ART STAGE SINGAPORE 2015, January 22 - 25

ARNDT is pleased to announce its participation at Art Stage Singapore 2015, taking place from January 22 – 25. We are looking forward welcoming you at our Booth E13.

Artists exhibited:
Del Kathryn Barton, Gilbert & George, Rodel Tapaya, David LaChapelle & Jigger Cruz.

Venue:
Marina Bay Sands Convention Center | 10 Bayfront Avenue | Singapore 018956

Please click here to view the list of artworks.

PRESS
Singapore Bling | Süddeutsche Zeitung | January, 2015

BAZAAR ART JAKARTA

ARNDT is pleased to announce its participation at 'BAZAAR ART JAKARTA', at The Ritz-Carlton, Jakarta, Pacific Place, Indonesia. Taking place from July 18-20.

VERNISSAGE, July 17, 2014, 07.00 PM

The exhibition shows the work of two contemporary artist.
From the Philippines, artist Rodel Tapaya and Indonesian artist Eko Nugroho.

ADDRESS
Sudirman Central Business District (SCBD)
Jalan Jenderal Sudirman No.52-53
Jakarta 12190
Indonesia

RODEL TAPAYA
The Chocolate Ruins

Solo exhibition at ARNDT Berlin
March 15 - April 26, 2014

Clicke here to view the list of exhibited works

Press Release

ARNDT Berlin.  Rodel Tapaya is one of the leading Filipino visual artists of his generation and belongs to the most acclaimed artists in Southeast Asia today. Due to exposure in international exhibitions and success in important regional art contests his works have gained renown and critical indorsement.  He broke out in the art scene by earning the prestigious APB Foundation Signature Art Prize in 2011. Tapaya’s first one-man exhibition at the Ateneo Art Gallery in Philippines - the country’s premier modern and contemporary art museum - is currently on display until April 2014. Tapaya’s first solo exhibition in Europe The Chocolate Ruins will open at ARNDT Berlin from March 15, 2014 and will be on display until April 26, 2014.

Rodel Tapaya's main piece at ARNDT's primary location in Berlin resists blatant interpretation. In his expansive painting, The Chocolate Ruins, the blend of thematically related images impresses a conflated disquiet and a sense of simultaneous ironies. Speaking in the reconstructed and often esoteric language of folklore¬ - myths and legends and their transfer in barbershop talk and current events - his works resurface age-old wisdom to comment on our contemporary life. All the images are visually connected by parts of the cacao plant, scattered across the canvas, each one dedicated to the three major disasters that has devastated the Philippines during the past year; a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, Supertyphoon Haiyan, and the scandal over widespread misuse of congressional funds.
Chocolates are easily a substitute for anything that corrupts, be it money, beauty, or tradition; an insinuation to its prominent role in the bittersweet aspirations and decline of Imperial Spain's colonial rule over the Philippines. Other elements in the tragic tableau show vestiges of church ruins, makeshift shelters, storm clouds with faces, and helpless men.
As our living and thinking increasingly adapt to the unremitting charge of information, artists like Rodel Tapaya have developed an ability to isolate particular parts of this dissonance and arrange them in fresh dramatic combinations. Tapaya has an awareness of the world as one would an ancient storyteller with insight developed in the context of the events that have altered into other things, and explores the implication of these dynamic and inexhaustible symbols and narratives in relation to one another. In a time and place when these myths and legends have become ruins as well, of national identity, the painter looks not to new discoveries to catalogue the human condition, but rather pathways among the thicket of things already known to our ancestors and his nation's literary heritage.

A publication - surveying his oeuvre of the past 10 years - edited on the occasion of Tapaya’s solo show Bato-Balani at the Ateneo Art Gallery, Quezon City, Philippines will be launched during the Art Fair Philippines and also presented at the Berlin opening of The Chocolate Ruins.

