjects are dressed in the prevailing street style found in current issues of fashion glossies and online lookbooks: boots, reincarnated Doc Martens; skinny jeans; plaid shirts; asymmetrical drape-like tops, shredded and torn; black plastic glasses; and bonnets are rendered in paint instead of pixels.

Balbarona herself, with her side-shave ‘do du jour, is a member of the fashion set and when she paints, she paints in style. “Going to paint” requires the same effort as “going out”—she must be dressed for the act of committing color to canvas, hence the multitude of suitcases and shoes competing for space in her studio.
Rollercoaster Relationshift Ride is based on true stories—contemporary realities—whispered in Balbarona’s ear or shouted over the throbbing bass blasting through speakers. In vino veritas indeed, or, in this case, bottles of San Miguel Light and Red Horse.

Being privy to the tangled web of relationships and Facebook clusterfucks ironically helped Balbarona out of her own depression. Misery loves company and the artist, for the first time, goes beyond autobiographical references in her work.

Forced out of the cocoon she spun for herself, the artist discovered a crazy, chaotic milieu populated by people thrown together in tumultuous intimacy. Steeped in late-night confessions and conversations, Balbarona found herself “belonging.” The secrets, beginnings, and endings freely shared by the “it” crowd became fodder for the artist, who was amused and captivated by the beautiful—and sometimes ephemeral—intensity of modern-day love affairs. She was no longer alone.

Rollercoaster Relationshift Ride possesses the collaged, unfinished feel that is signature to Balbarona’s paintings. She is a voyeur intent only on the action that defines the moment:
an embrace, a caress, a meeting of lips.

As an adjunct exercise in documenting the “now,” this show includes a collection of small portraits that pays tribute to Manila’s culturati—people who waited for Balbarona to emerge from self-imposed exile and begin painting anew.

Rollercoaster Relationshift Ride is Balbarona’s triumphant return from her personal hell. She is a phoenix dressed to kill rising from the ashes.—ll

Rollercoaster Relationshift Ride will open on Friday 6PM March 18, 2011 at Blanc Peninsula Manila. For further enquiries, please call/sms +63920 927 6436 visit www.blanc.ph or email info@blanc.ph

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EJ Cabangon's Suddenly Gray @ Blanc Makati

In Suddenly Gray, EJ Cabangon tackles and questions the possible implications of the fast advancement in technology and how it relates to inter-personal relationships of humans. He challenges the viewer to take advantage of the fast paced world and use it to further progress as a people.

“Suddenly Gray” is EJ Cabangon’s 9th Solo Exhibition and will open on Monday 6PM, March 22, 2010 at Blanc Gallery Makati. Blanc is located at Crown Tower, 107 H.V. dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati City.

For more information, please call or sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph, www.blancartspace.multiply.com

Suddenly Gray will run until April 9, 2010.

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Janet Balbarona "Peeling Peaches for the Sharpest Tongue" @ Blanc Makati

“Peeling Peaches for the Sharpest Tongue”

Janet Balbarona’s Second Solo Show

Drawing on the bitterest, rawest experiences of alienation,

frustration and loss, Janet Balbarona deconstructs and lays bare her

most intimate, pivotal moments in a series of surrealist

self-portraits that are at once tense and thick with emotion, and yet

tempered with a strong sense of self-consciousness and conspicuous

calm. Balbarona effectively creates this complex, uneasy tension in

the stark contrasts between the immediate illusion afforded by the

bright, fanciful colors and general dream-like interweaving of images,

and then the more sinister allusions evident in each individual icon

and in the artist’s sober depictions of herself.

The paintings in “Peeling Peaches for the Sharpest Tongue” continue on

the autobiographical narrative arc of her first solo show, jumping off

from her departure from Manila for Beijing. As she recounts in a kind

of visual allegory the bittersweet failings and disappointments of her

“second round” or second chance at life in a completely foreign city,

her works reveal an increasing withdrawal into a kind of isolation.

One of the most emotionally-charged paintings, “Dear…,” conveys a kind

of loneliness, despite the presence of another, underscored by a clock

reading four in the morning and a dagger pointed up at the artist’s

fingertips.

As a whole, however, the idea of loneliness and isolation is most

obvious in the fact that whereas the artist would once typically

portray people around her with a sentimental detailing of faces and

fashions, now she remains the only solid inhabitant of her world, with

a small handful of attachments that are allowed a vivid, if merely

temporary existence alongside her.

