Nona Garcia

Born 1978 in Baguio City, Philippines
Lives and works in Baguio City, Philippines

Although representation is key in Nona Garcia’s art of stark realism, there are always moments when looking at her work involves confrontation with what is hidden, a bout with the indecipherable essence of things. From the illuminated films of sacred icons in her light boxes to portraits of sitters with their backs turned in her previous series of paintings, Nona Garcia’s realism is neither simple depiction of an overwhelming atmosphere nor the combination of particulars, but rather a piercing search for the essence of reality through isolation and intervention, through composition and elimination across objects inside the frame, or through mediation with a device such as an X-ray machine.

CV

Nona Garcia (b. 1978, Manila) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of the Philippines. Solo shows include: Recovery, Bencab Museum, Baguio City (2014), Before the sea, West Gallery, Manila (2012), False Apparitions, Valentine Fine Art, Singapore (2012) or Somewhere Else, Finale Art File, Makati City, Manila (2012). Garcia has also participated in numerous exhibitions in China, Italy, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Korea and Japan. In 2003 she was a recipient of the 13 Artists Award and in 2000, Garica was the grand prize winner of the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Art Award in Singapore.

Nona Garcia, Gateway, 2015, oil on canvas, 182,8 × 243,8 cm, GARC0006 Nona Garcia, Gateway, 2015, oil on canvas, 182,8 × 243,8 cm, GARC0006

Exhibitions

NONA GARCIA

UNEARTH

Solo exhibition at ARNDT Berlin
February 13 - March 14, 2015


Opening | Friday | February 13, 2015 from 6 - 9 pm | at ARNDT Berlin


ARNDT is pleased to present the first exhibition of Nona Garcia in Berlin.
Although representation is key in Nona Garcia’s art of stark realism, there are always moments when looking at her work involves confrontation with what is hidden, a bout with the indecipherable essence of things. From the illuminated films of sacred icons in her light boxes to portraits of sitters with their backs turned in her previous series of paintings, Nona Garcia’s realism is neither simple depiction of an overwhelming atmosphere nor the combination of particulars, but rather a piercing search for the essence of reality through isolation and intervention, through composition and elimination across objects inside the frame, or through mediation with a device such as an X-ray machine.  
For her new set of works to be shown in Arndt Gallery in Berlin, Nona Garcia employs her usual strategy of mounting together paintings that convey her condition and negotiation against her immediate reality—in this case, finding herself in a new environment while being an artist and maker of images. Having recently relocated from the capital region of Metro Manila to the mountaintop city of Baguio in Benguet Province, Philippines, Nona Garcia is bound to interact not only with the highlanders’ culture, but also with the implications of a new visual realm that will soon pervade her waking life: the long mountain ranges of the Cordilleras, the mountaintop settlements along limestone mining towns, and the proximity of clouds wandering across a nearby summit. 
The sudden change in vista imposes a remarkable impression to the senses. It is the impression, which nature forces into our own nature—of being human. It is the same reason why throughout art’s history we are treated with a multitude of depictions of landscapes: mountain ranges, treacherous slopes, and vast forests. They fit the characteristics of the sublime, which many philosophers have tried to reconcile as an aesthetic derived from both pleasure and danger. In Nona Garcia’s new set of paintings, though, we do not experience the realization of this genre but the appropriation of a genre. It ceases to become the representation of forms but the application and study of forms. Through her virtuosity in painting, an attribute she has exemplified throughout her career, the idea of landscape is again rendered through painstaking realism that draws us closer to what is represented, but yet again, only to undermine our ideas about what ‘landscape’ is.
Each component in her painting follows a form: the crest found in the structure of mountains. It is its essential attribute—the formation from base to apex. Whether these are images of sloping mounds of sand deposits inside a limestone shed, ranges of raised tents, an array of cement houses  across the slope, or a piece of sky, these structures signify the shape of an enigmatic terrain. In a small, dark room inside the gallery, Garcia’s light boxes share this mountain-like formation. Each box shows an illuminated film of sacred relics, which went through the scanner of a clinical X-ray machine. These relics were part of the culture of the mountain region’s indigenous tribes, and their dissected, scientifically drawn images become more mythical and radiant than their wooden actuality. This installation sums up Nona Garcia’s probe into her adopted surroundings, and solidifies her enquiry, and cold, objective look at what lies beneath the surface of venerated things—that their substances, their crude essences are more dumbfounding. Like sacred relics, mountaintops and vestal landscapes can generate awe. In Nona Garcia’s paintings, they turn into banal, desolate objects, but reveal more mystery than any vestal rendition of sunset and valley.

Nona Garcia (b. 1978, Manila) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of the Philippines. Solo shows include: Recovery, Bencab Museum, Baguio City (2014), Before the sea, West Gallery, Manila (2012), False Apparitions, Valentine Fine Art, Singapore (2012) or Somewhere Else, Finale Art File, Makati City, Manila (2012). Garcia has also participated in numerous exhibitions in China, Italy, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Korea and Japan. In 2003 she was a recipient of the 13 Artists Award and in 2000, Garica was the grand prize winner of the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Art Award in Singapore.

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

Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 2015  Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 2015
Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 2015 Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 2015
Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 2015  Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 2015
Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 2015 Installation view | Nona Garcia | UNEARTH | ARNDT Berlin | 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

Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015  Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015 Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015 Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015 Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015 Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015 Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015 Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT Berlin, 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015  Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015  Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015  Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015  Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015  Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015
Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015  Installation view, WASAK! Filipino Art Today, ARNDT ART AGENCY (A3), 2015