Foundation News

Dear Sweet Filthy World by Patricia Eustaquio
March 17, 2010, Wednesday
6-9 pm

Patricia Eustaquio, continues her exploration of memory with Dear Sweet Filthy World, bridging Elvis Costello’s song of the same name with oil paintings, cardboard sculptures, and boats cut from felt and cast in epoxy resin. Through these objects, Eustaquio expresses memory as an idea, and memory as she made it.

Eustaquio describes memory as a puzzle that must be broken down to be put back together again; it is ideas taken from our surroundings that “become floating individual thoughts that we access and take separately” to make a whole. Dear Sweet Filthy World is Eustaquio’s ode to this conceptual process, so vulnerable and relative, and yet at the same time, it is her narrative “to convey the irony of our feeling towards reality, the realities in life, the world.”

Taking her cue from the song, Eustaquio composes the show as a letter, allowing sentimentality and nostalgia to play a part. Understanding how one’s recreation of the past is built on fragments, Eustaquio allows her own memory to express itself, however limited and isolated it may be. As a subtext to Dear Sweet Filthy World, Eustaquio writes an actual letter, where she takes on the persona of someone coming to grips with a terrible event she has not experienced. This mirrors her memory of the Typhoon Ondoy tragedy. Watching from Delft, where she was completing her art residency, Eustaquio’s memory, time and space interfering, had gaps to be filled.

In doing so, Eustaquio’s art and language took a turn towards reaction. Dear Sweet Filthy World accuses the world, and questions the sweet and the filthy in it. Eustaquio wonders: “is the world sweet because of nature, and filthy because of man; is it vice versa; or is it either-or?” However personal, Dear Sweet Filthy World is also a set of “puzzles that complete themselves in the viewer’s mind”. Taking various forms and meanings, Eustaquio’s work allows us all to voice our feelings to a world where man struggles to shape memory, and fights to make sense of the ironies of life.

As in her previous show, Death to the Major,Viva Minor, Eustaquio allows us to question “the beautiful and grotesque, lifting the veil and revealing the void that waits underneath”.*

Patricia Eustaquio was awarded the CCP Thirteen Artists Award and the Ateneo Art Award in 2009, and will be part of the Art Omi Residency in New York in June.

*From Cross my heart and hope to die by Donna Miranda in Patricia Eustaquio’s catalogue (Silverlens Gallery)

Words: Bea Davila, Image: Patricia Eustaquio, Dear Sweet Filthy World II, 2010

The National Museum opened in January 2010 an exhibition titled “Botong Francisco Coching: Telling Modern Time, now on display at the 5th floor of the Museum of the Filipino People, National Museum (old Finance Building), T. Valencia Circle/Finance Road, Rizal Park, Manila.

The exhibition, curated by Dr. Patrick Flores, runs until the end of March 2010 and showcases the works of two masters, National Artist Carlos V. Francisco with his selected paintings, displayed back to back with comics illustrations of Francisco Coching.

As a collateral activity of the exhibition, on March 12 and 19, 2010, at 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., there will be lectures about the two contemporary artists. Alice Guillermo will speak on the first date while Robert Paulino and Solidad Reyes on the second, with Patrick Flores to discuss the curatorial component on both occasions. Both lectures will be conducted at the 4th floor, Tambunting Hall of the Museum of the Filipino People.

We would like to invite your fine arts students and faculty members to participate in both lectures. For confirmation or inquiries, please get in touch with Mr. Mel Lagartija or Ms. Rizza Salterio of the Museum Education Division at telefax no. 5270278. Please see attached file for the poster.

We look forward to seeing you at both lectures. Thank you.

Museum Education Division, National Museum

MFPI Lecture Series “POLITICS: PINOY STYLE”
“The Crisis of Leadership and the Challenge of Modernity”

In his lecture, Prof. Randy David proposes a way of looking at the governance problems of our society by linking these to the challenge of modernity.  He will try to show that many, if not all, of these problems are normal manifestations of the difficult and often confusing transition to modernity that every society has to confront at one time or another – rather than the symptoms of an accursed condition for which there is no other cure but to find a messiah in our midst.

This lecture of Prof. Randy David, the last in the MFPI’s lecture series on “Politics: Pinoy Style”, will be held at 6:30 pm on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at the Silverlens Gallery located at 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati City. MFPI Fellowship will follow right after the lecture.

Fees
MFPI Members – P100.00
Non-members – P200.00
Students – P50.00

Please download and fill out reply form. Fax to 404-2685 / 722-9073/ 810-6912.
Email to inquiry@museumfoundationph.org
You may also text/call 0928-5039392 (Elvie) or 0927-8484680 (Mae) to reserve slots.