Much of Balbarona’s work still relies on the set of highly specific

iconography, which both draws on each item’s accepted contexts and

metaphors in popular culture, as well as the artist’s own set of

meanings. The key image in this show, the ubiquitous peaches, takes on

the erotic implications of the fruit to convey love, lust, and pain,

but also employs the artist’s connection to China, where peaches are a

frequent, inexpensive commodity. With regard to the latter meaning,

the artist creates a very telling contrast between fresh peaches in

the anchor piece of her show, “The Second Round” (also notably the

only painting that employs imagery from her previous show), and

rotten, bleeding peaches throughout the rest of the series. Notably,

just as she tackles themes and situations that are at once uniquely

hers and yet are ultimately understandable as fundamental human

experiences, Balbarona employs very personal symbolism that is also

accessible enough for viewers—clocks, pressure gauges, candy canes,

daggers, and online communication icons—which encourages discovery of

one’s own stories within the fantastical structure of each piece.

Finally, for Balbarona, “Peeling Peaches for the Sharpest Tongue” does

not have a “formal” conclusion. She explicitly states that the

concluding piece, “Ricochet Part 2,” in which the artist depicts

herself as struck by several arrows save for the one that she is able

to catch mid-air, imparts neither tragedy nor redemption, neither

closure nor catharsis, only indetermination and an open end.

Confronted with the context of her own life as depicted in her art,

she offers an open ending and the possibility of continuation at the

end of the show, subtly emphasizing the fact that this is an

inescapable reality for her, which we, as spectators, merely glance

at, comment on, or observe quietly, before walking away.

-Yonina Chan

The exhibit opens on Monday 6PM, February 22, 2010 at Blanc Gallery

Makati. Blanc is located at Crown Tower, 107 H.V. dela Costa St.,

Salcedo Village, Makati City. For more information, please call or

sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit

www.blanc.ph, www.blancartspace.multiply.com

Peeling Peaches for the Sharpest Tongue will run until March 12, 2010.

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Blanc Peninsula Manila Opens With "These Are Days"

Blanc Peninsula Manila will open with an inaugural exhibition entitled "These Are Days" on Wednesday, February 17 from 5PM until 8PM. blanc peninsula manila is located at The Peninsula Manila G/F Shops 8 and 9 Ayala Avenue cor Makati Avenue, Makati City.

The exhibition will run until March 12, 2010.

For more information please visit www.blanc.ph call/sms +63920.9276436

"These Are Days" will feature the works of

Allan Balisi
Andres Barrioquinto
Jonathan Ching
Mariano Ching
Melvin Culaba
Eugene Jarque
Geraldine Javier
Lao Lianben
Lynyrd Paras
Arturo Sanchez
Yasmin Sison
Mac Valdezco
Ronald Ventura

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Jojo Barja's Dead City @ Blanc Makati

Ang Cum Laude ng Kalsada

“Dead City” Renato Barja Jr.’s 7th Solo Exhibition

Dead City is a series of short visual stories about underprivileged Filipinos.

"I created images, taking off from what I feel about the people
around me. These individuals are discarded but are an undeniable
segment of our society. This is a story of how Filipinos accept the
norms of everyday life, without fully understanding it- that we are
in the middle of chaos, deaf and blinded by the ills of the government,
the never ending media and political mudslinging, overlooked inner
city population. We are in the brink of a social meltdown, what now?"

Look around it is a Dead City.

The exhibit opens on Monday 6PM, January 4, 2010 at blanc Gallery
Makati. blanc is located at Crown Tower, 107 H.V. dela Costa St.,
Salcedo Village, Makati City. For more information, please call or
sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit
www.blanc.ph, www.blancartspace.multiply.com

Dead City will run until January 22, 2010.

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Anino Shadowplay Collective at Blanc Makati

The question of Philippine viewership, even awareness of its Australia-bound projects has led the ANINO Shadowplay Collective to Blanc Makati this December. The exhibit Within and Without Blanc culls from and builds on ANINO’s output for its second collaborative project with Filipino-Australian playwright Paschal Daantos Berry and theatre artist Valerie Berry - Within and Without, a contemporary performance project inspired by Intramuros - the heart of and witness to the most tumultuous phases of Philippine history.

