Articles of Disagreements exhibition at Lopez Museum

Arts, the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

The Lopez Museum and Library opens its second major exhibition for 2014, Articles of Disagreements, starts September 19, and will run until 20 December 2014.

Guest curated by Lian Ladia and Sidd Perez of Planting Rice, this exhibition features works by guest contemporary artists Tito and Tita (Film Collective), Nilo Ilarde, Buen Calubayan, and Maria Cruz.

Articles of Disagreement is a generative exhibition on art languages that will unearth different forms of art writing/ anecdotes of criticism in Philippine art history, our own historiography, the local art education infrastructure, and how we position ourselves in western critical languages. Though Articles of Disagreements was born out of a specific pool of articles and association towards critical inquiry in the local context, reflexive practices of contemporary artists are also put into focus, as diverse occupations in the Arts and other strategies an archive could take are explored to unburden itself from established institutional forms.

The Articles of Disagreements exhibition focuses on art forms that will unearth the different forms of art writing and anecdotes of criticism in Philippine art history.

 Articles of Disagreements was born out of a specific pool of major texts found in the Lopez Library archives and focuses on the reflexive practices of contemporary artists, as diverse occupations in the Arts are explored to unburden itself from established institutional forms.

Featured artists include the collective of young filmmakers Tito and Tita, conceptual artist-curator Nilo Ilarde, Germany-based artist Maria Cruz, and 2013 Ateneo Art Awardee Buen Calubayan. The exhibition will revolve around the archives of the library, along with the museum’s collection of works by Raymundo Albano, Fernando Zobel, Nena Saguil, Roberto Chabet and more; including the ever present masters Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.

The exhibition is curated by Sidd Perez and Lian Ladia of the alternative contemporary art platform ‘Planting Rice’.

An interesting feature of the exhibition is the reading laboratory cum coffee shop, named 'Café of Letters,' which aims to elicit discussion and written contributions that will zoom in on the generation of narratives that make up the body of texts of Philippine art history, art criticism, and broad art writing.

Artist and 2013 Ateneo Art Awardee Buen Calubayan is "moving in." Planting Rice's ARTICLES OF DISAGREEMENTS is presenting his self-archiving project Biography Work. — Articles of Disagreements co-curator Sidd Perez.

Don Eugenio Lopez, Sr, who founded and built the Lopez Museum and Library in order to provide scholars and students access to his personal collection of rare Filipiniana books, manuscripts, maps, archeological artifacts, and fine art.

The museum’s collection includes paintings by 19th century Filipino masters, Juan Luna y Novicio and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo. Luna and Hidalgo garnered honors for their country when the paintings they submitted to the 1884 Esposicion National de Bellas Artes in Madrid won the Filipino some international recognition in the field of fine arts. Luna’s Spoliarium received one of the three gold medals awarded. Hidalgo’s entry, Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho, was awarded the first silver out of a total of fifteen that were given out.

If Luna’s canvasses depict drama and a certain bravura, Hidalgo’s portray a delicate sensibility, which a critic has described as “more pure, more serene in feeling”.

You will enjoy The Articles of Disagreements exhibition. Registration fee is P120 (P100 for students and members of the museum’s membership program) and comes with a free admission to the current exhibition.

The Lopez Museum and Library is at the ground floor, Benpres Building, Exchange Road corner Meralco Avenue, Pasig City. Museum days and hours are Mondays to Saturdays, except holidays, 8am to 5pm. For inquiries, call Tina Modrigo at 631-2417.

Featured Artists

Tito & Tita (Manila) is a collective of young artists working mainly with film and photography based in the Philippines. As individual filmmakers, their works have been featured in various film festivals and art fairs in the past years, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2013), the Museum of the Moving Image, New York (2012), and Documenta in Kassel (2012). As a collective, they have presented their works at the Ishmael Bernal Gallery, U.P. Film Center (2012) and at Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila (2013), Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago (2013), Blanc gallery, Manila (2014), Silverlens, Singapore (2014), Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles (2014), redefining independent cinema and photography in Manila via an enthralling transformation of images and disarming practicality, amidst all the symbolism, surrealism, and a variation of experimental techniques.

Buen Calubayan (b.1980) devises his art projects to understand and organize his life in relation to the context of a larger community. He uses painting, installation, performance, research and documentation as he navigates through mainstream, museum-based and non-traditional modes of art validation. He is an artist/curator with a BFA degree and Masteral units in Cultural Heritage Studies; a five-year teaching experience at the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Santo Tomas and has been a Museum worker from 2002-2013 at the UST Museum and National Museum of the Philippines. He was a Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) 13 Artist Awardee in 2009. Recently he finished a residency and exhibition at the Visual Art Centre of La Trobe University in Australia, a grant he was selected for after winning the Ateneo Art Awards (AAA) in 2013. This year, he was again shortlisted for the same award.

Maria Cruz (b. 1957) avoids being bound to a single identity, having lived in Manila, Sydney and Berlin. Educated in all three cities, Cruz presents a composite of sources and outputs in her art practice, moving between figuration and abstraction seamlessly, adopting and rejecting traditions where it suits and retaining others.

Nilo Ilarde (b. 1960) is a curator and conceptual artist who maneuvers material, site, content, and context and constructs found objects as fallen monuments to modernity. He has served in various capacities in organizing, exhibiting and mounting conceptual contemporary works and practices in Manila and the region. Ilarde has exhibited at Osage (Hong Kong) Taksu (Singapore) Richard Koh Gallery (Singapore), Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, West Gallery, Mo_. Space, Finale Art File, Mag:net, The Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila) among others.

Curators

Planting Rice is comprised of curators Lian Ladia and Sidd Perez. Aside from curatorial projects offering a resource of current discussions and collaborations involving an international context, Planting Rice is also aimed to nurture the local growth which is a strong thrust in their curatorial platform.