PH National Artist Bencab celebrates 50 years of his art practice and heads to Lopez Museum with 'Frames of Reference'

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National Artist BenCab (Benedicto Cabrera) at the Lopez Museum & Library for the feature exhibit "Frames of Reference" open to the public starting April 23 - July 4, 2015.

Philippines National Artist BenCab (Benedicto Cabrera) celebrates fifty years of his art practice with a series of multi-sited exhibitions and events. As a fitting kick off, the first exhibition will be held at the Lopez Museum's Library section and will be open to the public starting April 23 up to July 4, 2015.

Frames of Reference offers a glimpse into his life and art practice during the late 1960s onwards, while living and exhibiting abroad and his eventual return to the Philippines for good.

BenCab Self-portrait

More than his works, the exhibition is an intimate portrait of the artist, the lover, the family man, the bibliophile and a collector, among other hats he has and continues to wear.

Never before exhibited, about 15 of his art-books will be made available to the public. These small scrapbook-like compilations of collages (clippings and cut-outs), drawings and sketches interspersed with his handwriting; prominently feature his love for nostalgia, handmade paper and bookbinding.

A page from one of his art-books. Artist’s Collection. Photo by Wig Tysmans.

A diaristic presentation of his aesthetics, letters, mementos and other keepsakes also find their way into the pages.

A page from one of his art-books. Artist’s Collection. Photo by Wig Tysmans.

Other hand-crafted books show the early studies and iterations of some of his most important series of works: Sabel, Larawan and Japanese Women (ukiyo-e). Also included in the exhibition are early folios of prints he was a part of, along with other Filipino and foreign artists.

The Lopez Museum and Library is also proud to exhibit three works from its own collection, including the iconic Soldiers (Heroes of the Past IV),1998.

Frames of Reference is curated by Dannie Alvarez and is co-presented by Bencab Art Foundation; Sureste Properties, Inc.; Samsung Electronics Philippines Corp. (SEPCO), our technology partner; and Gourmet Farms Inc., our public programs partner.

For more information, call Tina at 6312417 or email lmmpasig@gmail.com. Lopez Museum and Library is at the G/F Benpres Bldg., Meralco cor. Exchange Rd., Ortigas Center, Pasig City.

Museum and library hours are 8-5pm Mondays through Saturdays except Sundays and holidays.

Articles of Disagreements exhibition at Lopez Museum

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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.

COMPLICATED Exhibit opens at Lopez Museum and Library

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Lopez Museum and library presents Complicated.

"It's Complicated", a phrase popularized by social media, has become the catch all for all undefined and problematic relationships typical of the post-modern world.

Seeing parallels between these and the complex relationship of the Philippines with its colonial pasts, the Lopez Museum and Library, in partnership with Tin-aw Art Gallery, opens its first exhibit for the year, Complicated on February 21, 2014 featuring commissioned works by guest artists Mike Adrao, Leslie de Chavez, and Ea Torrado, juxtaposed with works by Juan Luna, Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Juvenal Sanso, Bencab, Ang Kiukok, Jerry Elizalde Navarro and other artworks from the Lopez Museum collection.

Mike Adrao's charcoal on paper works collectively titled "Colony" comprise of intricately ornamented, larger-than-life anthropomorphic pillars and delicately drawn insects whose patterns were researched from the Lopez Library collection.

Representing various forms of colonization our country has undergone, his works reference the interplay of our living culture and those of the colonizers that have reached our shores.

Several of these pieces were selected for the curated "platform exhibits" representing Southeast Asian art trajectories in the recently concluded Art Stage 2014 in Singapore.

Leslie's de Cahvez's mixed media instalation entitled "I Just Ca't Stop Loving You" featuring Michael Jackson inside the basin with water and holding a hose. 

Leslie de Chavez

Leslie de Chavez presents several installations and paintings that focus on colonization, not just as the context of our history, but as an ongoing process in which we are very much a part of. 

Known for his acerbic cultural commentary, his works take a critical stance that aims to jolt audiences to reflexivity, awareness, and realization.  One work in particular is created in reaction to the museum's collection of Per Pacem et Libertatem (For Peace and Liberty) studies.

These studies are what remains of a mural-sized work by Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo commissioned by the American colonial government and exhibited during the 1904 St. Louis Exposition where villages were set up in St. Louis, Missouri and people from various ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines were shipped and exhibited to the American public.

His other works are likely premised on touchy subjects in our culture and history.

Here's Choreographer and dancer Ea Torrado.

Choreographer and dancer Ea Torrado presents a three-channel video installation based on the frantic search of Jose Rizal's Sisa and reflections on the museum's iconic España y Filipinas by Juan Luna. Using Sisa's search for her missing children as a metaphor of post-colonial identity, Torrado presents the search for the many desaparecidos and victims of extrajudicial killings in recent history as premised in the promises of modernity and progress which are both at the core of nation-building and Luna’s painting.

This film is produced with the support of Tuchi Imperial, sound designer Chris Aronson, cinematographer and film editor Dan Pamintuan and the ABS CBN Film Archives.

These commissioned works are contextualized amid various collections from the museum's painting and archival collections.

Visit: www.eatorrado.com

Great works by Juan Luna, Fabian Dela Rosa, Juvenal Sanso, Jerry Elizalde Navarro, Bencab, Ang Kiukok, among others, are exhibited with select books from the library's collection and rich archive of colonial photographs, maps, travel journals, sketches and cartoons, including those done by Tony Velasquez (known for his creation of the early Filipino comics series Kenkoy), Liborio Gatbonton, and Mario Dangan.

The exhibit is further supplemented by loaned artworks by Juvenal Sanso and contemporary artist Anton del Castillo.

Complicated is curated by Ricky Francisco and Ethel Villafranca. It will run from February 21 to August 2, 2014. It is presented with support from Tin-aw Art Gallery. For more information, call Tina at 6312417 or email lmmpasig@gmail.com

Visit Lopez Museum and Library at the G/F Benpres Bldg., Meralco cor. Exchange Rd., Ortigas Center, Pasig City. Museum hours are 8-5pm Mondays through Saturdays except Sundays and holidays.