Within and Without Blanc is a selection of ANINO’s videos, photographs, animation, installations and cutouts created and redesigned through the R&D and creative development phases of the performance project. Opening night will feature a performative sketch that ponders on Philippine history and contemporary society.

The ANINO Shadowplay Collective is a group of multi-media artists dedicated to the development and popularisation of Philippine shadowplay.

The exhibit opens on Monday December 7 at 6PM, at Blanc Makati. Mandaluyong. Blanc is located at 2E Crown Tower 107 H.V. dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati City. For more information, please call or sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph and www.blancartspace.multiply.com

Within and Without Blanc will run until December 28, 2009.

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Onus by Mervin Pimentel @ Blanc Gallery Makati

ONUS by MERVIN PIMENTEL
October 26- November 13, 2009
Blanc Gallery Makati

The onus is on us, as Mervin Pimentel suggests abruptly in this installation of paintings in oil at the Blanc Gallery in Makati City. But as to what is and wherefore that responsibility lies, Pimentel assembles a layered and tangled narrative as ground for this vital question.

Onus easily appeals to our sight and sensibility, placing cartoon-like people amidst verdant gridlocks of flora, fauna and more people while proceeding to discomfort us with its latent corruption and violence. These canvases are replete with characters that suggest the notorious types and prototypes of Filipino everyday life. Yet Pimentel renders each adeptly as creature: lush, ripe and rosy like fruit for picking.

Pimentel’s treatment of such dire subjects may still trace its lineage to the editorial cartoon, recalling the detailed graphics of such pieces in the old Philippines Free Press. One traces parallel tendencies among many emerging young artists today, for whom the cartoon is no longer relegated as ‘pop’ subject or influence, but as medium and form itself. Indeed, a diverse universe of cartooning has emerged from print and graffiti practice right into the canvas. But then, Pimentel’s skills clearly steer in the direction of social commentary as response and even reflex, given his actual brushes with authority in his rural hometown.

Mervin Pimentel studied Fine Arts at the Far Eastern University. He has been a consistent finalist in professional and student painting competitions, and is part of artists’ initiatives in both Metro Manila and Pangasinan. He is also a core member of TutoK.

Onus opens on Monday 6PM, October 26 at Blanc Gallery Makati. blanc is located at Crown Tower, 107 H.V. dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati City. For more information, please call or sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph, www.blancartspace.multiply.com

Onus will run until November 13, 2009 and is co-produced by slash/art artists’ initiatives.

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Allan Balisi's We Don’t Need No Fire to Warm Us @ Blanc Compound

WE DON’T NEED NO FIRE TO WARM US

Allan Balisi’s latest one man show, We Don’t Need Fire To Warm Us, is a departure of sorts, but not necessarily in the way you might think. Certainly, not in terms of method, which for Balisi involves a process of subtraction, of peeling away at the paint on the canvas, to reveal nuances in the underlayers. If anything, the method is even more severe this time.

But it’s the cohesive narrative threads that used to connect one work with the other that are gone, or at least not readily apparent. And while he still sifts through old photographs and fragments them as a sort of re-purposing and re-contextualizing , the cryptic and mysterious and thickly evocative imagery has subsumed the biographical
undercurrents that were once rampant and obvious.

The title We Don’t Need Fire To Warm Us is Balisi’s exhortation to deny the old dependencies, to uphold a kind of stand-alone existence, and his refusal to fall back on his old tropes seem to reflect this.

In many ways, he’s still going to the same places but he’s taking another route. Or several. Where he used to make up narratives through the connective tissues of biography, he is now making up narratives through the fragmentary disconnect of unrelated fictions. But then, you never really know. The story it ultimately tells is all up to you.

We Don’t Need No Fire to Warm Us is Allan Balisi’s fifth one man show and his third for Blanc. It will open on Saturday 6PM, September 19 at the blanc compound 359 Shaw Blvd., Mandaluyong City. For more information, please call or sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph, www.blancartspace.multiply.com.

We Don’t Need No Fire To Warm Us will run until October 9, 2009.

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Jeho Bitancor's "unBOUNDed" at blanc Makati

unBOUNDed
by Jeho Bitancor

How does space as a phenomenon translate to embodied articulations of
personal and social significance?

Referencing my condition as a migrant, I had to grapple with this
problematic and contemplate on other questions whether the space to
locate our bodies constricting or liberating or both? If so, how does
it manifest? Is it of our own choosing and creation, or is it imposed
and inherited?