PRESS | RANDIAN | Rodel Tapaya | The Chocolate Ruins

Rodel Tapaya | Tiroche deLeon Collection 2014
www.tirochedeleon.com

ART FAIR PHILIPPINES, February 5 - 8, 2015
 

ARNDT is pleased to announce its participation at Art Fair Phillipines 2015.

Artists exhibited:
Jigger Cruz, Ian Fabro, Rodel Tapaya.

Please click here to view the list of artworks.

ART BASEL HONG KONG 2015 - March 15 - 17, 2015

ARNDT is pleased to announce its participation at Art Basel Hong Kong 2015, taking place from March 15 - 17. We are looking forward to welcoming you at our BOOTH Hall 3 C30.

Participating Artists: Jumaldi Alfi, Stephan Balkenhol, Jigger Cruz, Wim Delvoye, Gilbert & George, Yang Jiechang, Heinz Mack, Rudi Mantofani, Vik Muniz, Eko Nugroho, Norberto Roldan, Arin Dwihartanto Sunaryo, Rodel Tapaya and Qiu Zhijie.

Please click here to see a preliminary list of the exhibited artworks

Venue:
Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre
1 Harbour Road
Wan Chai, Hong Kong

ARNDT Berlin
Potsdamer Strasse 96
10785 Berlin
info@arndtberlin.com

RODEL TAPAYA - 2015

The catalogue includes a range of images and stories that occur in RODEL TAPAYA's work. The publication features text by: David Elliot, Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Zeny May Dy Recidoro and Rodel Tapaya.

Hardcover, ca. 155 pages,
English
published by DISTANZ Verlag

EXPLORE THE COMPLETE PUBLICATION HERE

Please order from DISTANZ Verlag
www.distanz.de
ISBN 978-3-95476-096-1
 

RODEL TAPAYA / Art15 London - May 21-23, 2015

ARNDT is pleased to announce its participation at Art15 London 2015, with a solo presentation of RODEL TAPAYA. We are looking forward welcoming you at our Booth A16.

PRESS

International New York Times | Rise of the boutique fair | 25 May 2015

RODEL TAPAYA

DIAMOND IN THE DISTANCE

Solo exhibition at ARNDT Singapore

September 13 - October 25, 2015

Opening | Saturday | September 12, 2015, from 4 - 7 pm | at ARNDT Singapore

ARNDT is pleased to present its first solo exhibition in Singapore by artist Rodel Tapaya.

Acres of Diamonds
Rodel Tapaya takes on the role of a miner and treasure hunter. With a renewed sense of adventure, he trudges on to seek and sift through local narratives for that precious gem — an elusive diamond that spells unparalleled good fortune. 
Inspired by the stories woven in Russell Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds”, Tapaya attempts to mediate between the interstices of what is valued and what is coveted. 

“He said there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned a very large farm with orchards, grain fields and gardens. He was a contented and wealthy man—contented because he was wealthy…”

Al Hafed lived a comfortable life. One day, a priest paid him a visit and spoke of the cosmos, of granite, silver, gold and finally, diamond. For the first time, he felt like a poor man hungry for prosperity. The following day, he sold his farm and left his family in search for diamonds hidden underneath the white sand of a river flanked by two mountains. With high hopes and what money he had, he scoured the world. Alas, no bed of diamonds could be found. Eventually, his demise came in the form of a big tidal wave that sunk his dreams along with his remains. 

The story takes an unexpected turn when Al Hafed’s successor chances upon a modest black stone at the bottom of the stream in his garden. Days pass and the same priest who spoke to Al Hafed visited his successor in his house. Upon seeing the stone atop the mantle, the priest identifies it as a diamond. Together, they went back to the garden and therein discovered what is now known as the magnificent diamond mines of Golconda.

Conwell’s oration is more than an exercise in rhetoric. The potency of the morals embedded therein is attested to by the number of times that his lecture cum sermon has been publicly delivered. And this perhaps is why Tapaya found it a fitting point of departure as he takes on once more the fantastical worlds in folk literature.