Art in the Park 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
2:00 to 10:00 pm
Jaime Velasquez Park
Salcedo Village, Makati City

Art In The Park Feb 2010 will exhibit pieces from:

Art groups and individual artists: CANVAS, Zone 5 Camera Club, Kulay, SC Tan, TutoK, Art Wednesday, Invisible, Putik, Joey Cobcobo, Ryan Rubio, Allain Hablo, Lester Almacio, Mac Valdezco, Philippine Association of Printmakers, Ral Arrogante, Sheer Joy, Ang INK, Provenance Fine Arts Brokers, and Tara Soriano.

Students, teachers, and established artists from art schools: L’Arc En Ciel, TUP, FEATI, and FEU.

Art groups and art spaces from outside Metro Manila: The Mighty Bhutens and their mosaics from Baguio, Nineveh Art Space of Laguna, Amarela Gallery of Bohol, Hugis Sining from Bulacan, Parokyano ng Malabon, Neo-Angono Artists Collective.

Established galleries: Blanc, Tin-Aw, Tala Art Gallery, Galerie Astra, Nova Gallery, Galeria de las Islas, Metro Gallery, Art Verite, Ricco Renzo, West Gallery, Artis Corpus, Avellana Art Gallery, Art Cabinet, and Gallery Genesis.

AIP 2010 will also showcase two extraordinary pieces: LEEROY NEW reprises pieces from his Odeon Universal Galaxy Show, and LEA LIM creates Silence, her site specific installation of 100 swings.

A special screening of Moccolo, a video by Romina Diaz starts in the playground area at 6:00 pm sponsored by Galleria Duemila.

Food and drinks will be provided by La Cuisine Francaise, Straits Wines, Pizza di Grazia, Rafik Shawarma, Windows Cafe, and Nic’s Bakeshop. A jazz quartet will serenade us throughout the day.

Art in the Park 2010 is organized by the Museum Foundation of the Philippines with the help of Bgy. Bel Air, Security Bank MasterCard, and Radio U92 for the benefit of the National Museum and its network.

No admission fee. See you all there!

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Malikmata by Mark Orozco Justiniani
February 19, Friday
6-9pm

Celebrated painter, Mark Orozco Justiniani, veers his latest work away from the medium he has long been associated with and instead takes it to the world of sculpture where corners and frames cannot bind. This world, entitled Malikmata, is one where night and day converge, and folklore and reality abandon their distinction.

Justiniani’s keen interest in Filipino society and tradition takes the sculptural route to present Filipino folklore in a form that is multidimensional, concrete and tangible. Not only do the eyes find the splendor of the earth as the sun sets and shadows creep in; this inbetween too awakens the other four senses, and at the same time stirs the imagination. Meant to heighten every sensation, Malikmata, Justiniani explains, involves a lot of ‘ “looking through” with peepholes and lenses with several angles and different vantage points’. With viewers’ participation, the world Justiniani creates is sculptural commentary infused with physical interaction.

Malikmata reveals the creatures of the night, from the fireflies and spiders that lurk in our backyards to those monsters that haunt our dreams. Taking us into the world where what is real and unreal coexist, Justiniani presents a tikbalang who no longer tricks people into getting lost in the forest it guards; a manananggal who discovers the worlds her two halves occupy are one and the same; and an Agtayabun, the man-bird that arbitrates between the realms of the divine and the bestial, who has sided with the latter and allowed chaos to reign. Thought to be lost in modern consciousness, these creatures of folklore defiantly linger and taunt us to surrender to our darkest nightmares.

With sculptural representations manifest of a society that often combines rationality and mysticism, religion and folklore, fact and faith, Justiniani’s Malikmata is indeed a journey that goes back and forth between realms that are supposed to be distinct. More than confusing our senses, Malikmata questions how we construct reality and define illusion.

Malikmata is in collaboration with Tin-aw Art Management.

Malikmata will be shown alongside STRIP 2010 with Tammy David, Jake Verzosa, Veejay Villafranca at Silverlens Gallery and Saucerful of Secrets by Mariano Ching with Haraya Ching at 20SQUARE, SLab. Mark Orozco Justiniani will have his Artist Talk on March 06, 2010, Saturday, 3-5 pm.

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0917-5874011, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am-7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com / slab.silverlensphoto.com.

Words: Bea Davila
Image: Studies for Malikmata by Mark Orozco Justiniani