My inquiry was triggered by the tension I had to negotiate as a
transient body constantly relocating itself, from the “periphery” to
the “center”, and from the west coast to Midwest to east coast in
barely two years. This would mean adapting to new circumstances and
unfamiliar grounds. Or better yet, enduring/enjoying shifting working
conditions; from a huge garage space in California, to a freezing open
patio in Memphis, to a claustrophobic basement apartment in Jersey
City, and finally to a decent studio space in the suburbs of Central
New Jersey.

It is while working in a spare space in Jersey City measuring less
than 7 X 5 ft in floor area that I have come to question the nature of
my existence. Does the space I occupy define me or is it in defining
myself that I inhabited it? Similarly, is the decision to be “in” the
space and adhere to the condition it entails a result of my own
volition alone or a product of inherited values historically ingrained
within my psyche? It can be both in my case for there are a number of
reasons that may be politically in/correct or even romantic. It can be
the notion of growing artistically/ intellectually and recognizing my
battle as a post-colonial subject, while at the same time grazing at
my enemy’s pasture for which I am not yet guilty of.

For this exhibition, I have focused on subjects that are apparently
social in context and navigating through issues that affect me. For
me, there is no dividing line clearly delineating the personal to
societal. I believe that personal experiences transcend to if not a
direct result of the workings of society.

Age-old issues of vulnerability, conformity, dislocation, bondage,
greed, identity and struggle are presented in various reconfigurations
and re-contextualization. Utilizing as a device objects that contain
figures or figures that resemble objects, the works allude to feelings
of entrapment, enclosure and imprisonment. Others served as shelter
and recluse, echoing the duality and manifold definition of inhabiting
and identifying with a space.

Jeho Bitancor’s “unBOUNDed” Will be on view until September 18, 2009
at blanc Makati. blanc is located at Crown Tower, 107 H.V. dela Costa
St., Salcedo Village, Makati City. For more information, please call
or sms 752-0032 / 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit
www.blanc.ph, www.blancartspace.multiply.com

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Jigger Cruz's Swing @ Blanc Art Space Makati

Swing
2 February 2009
Blanc Art Space Makati

Stimulated by the idea of repetitive motions, of the rollicking movement of back and forth and back and forth, Swing, Jigger Cruz’s first solo exhibition, revolves around geometric translations of rhythmic swaying gestures. The works, a scuffle of textures and forms that situate well within similar past works of Cruz, are born from his exercises of the composition of cyclical gesticulations.

Cruz paints an assemblage of recognizable objects and obscure shapes which interlace, envelope and unfurl within one another. Simultaneously tempered and fueled by scientific-based inspired titles, elements such as satellite disks, bicycle wheels, coiling striped horns and sprays of particles are within these shuffling vortexes of the nonsensical. The focus, aided by a fairly subdued palette, turns to configuration which leads the lingering visual experience into its stormy yet measured rocking. Yet like the childhood playground favorite the exhibition name alludes to, the paintings are fittingly done in a sport and spirit of frolic by which viewers’ roving eyes can take in coy pleasure.

- Clarissa Chikiamco

Swing will open on Monday, 6PM, February 2, 2009 at blanc makati. blanc is located at Crown Tower 107 H.V. dela Costa St. Salcedo Village, Makati City. For more information please call or sms 752-0032/0920- 9276436 , email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph and www.blancartspace.multiply.com

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Pamela Yan Santos’ Like Exhibit @ Blanc

Pamela Yan Santos' Like

In her upcoming solo exhibition entitled LIKE, Pamela Yan Santos explores personal history as known and remembered through various indices such as photographs, written and scribbled language and other signifiers that many of us consider as mundane.

Working in mixed media and in layers, she uses the processes of serigraphy, painting and collage as components to a kind of visual syntax intended to essay personal episodes and remembrances of emotional significance. The approaches through which she interrelates the various processes make the works resonate as wish, as a point of comparison, as a mnemonic or as a conjunction, which are among the permutations of the word LIKE.

From a personal perspective, the works bridge the artist's past and present by transforming events through time into a synchronous testament, expressing how agreeably or uncannily the two echo and mirror each other.