From a story teller to a diamond hunter
From multiple voices and points of origin, a narrative is hewn and transformed by the community. As these layers coalesce; as lines that define and delineate an author from his audience are blurred beyond recognition; here, a form of collective consciousness is fashioned in the process.

Enamoured by anthologies of myths and legends thoughtfully translated from numerous tongues and collected from various localities that outline the Philippines, Tapaya reconfigures the narratives into visual labyrinths on paper and canvas. Within the substantial segment of his decade-long art practice resting on these textual reserves, he has produced a wealth of works that mirror the enigmatic qualities of the stories he decides to tell.

The abstractness of myths and legends is somehow betrayed by the finality and two-dimensionality of the format. His paintings and larger murals are flat. Lines, curves and colors, characters and settings are confined within the four corners of his chosen surface. His paintings attempt to “tame”, contain and encapsulate a world that supersedes the physical and even visual depiction.
Orations come to pass. Mysterious apparitions necessitate instantaneity and brevity. Much like written documentation, Tapaya’s works endure, allowing what is imagined to take form and scenes made manifest to be surveyed at length. He is a story teller able to stretch time, even eludes it. In Diamonds in the Distance, this ability proves useful as he reframes his search for a thing that is as desirable as it is purportedly elusive.  

With a host of narratives in tow, Tapaya is now a miner. As in the past, accuracy, soundness and logic are cast off along with nagging doubt. More than what is and should be of value, his hunt for treasure exposes the potency of the idea of having something that is worthy of such estimation.

The basis of his paintings, these myths and legends chart positionality and proximity. Is our life’s diamond within grasp, or is it something that begs to be chased after and pursued. In the same vein, these works offer a glimpse of a world-order that depends upon harnessing a power —may it be good will, or greed, luck, and even faith, among others — to arrive at a kind of life we yearn for, of a life well-lived.

Finding Diamonds
A lush forest is the site of an exciting quest. Separated in half, the upper torso of a man hovers as he sets his sight on a precious stone afar. In the raw, a diamond is opaque and rather misshapen. Once precisely cut, perfected and polished, this gem deserves nothing but adulation. Hit by light, a multitude of colors ricochet and dance onto adjacent surfaces.

In Tapaya’s Finding Diamonds, the man is akin to the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) whose search takes them to distant shores. Arguably to this day, the proverbial American (or another) Dream rings true still for some. Al Hafed, who spent his remaining days looking for hidden treasures elsewhere, died without seeing the dazzling glare, not knowing that a mine of diamonds is within reach.

In Regain the Fire, protrusions line the bottom of the canvas. A hostile volcano towers over calm mountains — a preview to a Bikolano tale that speaks of good ties gone sour — severed. In the story, Gugurang, god of good, resides in Mayon Volcano while Asuang, the god of evil, in Mount Malinao. The former reigned as the supreme deity of Bikolanos. Revered by all, Gugurang was the good god who punishes wrong doings. He showed his might with the rumbling of the volcano. He showed his indignation and resolve when fiery lava would spew out of the crater.

With a pang of envy, Asuang asked Gugurang for some of his fire. Gugurang refused, for he said that such power was not easy to control. He argued his case but Gugurang was firm. Infuriated, Asuang plotted to steal the fire, a sign of a war waged. With his cunning ways, he was able to successfully steal it. Then again, he quickly noticed that the world around him caught fire. As he passed, everything burned until all was black. Determined to turn things right, Gugurang tried desperately to steal it back.
As fate would have it, Gugurang regains control of the fire and his people. As punishment, he sent down a great deluge, thunder and lightning towards Mount Malinao. When calm was restored, people noticed that Mount Malinao was seemingly halved, while Mayon Volcano stood pristine.

