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MANUEL OCAMPO

COUNTERPICTURES: Paintings in Drag

LUIS ANTONIO SANTOS

INDEX

CARLO VILLAFUERTE

Handshakes, Statements & Thoughts

ROMINA DIAZ

Stagnant Energies

RANELLE DIAL

Access Point

KEIYE MIRANDA

Labyrinthine

ART FAIR PHILIPPINES 2016

GROUP SHOW

Topsy Turvy

ROMEO LEE

FinaLee

JEONA ZOLETA

Cyber Mystic Tiger

NICOLE COSON

Process of Elimination

For its visitors, the precise arrangement of stone and sand in the famous Ryoanji Garden in Kyoto maintains a playful tradition of conjecture: a mother tiger carrying her baby cubs across the river, islands between the sea, enlightenment, emptiness. Following her exploration of captured phantoms and flash constructions, Nicole Coson’s practice builds upon the way such impressions develop in the mind. Here, stone against sand are like clouds against sky, where the instinct to “make sense” of such formations is a generative but ultimately misleading exercise. A combination of printmaking and painting, Coson’s second solo exhibit at Finale Art File recomposes a rock arrangement through a breakdown of its elements. The stones rebuild their size and mass upon the canvas and at the center, lengths of blue velvet catches the invisible plane of arrangement. 

 

Nicole Coson (b.1992, Manila) completed her BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2014. She is currently based in London. 

 

(Mara Coson)

KRISTIAN KRAGELUND

Reactive Painting

Danish artist Kristian Kragelund shares a series of works from a larger and ongoing research project on process-based painting and sculpture. Interested in painting without using actual paint, Kragelund explores image making through combining different materials and chemicals. This series is produced using canvas coated with a mixture of acrylic binder, metal powder, and acid, which chemically reacts with each other to oxidize and alter the paintings’ surface. Combining the processes of control and randomness, the resulting compositional arrangements are examples of what Kragelund terms as ‘staged expressionism’. Connecting the physical process of painting to the broader issue of multicultural formations and intersecting identities, Kragelund seeks to draw out and explore qualities inherent to the material itself, rather than dwell on surface appearances. 

 

Kragelund is based in London and is an alumnus of Central Saint Martins. He works across a variety of media, focusing on exploring the potentials of painting and sculpture. He has been shortlisted for several awards, including the 2012 The NeoArt Prize, the 2013 Sixth Annual Digital Graffiti Award, and the 2015 Bloomberg New Comtemporaries award. 

 

(Lisa Ito)

TAICHI KONDO

What's My Name?

Taichi Kondo’s first one-man exhibition in the Philippines explores the idea of dualities as perceived by the senses and as part of imagining a new “provisional world”. Posing the question of identity to both self and the public, Kondo shows how diversity is produced through the merging and meeting of binary or dual forces: heaven and hell, creation and destruction, humanity and divinity, civilization and chaos, for instance. The paintings are rendered in a primitive style, underscoring the raw energy inherent in this process. 

 

Of Japanese-Filipino descent, Kondo was born and raised in Japan. He has previously participated in group exhibitions at the Bikura Art Gallery and Saitama City Hall Gallery in Japan. He co-founded Art Lovers Incorporated, a company and art gallery, with artist Takuma Tanaka in Tokyo. 

 

(Lisa Ito)

33rd ANNIVERSARY SHOW