Pam Yan -Santos graduated with a degree in Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Painting from the University of the Philippines. A prize winner in the print category of the 1993 AAP Annual Art Competition, she has joined significant number of group exhibitions both here and abroad, the latest of which is ArtBeijing in China.

LIKE is Pam's 5th solo exhibition and will be curated by Leo Abaya.

LIKE opens on Monday, November 3, 2008 6PM at the blanc compound 359 Shaw Blvd, Mandaluyong City. For More information please call/sms 752-0032/0920- 9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit www.blanc.ph.

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Rene Cuvos' Estranghero Exhibit @ Blanc

Estranghero
a show by Rene Cuvos

The sheer number of human beings in this planet assures us that a day can’t go by without setting our eyes on a face we’ve never seen before. There are hundreds of people that we see but never meet, as we walk the streets, ride a jeep, drink in a coffee shop or watch TV. Their faces are a blur, a blank, as we go about the business of living. We practically never see them---but there are a few that stick.

There are a few faces that we never seem to forget. For some inexplicable reason, there is an intangible connection to the stranger whom we’ve never even spoken to, much less get near to. He or she must have reminded us of someone we used to know in kindergarten, for all that’s worth. There is an urge to stop, turn around and look closely to find...what? Who knows?

Rene Cuvos explores this phenomenon in his new collection, “Estranghero”. Each painting is a close study of a stranger’s character and personality. In “Mangangaral” (oil on canvas, 24x18 inches), he delves into the irony of a person whose intentions are intrinsically good, but whose heart is hard and unfeeling. In “Konserbatibong Maligalig” (oil on canvas, 30x24 inches) the hypocrisy lies in a person’s pretensions to conservatism in sex that is altogether different from his or her actual sexual relations. “Makapangyarihan” (oil on canvas, 10x8 inches) illustrates the impunity by which people in power treat their positions.

Cuvos tells us that the strangers we meet are never who we expect them to be, despite their pretensions. In the end, we might even be strangers to ourselves.

“Estranghero” opens on Friday, September 12 at 6pm until September 1 at blanc at 2E Crown Tower 107 H.V. De La Costa Street, Salcedo Village, Makati City. For inquiries, please contact tel. 02.7520032, mobile 0920.9276436, email info@blanc.ph or visit the website at www.blanc.ph

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Wilfredo Offemaria's Font Exhibit @ Blanc Art Space

"FONT" by

Wilfredo "Offe" Offemaria
Blanc Art Space

Wilfredo "Offe" Offemaria mulls over universality as he incorporates various symbols into his abstract works in "Font," his latest exhibit at Blanc Art Space, 2E Crown Tower, 107 H.V. Dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati.

His preoccupation with writing forms and typeface has him filling canvases with paint-embossed numbers amid broad arcs and random dots, the choice of Arabic numerals an apt metaphor for
understanding that encompasses race, geography, discipline, and technology. In some
pieces his wide, textured strokes result in Chinese prosperity characters that are the artist's take on oriental brush painting while he refers to the far-reaching influences of the Sino culture, familiar worldwide.

With reverence, Offemaria also renders the native Filipino script Baybayin, more popularly known as Alibata, in part cultural tribute and in part lament about its waning recognition.

"Font" runs from October 29 to November 17, 2007.

For more details on Wilfredo Offemaria's Font Exhibit @ Blanc Art Space, please visit www.blanc.ph email info@blanc.ph or call/sms 752-0032/0920- 9276436

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Paulo Vinluan's Third Solo Exhibition @ blanc

We paint pictures in our heads. Mental notes of what
we want to happen, having a vision of our future
selves. Inspired by a paint-by-numbers painting I saw
in a flea market, I saw a relationship between the
paint-by-numbers painting and that of my own mental
picture of my moving to Brooklyn last February of this
year. My paintings have always been a reflection of
myself in current situations that I am in. The
paintings in this exhibition is a dialogue between the
ideals we set ourselves to do and the reality of
striving to paint that picture, by the numbers, as we
it.