Accepted in faith, myths speak of events that happened in the past, giving insight to the present. Punishment and misfortune befall the wicked, while good will and deeds are rewarded with prosperity. In her compilation of myths, Damiana Eugenio sites Malinowski:

“Myth as it exists in a savage community, that is in its living primitive form, is not merely a story told but a reality lived. It is not the nature of fiction…but is a living reality, believed to have once happened in primeval times, and continuing ever since to influence the world and human destinies. This myth is to the savage what, to the fully believing Christian, is the Biblical story of Creation, of the Fall, of the Redemption by morality, as it governs our faith and controls our conduct, even so does his myth for the savage…Myth…expresses …enhances, and codifies beliefs; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man.”

Most of the time prescriptive, myths and even legends go beyond ascertaining and codifying beliefs and morals. They speak of a realism that somehow assuages the dreariness of earthly life. Everyone desires something. Everyone works at the betterment of life. In Tapaya’s previous exhibition Bato-Balani, I wrote:

“It is the truth that nothing is without cost, the credence of the well-known adage that warns “be careful what you wish for” that is of import in a world where everyone covets; and where gods and goddesses, mortals, animals and other fanciful creatures are leveled by their wanting.” 

Overlooked and hidden treasures
In his works, he ferrets out occasions where treasures need not be defined by tactility, lustrous qualities or even rarity. Tapaya believes that most often, true and enduring riches are within our midst. They come in the form of relationships and ties we nurture and keep, and even unwavering convictions that calibrate our views and steer actions. All of these extend beyond the confines of the self, bleeding into the broader context of community and the country.
The Helpful Crocodile is a work based on a tale from Ilocos wherein a young woman is enslaved by three witches. Working on her chores, Maria finds a young crocodile near the body of water where she washes dirty dishes. Unknown to her, the crocodile she decided to take care of possessed supernatural powers. One day, the now adult crocodile overheard the evil plan of the witches to eat Maria. To help her escape, the crocodile instructed her to plant a bamboo on its back. As a makeshift anchor, she safely sailed until the bank was reached. The crocodile asked her to sever a branch of the bamboo and plant it at the site where they parted as a reminder of their unexpected friendship.

In the exhibition, another large scale acrylic painting commands attention. Entitled Slave Broker, the work is a mirage of colors, figures and tableaus. An avian creature is concealed behind sharp and angular feathers. Locked in its hands are grim faces, folks about to be slid into a cramped cage. 

The work is inspired by recent events surrounding a former overseas Filipina worker who was placed under death row after she was accused of attempting to smuggle heroin. Her story is but one of many cases of widespread human trafficking across borders. Preying on desperation, recruiters and organized crime syndicates subject them to incredulous conditions. With everything to lose, and without a countermove, they plummet into desolation.

Clad in a white barong, the man with butterfly wings clings onto a pig’s head. While he eyes a gumamela nearby, he concocts a plan. With a sinister smile, it is ascertained; things will be set in motion.

In Philippine politics, the figure of a swine is a stand in for corrupt politicians. With the 2016 National Elections fast approaching, Butterfly Carnival is Tapaya’s take on the loose and often relationship-driven political party system in place. Two-faced gimmickry, disloyalty and cheap prizes abound in this carnival of sorts. With sheer ambition, relations fostered stand in ruin. 

Beyond myths and legends

In Diamond in the Distance, Tapaya includes works on paper that are departures from his large scale canvas paintings, as well as from the aesthetic of assemblages that is distinct in his recent works. With restraint, a focal point is apparent. Whimsy takes a step back in favor of the banality of the everyday.

Rounding of his mediation, Tapaya compels us to sort the essential from the frivolous, and those that can be set free and reclaimed. In times fraught with devastation, mundane possessions are magnified and turned precious. Scenes from the onset and aftermath of storms, immense and widespread floods, even demolition of homes and being uprooted show of precarious states.

