7 Must-See Art Shows This Month That Evoke Reflection for a Hopeful Future

No matter where you’re standing–be it from the top floor of a towering edifice in the city, or from the coast of some fishing village, or inside a cathedral before a crucifix–it isn’t difficult to gather that the world is in need of some miracle to save it from the brink of collapse. And for this month’s shows, artists continue to act like the prophets that they are, cautioning society of its destructive tendencies as seen in the shows of Pete Jimenez (Finale Art File Gallery) and Manuel Ocampo, MM Yu and Romeo Lee (Blanc Gallery). The art scene itself is pervaded with its own unresolved issues and is brought to the fore by Robert Langenegger (Blanc Gallery), containing its own actors captured by Raena Abella (ArtInformal Gallery). 

These days, art has become all the more vital for humanity to spur reflections and inspire action that could sway our fate to a brighter future. Here is a list of shows that invite us to do just that:

To Seek. To Surrender. To Stay at Artinformal Gallery

Photographer Raena Abella turns to the 9th-century process of ambrotype to render the faces that animate the Philippine contemporary art scene. The method moves against the grain of the present movement and asks its sitters to remain before the camera for thirty, sometimes sixty seconds, long enough to feel the duration of being looked at. The photographs arrive without the familiar vocabulary of contemporary ways of capturing images; there is an absence of bright saturated colors, romantic flares, and small technical seductions. For viewers, this may be disorienting and this is precisely why this show is worth viewing. 

The exhibition runs through April 9. For more information, visit https://www.instagram.com/artinformalgallery/

You are the Apple at Finale Art File

Many view the archipelago that is our country as some paradise—abundant fragments of land teeming with wildlife, vegetation and a Filipino populace of different regions, sustained and nourished by the vast almighty sea. And yet, the pressing issue of water scarcity exists. In this show, Pete Jimenez likens the Philippines to the garden of Eden. Through sculptures of thirty or so tanks crushed and emptied, Jimenez illustrates the greed of humanity’s consumption. From afar, one may view the form of the sculpture as reminiscent of the fruit from which Adam and Eve took their fall. Jimenez calls for action guided by empathy to all bodies and creatures that bring life. 

The exhibition runs through March 31. For more information, visit https://www.instagram.com/finaleartfileinc/

Taga-Silim at Finale Art File Gallery

Mac Valdezco is a curious artist who is fervently committed to finding the unsung techniques thread, cords, and strings can intrigue her viewers. Her inquiry for this show is inspired by the way light reveals itself through outstretched branches and variegated contours of leaves. Sticking to an achromatic palette for her sculptural abstract works, she amplifies the mystic albeit easily dismissed as banal quality of light. 

The exhibition runs through March 31. For more information, visit https://www.instagram.com/finaleartfileinc/

Peak and End at Vinyl on Vinyl Gallery

How conscious are we when it comes to remembering and experiencing the self? Isha Naguiat draws from the psychologist Daniel Kahneman who details the distinction between the two processes and asserts that the remembering self highlights and interprets the peak and end of an experience, thereby influencing future actions. For the artist, whose practice hinges on memory as a constant theme, the act of remembering manifests in her body of work for this show in woven photographs printed twice, with the second traced by embroidery symbolizing reflection. In so doing, the artist invites her viewers to move through them and witness moments recalled. 

The exhibition runs through April 7. For more information, visit https://www.instagram.com/vinylonvinyl/

Intonarumori (noisemakers) at Blanc Gallery

The saying “The future is now,” is portrayed by the powerhouse trio of Manuel Ocampo, MM Yu, and Romeo Lee in this show through Hello Kitty mutants, autocannibalism, and urban marks that reflect Manila’s “devious dirty charm.” The title of the show, which means ‘noisemaker,’ is drawn from a piece by Luigi Russolo, who lived during the height of the industrial age when mechanical shrieks and clangs began reverberating throughout the globe. The artists find themselves in a position similar to Russolo where life in contemporary Philippines is defiled and defined by apocalyptic tendencies by a people and have now made it their fate. Through a compelling collision of photography and painting laced by the grotesque, the artists augments the tragedy of Filipinos today.

Art Purgatory at Blanc Gallery

Robert Langenegger maintains a streak of art that is viscerally jarring, questionably “considerate” and religiously referential to Biblical images and texts–which is perhaps why we need him in the contemporary art scene in the Philippines. He is unafraid to touch on niche realities without the automatic dogmatic impulse one finds in exhibits that tread similar lines.
The art world is one such niche rife with the cyclical emails to institutional bodies requesting support, ornamental trophies, long lines of “emerging artists” and free beers. Langgenegger tackles the limbo nature of this realm with the objective of “[neutralizing] something negative… and [regurgitating] it into pretty little artworks for the public to judge and decipher at their leisure.”

The exhibition runs through March 28. For more information, visit https://www.instagram.com/blanc.gallery/

Smokescreen at Provenance Gallery

In recent times, the truth has become a slippery fish escaping to the murky waters of a lake rather than a stone bearing the sharp marks of its history. Where facts and documentation should be made available with unmitigated transparency lies the most muddled and manipulative of devices and entities that conjure a false image of honesty and verity to further confuse a populace that is already distracted. To Geovanni Abing, today’s post-truth society is cloaked with the thick smoke engineered by those in positions of power. Perhaps the most interesting facet of this show is the artist’s use of papercut techniques combined with acrylic washes that create a soft translucent effect to his collages, imitating the effect of smoke when it spreads through a city.

The exhibition runs from March 21 through April 13. For more information, visit https://www.instagram.com/provenanceartgallery/