Paulo Vinluan
Ideal Theories and Other Trivial Matters of the Heart
blanc August 8 - August 29, 2007

"Ideal Theories and Other Trivial Matters of the
Heart" will open on Wednesday, August 8 6PM at blanc.
blanc is located at 2E Crown Tower 107 H.V. dela Costa
St. Salcedo Village, Makati city. For more information
please call/sms 0920-9276436, email info@blanc.ph or
visit www.blanc.ph

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Keiye Miranda-Tuazon's Breaking the Silence @ blanc

Keiye Miranda-Tuazon's
"Breaking the Silence" at blanc

July 14 6pm - August 4

BREAKING THE SILENCE

My works are either familiar or unique underwater
images of people and objects that float, weave through
or swim around. It deals on personal space, time,
memory, thoughts and experiences. The images suggest
a sense of movement as the light reflecting on the
water attempts to recapture the original and existing
form. This enables one to trace or transcend the
movement of thought and explore, for instance, the
dimension of solace and solitude. The entire painting
is an illusion of color: the play of light imbuing on
the works implies the fluidity, changing views and
dimensions of water.

The moving/flowing water serves an element of
defamiliarization, producing an intriguing ambiguity
of the real and unreal, thus, setting new terms of
encountering reality. The stark images and figures
create a complex and resonating pattern, like bathing
in a luminous glow of water. Rolled by water's moving
reflection, the depiction of figures that float exists
in the same dream-like level of memory and time, in
which it has a double image signifying the issue of
identity. The shadows, meanwhile, suggest a condition
of change.

The imagery of submergence in water alludes to the
realm of subconscious and the unconscious. It is not
only the rational conscious self that defines one's
identity, but more so, the submerged level of the mind
that doubly and crucially suggests in the articulation
of the self. This can be seen or felt, for instance,
during pre-natal and birth experiences in the fluid of
mother's womb. The bodies move alone like apparitions
in the chiaroscuro of water, as the viewers are
impelled to discover their fluid identities, which is
the sense of being and becoming.

KEIYE MIRANDA-TUAZON
blanc
6PM July 14, 2007 - August 4, 2007

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Christopher Zamora's Ordinary @ blanc

"Ordinary"
blanc gallery
by Christopher Zamora

Please come to the third solo exhibition of
Christopher Zamora entitled Ordinary at blanc.

blanc is located at 2e Crown Tower 107 H.V. dela Costa
St. Salcedo Village Makati city. For more information
please call/sms 752-0032/0920- 9276436 or email info@blanc.ph

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Melvin Culaba's Interiorism @ Blanc

Melvin Culaba will have his sixth one man show at
blanc called Interiorism. The exhibit will be composed
of large scale paintings by Culaba.

Melvin Culaba's Interiorism @ Blanc

will open on May 28, 2007 6pm and will run
until June 18, 2007.

blanc is located at 2e Crown
Tower 107 H.V. dela Costa St. Salcedo Village, Makati
City.

For more information on Melvin Culaba's Interiorism

@ Blanc, please call or sms
752-0032/0920- 9276436 or email info@blanc.ph.

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I of Disappointment @ Blanc

I of Disappointment ( Barrioquinto, Borsoto, Roxas, Tanedo)
at blanc April 30 6pm

"I of Disappointment" a group show featuring Andres
Barrioquinto, Lawrence Borsoto, Ivan Roxas, and CJ
Tanedo will open on Monday, April 30, 2007 6PM at
blanc. The show will run until May 21, 2007.

blanc is located at Crown Tower 107 HV dela Costa St.
Salcedo Village Makati City.

For inquiries on I of Disappointment
( Barrioquinto, Borsoto, Roxas, Tanedo) at blanc, please call
or sms 752-0032/0920- 9276436 or email info@blanc.ph

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Carlo Gernale's Busog @ Blanc

Carlo Gernale's Busog
blanc gallery
third solo exhibition

Experience large servings of scrumptious paintings by Carlo Gernale on his latest solo exhibition entitled Busog. Gernale's mouth-watering works will satisfy that unexplainable craving for the particular taste you have been yearning for.

Gernale's images of fragrant, sweet fruits, unbelievably enticing lechon baboy, deliciously oily cheeseburgers, and other ultra-hygienic street delights are not only excellent sources for daily nutrition but are masks for social commentaries that is highly recommended for the soul.

This will serve as your invitation to the yummiest exhibition in town. You have to be there. It's going to be good.

Carlo Gernale's Busog will open on April 9, Monday at 6pm and will run until April 23.

blanc is located at Crown Tower 107 H.V. dela Costa St, Salcedo Village, Makati city.

For inquiries on Carlo Gernale's Busog exhibit @ Blanc, please call or sms 0920-9276436 or email info@blanc.ph

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