Tapaya’s tapestry of images speaks volumes of conditions that cut across worlds that are imagined and real. His ability to blur the lines that separate them, spot parallels and then weave them seamlessly has proven useful in abstracting a quintessential truth about being human. In his search for life’s diamonds, a line from Conwell’s story about Al Hafed resonates well with Tapaya’s recent works – an enduring gem that will never lose its luster: “He was a contented and wealthy man…wealthy because he was contented.”

Text by Thea Garing

Gillman Barracks
9 Lock Road #03-21
Singapore 108937
Tel. +65 67340775
info@arndtfineart.com

PRESS

The Straits Times | Search for gems | September 2015

Butterfly Carnival
This is a politically inspired painting, very timely due to the nearing 2016 Presidential Elections in the Philippines.
A political butterfly is like a person/s, i.e. a politician, who like the butterfly transfer to different flowers or from one political party to another.  In the Philippines it’s easy to change sides or parties, very quickly just months, which may denote disloyalty of one person to the party and its values.
The Election time is like a Carnival experience.  People have to be entertained by many different tricks and prizes by running officials.  Cheap prizes in the form of dole outs are more exciting compared to listening to politicians’ plans and platforms.  One must look more critically and morally to which candidate has the real ‘diamond’ for leadership that can put the country in its shining light. (Rodel Tapaya, 2015)

Finding Diamonds
Finding Diamonds is inspired by the story by an American minister Russell Conwell called Acres of Diamonds, Tapaya looks into the plight of Oversees Filipino Workers where one looks for gem elsewhere but leaves the people that are valuable to him. He spent his whole life looking for the diamonds and died without seeing its glare.  Not knowing that the real mine of diamonds is just in his own backyard. (Rodel Tapaya, 2015)

Slave Broker
This work is inspired by a current events news around April 2015 on a Filipina worker in Indonesia named Mary Jane Veloso, along with other 8 foreigners and one Indonesian national being sentenced to death. Mary Jane’s case is due to smuggling of heroin.
Mary Jane’s case only shows one of the victims of human trafficking, wherein illegal recruiters, organized crime syndicates would entice poor people to work abroad for better life.  These people then will sell everything they have, their farms, livestock, etc just to raise money for the placement or promised employment to them in the foreign land, not knowing that they don’t have work there and will be forced and trapped to do illegal things, such as smuggle drugs, prostitution, selling of human organs, etc.
The risk of going to work in foreign country is too costly, to the point of own life, when done without much research, discernment and thought. People became easily dazzled by these ‘predators’, slave brokers, offering false ‘diamonds’; better salaries, better lives; better future, while the gullible, naïve victims leave their homes, livelihood and most importantly their families behind. (Rodel Tapaya, 2015)

The Helpful Crocodile
Tapaya believes that the true diamond/gem can be found in various relationships such as friendships.
This work is inspired by a folktale from Ilocos, northern part of the Philippines.
In the story a woman was captured by three witches and made the woman their slave.  She was made to do the chores in the house of the witches.  There is a baby crocodile which the woman found near the place where she washes the dishes.  Maria took care of it until that crocodile became an adult crocodile, not knowing that the crocodile have supernatural powers. One day the crocodile overheard the witches that they plan to eat the slave woman.  The crocodile helped Maria to escape the witches’ house, by asking her to plant a bamboo at his back and use it as the woman’s anchor in their cruise home.  Then when they finally reached the edge of the river the crocodile asked Maria to cut a branch of the bamboo she planted on its back and plant it at the edge of this river so the woman can remember their friendship. (Rodel Tapaya, 2015)

A3 PRESENTS: WASAK! Filipino Art Today

December 8, 2015 – January 30, 2016

Opening | Saturday | December 5, 2015, 12 - 6 pm

A group exhibition curated by Norman Crisologo and Erwin Romulo across two locations in Berlin at:

ARNDT Berlin Potsdamer Strasse 96 (Tue - Sat, 11am - 6pm)

ARNDT ART AGENCY A3 Fasanenstrasse 28 NEW PREMISES (Wed - Sat, 12 - 6pm)

Exhibiting artists: Zean Cabangis, Annie Cabigting, Buen Calubayan, Louie Cordero, Jigger Cruz, Marina Cruz, Kawayan De Guia, Alfredo Esquillo, Ian Fabro, Nona Garcia, Robert Langenegger, Pow Martinez, Manuel Ocampo, Alwin Reamillo, Norberto Roldan, Kaloy Sanchez, José Santos III, Rodel Tapaya, Tatong Torres and Ronald Ventura.

