Contemporary Art Tours with Art Fair Philippines 2014

The Museum Foundation of the Philippines Inc. teams up with Art Fair Philippines 2014 to broaden your exposure to Philippine contemporary art! A selection of daily tours, expertly managed and conducted by specialists, will run for the duration of the fair.

Daily, 20 to 23 February 2014
A Closer Look at Art Fair Philippines 2014

Walk through two levels of the fair with curator Lian Ladia, founder of the online art platform Planting Rice. A great way to deepen your appreciation for what our participating galleries have on view, and to get to know the different artists making their mark today.

When: Daily, 20 to 23 February 2014
Time: 10:15 am
Meeting point: Reception Desk, Art Fair Philippines 2014
Fee: Free

20 February 2014
In City and Country, Elmer Borlongan, 1992-2002 at The Ayala Museum

Take a guided tour of Ayala Museum’s blockbuster exhibit, mounted to coincide with Art Fair Philippines 2014.

In City and Country, Elmer Borlongan, 1992-2002 reviews the body of work of an artist seen as visual expressions of the fin de siècle anxieties of Philippine society. His paintings, regarded as both social realism and figurative expressionism, depict the relationship of the contemporary Filipino with his environment, from city to country. Over 40 paintings display portraits of survival and endurance.

When: Thursday, 20 February 2014
Time: 3:00 pm, Ticket/ Information desk, Ayala Museum lobby
Fee: Discounted museum entrance fee of PhP 125.00 upon presentation of your Art Fair Philippines 2014 ticket

21 February 2014
Due North: A Contemporary Art Tour of the Lopez Memorial Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, and the Jorge B. Vargas Museum

The tour takes you through three of the most intrepid museums for contemporary art. The Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Ateneo Art Gallery are located inside the Quezon City campuses of two of our country’s top universities. At the Lopez Museum and Library, view how works by emerging artists interact with the museum’s extensive collection of art, historical documents, and memorabilia. Curator and conservator Ricky Francisco accompanies the group.

When: Friday, 21 February 2014
Meeting time: 9:00 am at The Raffles hotel lobby
Price: PhP 1, 500.00 (inclusive of transportation, museum entrance fees, and a sandwich meal)

9:30am Departure for the Lopez Museum to view Complicated, an exhibit featuring artists Leslie de Chavez, Mike Adrao, and Ea Torrado juxtaposed against works by Juan Luna, Felix Resureccion Hidalgo, BenCab and J. Elizalde Navarro

10:45am Proceed to the Ateneo Art Gallery for Bato Balani, the latest in a series of large-scale paintings, narratives on Filipino legends and myths, by Rodel Tapaya

12:15pm Continue to the Jorge B. Vargas Museum for a sandwich lunch in the museum’s terrace café and a guided tour of their current exhibits, Philippine Macho Academy by Eisa Jocson, A Fish Tale by Daniel dela Cruz, and the Vargas Permanent Collection

3:30pm ETA Makati City, at Art Fair Philippines 2014

22 February 2014
A Capital Idea: Contemporary Art in our capital city’s museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila and the Cultural Center of the Philippines

Allow Rica Estrada of the Cultural Center of Philippines to bring you to the Metropolitan Museum of Manila for a taste for Philippine art overt the past century. The exhibit The Philippine Contemporary: To Scale the Past and the Possible curated by Dr. Patrick Flores surveys the art of the country from the academic schools of the turn of the 20th century to the artists exhibiting in the new millennium. Also on view, Abueva: The Power of Form, a retrospective featuring National Artist for Sculpture, Napoleon Abueva.

The Cultural Center of the Philippines turns its attention to an overlooked facet of Philippine art, the Mabini art movement. Once denigrated by art collectors as commercial and tourist art, it has now become a source of interest for artists and art historians.

When: Saturday, 22 February 2014
Meeting time: 9:00am, the Raffles hotel lobby
Fee: PhP 1, 200.00 (inclusive of transportation and museum entrance fees)

9:30am Departure for the Metropolitan Museum of Manila

11:30am Proceed to the Cultural Center of the Philippines

1:15pm ETA Makati City, Art Fair Philippines 2014

For bookings and information please call 4042685, 09493338211 (Elvie), 09278484680 (Mae).
Deadline for bookings is on Wednesday, 19 February 2014. Seats are limited.

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Special Solo Exhibit By BenCab

For this year’s Art Fair Philippines, National Artist BenCab has created a collection of free-standing sculptures that have been shaped in clay before being cast and finished in bronze, and bent metal wall-bound pieces. While he is better known for his works on paper and canvas, BenCab practiced sculpture on and off throughout his career and has taken courses as early as the 70s to hone the craft. The images in this series represent his legacy as a lyrical expressionist, drawing from concepts that have turned his images into icons. Pulsing beneath the surface are echoes of his past renderings of the nude body, as well as clothed figures that recall the graceful draping inspired by legendary dancer, Isadora Duncan, and a new character, “Man Thinking” which treads between expressiveness and quiet contemplation, reminiscent of another iconic “Thinker” cast in bronze.

Excerpted from Alice A. Sarmiento

For more information, visit www.artfairphilippines.com. Art Fair Philippines is co-presented by Ayala Corporation, Ayala Land Premiere, Alveo, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Globe Telecom, and Swatch.

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Swatch Presents: Rodel Tapaya

Swatch unveils a series of special exhibits for Art Fair Philippines 2014

In the imaginarium of Rodel Tapaya, mythology looms large. It evokes for him the lush imagery of the Philippine primeval, a forest of signs that are “taken for wonders” from the perspective of the equally perplexing present. Such a disposition is affirmed by studies in the archaeology of the region that trace concepts of ancestry to notions of ecology, specifically of plant life, and how it flourishes in rhizomes of relations. In the language of Bahasa Indonesia, the word alamat is address; in our lexicon, it is legend. In both senses of these meanings, address is irreducibly origin. And this is what the artist has been keen to probe in many of his excursions into the dense foliage of precedence: everything is before us in many ways.

Excerpted from Rodel Tapaya
By Dr. Patrick D. Flores

For more information, visit www.artfairphilippines.com. Art Fair Philippines is co-presented by Ayala Corporation, Ayala Land Premiere, Alveo, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Globe Telecom, and Swatch.

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