A publication has been published by DISTANZ Verlag to accompany the exhibition.

View the complete publication HERE.

The underlying motivation of the exhibition and accompanying publication in Berlin is to shed light on the fascinating contemporary art landscape in the Philippines. WASAK! explores Filipino contemporary art, in the hope of providing an emblematic contextual compendium for western audiences. Signaling the first instance of its kind, WASAK! thus offers snapshots of current artistic practices from the Philippines, uniting a selection of its leading protagonists across generational lines, genres, and media.

All of the 19 participating artists included have witnessed the social and political upheaval of Philippines’ recent history. Most of these artists spent their maturation grappling with local events that have transpired such as: natural disasters like earthquakes and floods; political unrest in the form of coup d’état and calls to presidential impeachments; political ineptitude in the form of corruption and briberies; and longstanding bouts with poverty and urban overpopulation. This selection of artists have nurtured, or at least, directed their ideas into the reality that is Manila, the nation’s capital, from where most of the country’s bizarre undulations spring.

Although much of their work is inspired by their own localities, these artists continue to seek their place among the rest of the world. Through the jumble and mess of their own ground zero—which is a country of broken histories, a nation of lush influences, and a people constantly having to live despite of something—their art continued to become, individually, more diverse and yet collectively, as a single exploded view. ‘Wasak’ is a Filipino word that means “in ruins.” When used in the vernacular, it means “wrecked,” or as a more encouraging interjection—it can also mean “going for broke.” It is a term that signals a hazard.
In this field of scattered landscapes, of broken narratives and loose continuity, what then could be ascribed as Philippine Art? The artists represented in WASAK! have come from the different potholes this gap has created, which explains the varying degrees how their work tries to explain not only a locality, but their own place in art history.

In a 1979 essay, one of the most influential Filipino art critic, Leo Benesa, asked the question: “What is Philippine in Philippine Art?” Knowing how any kind of art from any other place cannot escape the influence of the Western canon, he settled with a more optimistic response in implying that the intention of the artist to paint well is what makes them Filipino: “Painters first, and bearers of message, second,” he concluded. The majority of the artists in the show have chosen painting as their primary medium, with a few exceptions that have dealt primarily with assemblage and sculpture. In looking at their paintings, trying to find out what special place they hold, we can follow Benesa’s prescription—to look at the form first, and then deal with the message later. To try to understand, before anything else, that their intention is to do something which is relevant for them, before handing out a prognosis that casts them as representatives of an aesthetic sensibility, a socio-historical period, or worse, a movement.

The 19 artists covered in WASAK! provide us with an opportunity to experience the different directions they have wandered into—a chance to view a small course of history that is finding its way into the arts.

ARNDT Berlin
Potsdamer Strasse 96
10785 Berlin
info@arndtberlin.com
+49 30 2061 3870

ARNDT ART AGENCY A3
Fasanenstrasse 28
10719 Berlin
contact@arndtartagency.com
+49 30 2061 3870

PRESS

Randian | WASAK! | 7 April, 2016

Coconuts Manila | There’s an exhibit of PH contemporary art in Berlin and it’s called…'Wasak' | 15 January 2016

Zitty Berlin | „Wasak!“ zeigt Bilder aus einem katholischen Asien | 14 January 2016

Art Radar | WASAK! Filipino Art Today at ARNDT Berlin | 12 January 2016

Kunst und Film | WASAK! Filipino Art Today | January 2016

Artsy | ARNDT Explores the Complexities of Filipino Art in New Berlin Gallery Space | 12 January 2016

Financial Times | The Art Market: All about agencies | 18 December 2015

Blouin artinfo | ARNDT Opens new Berlin Venue With Filipino Art Shows | 11 December 2015

Taz | Kunstraum | Land der Brüche - Kunst aus den Philippinen | 10 December 2015

Artnet | Arndt Gallery Opens New Upmarket Location in West Berlin | 3 December 2015

Inquirer | Filipino Art Exhibit WASAK! to open new gallery in Berlin  | 26 November 2015

WASAK! Reloaded

Group Exhibition of Filipino Art Today

27 August - 8 October 2016

Opening | Saturday | August 27, 2016, 12 - 5 pm | ARNDT Fine Art, Singapore 

WASAK! Reloaded  is a group exhibition exploring the Filipino contemporary art landscape and is accompanied by a major hard copy publication WASAK! Filipino Art Today published by European publisher DISTANZ Verlag. The show is a continuation of the well-received group exhibition presented in Berlin in 2015, and will travel to Gazelli Art House in London in 2017.

Exhibiting artists include: Zean Cabangis, Louie Cordero, Jigger Cruz, Marina Cruz, Kawayan De Guia, Alfredo Esquillo, Ian Fabro, Robert Langenegger, Jason Montinola, Pow Martinez, Manuel Ocampo, Norberto Roldan, Kaloy Sanchez, Rodel Tapaya and Ronald Ventura.

The underlying motivation of WASAK! and its accompanying publication is to shed light on the fascinating contemporary art currently being produced in the Philippines. By offering an overview of Filipino contemporary art, WASAK!  aims to provide an emblematic contextual compendium. Uniting a selection of leading protagonists across generational lines, genres, and media, the exhibition presents snapshots of current artistic practices from the Philippines.

The 17 participating artists have witnessed the social and political upheaval of Philippines’ recent history. Most of these artists spent their maturation grappling with local events that have transpired such as: natural disasters like earthquakes and floods; political unrest in the form of coup d’état and calls to presidential impeachments; political ineptitude in the form of corruption and briberies; and longstanding bouts with poverty and urban overpopulation. This selection of artists have nurtured, or at least, directed their ideas into the reality that is Manila, the nation’s capital, from where most of the country’s bizarre undulations spring.

Although much of the artists´ work is inspired by their own localities, these artists continue to seek their place among the rest of the world. Through the jumble and mess of their own ground zero—which is a country of broken histories, a nation of lush influences, and a people constantly having to live despite of something—their art continued to become, individually, more diverse and yet collectively, as a single exploded view. ‘Wasak’ is a Filipino word that means “in ruins.” When used in the vernacular, it means “wrecked,” or as a more encouraging interjection—it can also mean “going for broke.” It is a term that signals a hazard.

In this field of scattered landscapes, of broken narratives and loose continuity, what then could be ascribed as Philippine Art? The artists represented in WASAK! have come from the different potholes this gap has created, which explains the varying degrees how their work tries to explain not only a locality, but their own place in art history.

The 17 artists covered in WASAK! provide us with an opportunity to experience the different directions they have wandered into—a chance to view a small course of history that is finding its way into the arts.

Press Contact:
Pey Chuan Tan
peychuan@arndtfineart.com
+65 9111 3203

Venue:
ARNDT Fine Art Pte Ltd
Gillman Barracks
47 Malan Road #01-25
Singapore 109444
Tel. +65 67340775
Opening hours: Tues - Sat 11am- 7pm, and by appointment

Press:
Blouin ARTINFO | Filipino Artists Present "WASAK! Reloaded" at ARNDT Fine Art | July 21, 2016

Blouin Art Info | Filipino Artists Present ‘WASAK! Reloaded’ at ARNDT Fine Art | July 21, 2016