Bastards of Misrepresentation: NY Edition at TOPAZ ARTS

TOPAZ ARTS presents
BASTARDS OF MISREPRESENTATION: NEW YORK EDITION
a multi-venue exhibition on view Oct 27 – Dec 30, 2012

Curated by artist Manuel Ocampo

Featuring 20 artists from Manila:
Poklong Anading, Yason Banal, Bea Camacho, Valeria Cavestany, Lena Cobangbang, 
Maria Cruz, Gaston Damag, Dex Fernandez, Arvin Flores, Dina Gadia, David Griggs, 
Robert Langenegger, Romeo Lee, Pow Martinez, Jayson Oliveria, Carlo Ricafort, Timo Roter, 
Gerry Tan, MM Yu, Maria Jeona Zoleta

TOPAZ ARTS proudly presents “Bastards of Misrepresentation: New York Edition”, curated by internationally renowned artist Manuel Ocampo, featuring 20 leading artists from Manila’s thriving arts scene, with contemporary works from painting and installation to video and performance. Bringing the scene to NYC, a series of exhibitions will take place from October 27 to December 30, 2012, presented by TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. at locations across Queens & Manhattan — Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Crossing Art, Queens Museum of Art/Partnership Gallery, Tyler Rollins Fine Art and TOPAZ ARTS.

Schedule of exhibitions and opening dates:

Oct 27 to Dec 30: TOPAZ ARTS  •  Opening Sat Oct 27, 3-6pm: Bastards at TOPAZ ARTS
Viewing hours: Saturdays, 12-4pm and by appointment • 55-03 39th Ave, #7 to 61st/Woodside  > details

Nov 1–7: A/P/A Institute at NYU  •  [cancelled due to storm] Bastards at A/P/A at NYU     
7-8 Washington Mews, N/R to 8th St.  > details

Nov 3 to Dec 20:  Crossing Art • Opening Sat Nov 3, 3-6pm: Doing Time on Filipino Time
Hours: Tues-Sun 11am-6pm or by appointment • 136-17 39th Ave, #7 to Main St. > directions

Nov 8 to Dec 22: Tyler Rollins Fine Art • Opening Nov 8, 6-8pm: Manuel Ocampo Solo Exhibition   
Nov 10, 3pm: Artist Talk | 529 W. 20th St, #10W; A/C/E to 23rd St > directions
Hours: Tues-Sat 10am-6pm

Nov 11 to Dec 30: Queens Museum of Art/Partnership Gallery  • Opening Nov 11, 3-5pm
Doing Time on Filipino Time: Contemporary Installations from Manila
Hours: Wed-Sun 12-6pm •  Flushing Meadows Corona Park, #7 to Willets Pt. > directions

“Bastards of Misrepresentation” is a show about the cultural scene happening in the Philippines yet is not a definitive show about Philippine art. The 20 artists included represent the “now” of contemporary art in Manila whose works entice and challenge perceptions. Many of the artists have been recognized by the country’s most prestigious awards from the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Artist Awards and the Ateneo Art Awards, and are establishing reputations in Europe, Australia, and Asia, while locally others are highly visible as performers in the underground art, performance and music scene. TOPAZ ARTS received an Asian Cultural Council award enabling three of the artists from Manila — Yason Banal, Lena Cobangbang and Maria Jeona Zoleta — to participate as Artists-in-Residence, creating new works, site-specific installations and performances.

About the Artists:

Poklong Anading works with a variety of media to create objects, installations and videos that explore chance and the ephemeral while being rooted in the familiar. He received his BFA in Painting from the University of the Philippines in 1999. He has exhibited in galleries and museums in Manila, USA, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Denmark, Malaysia and China.

Yason Banal’s work moves between performance, installation, photography, video and text, taking myriad forms and conceptual strategies in order to explore, perhaps even trigger, suppressed associations and links. He obtained a BA in Film at the University of the Philippines, an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College-University of London, residencies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and AIT in Tokyo, and is currently a Fall 2012 Artist in Residence at TOPAZ ARTS.

Bea Camacho works in installation, video and performance with “an impeccable, often minimalist execution” exploring ideas of memory, absence, longing and transformation. She received her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she was awarded the Albert Alcalay Prize for Outstanding work in Studio Art and the David McCord Prize for Achievement in the Arts. Her work has been shown at the National Museum of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Hong Kong Cultural Center, Kyoto Art Center, Triennale di Milano Design Museum and the Tate Modern in London.

Valeria Cavestany has been producing artworks characterized with a certain ebullience of spirit, a preponderance of bright colors, and a dazzling array of forms that reference anything from mundane objects to religious iconography. Her works have been shown extensively from 1987 to presently in Manila galleries such as Finale Art File, Ayala Museum, Manila Contemporary and Galeria Duemila; and internationally in Spain, London, Mexico, and Istanbul.

Lena Cobangbang graduated from the University of the Philippines and is a founder of the artist collective Surrounded By Water. Her  work is broad-ranging, moving across video, installation, and found objects to embroidery, cookery, performance and photography. She was a fellow of the HAO Summit 2008 (for emerging artists, curators and art managers in Asia) in Singapore and completed a research residency exchange between Green Papaya Art Projects and Pekarna Magdalenske Mreze in Slovenia. A recipient of the prestigious CCP Thirteen Artists Award, Lena is currently a Fall 2012 Artist in Residence at TOPAZ ARTS.

Maria Cruz incorporates installations and constructions, going beyond traditional painting approaches. she is interested in the abstraction of text as forms, in the possibility of impressions and meanings derived from combining “loud” colors, and in representing the process of making paintings. Born in the Philippines, she studied Fine arts in Manila, Sydney, and Duesseldorf from the early to late 1980s. A recipient of various arts awards, prizes, grants from the Arts Council of Australia, and international artist residencies, she currently lives and works as an artist in Berlin.

Gaston Damag is a Philippine-born artist based in Paris. He is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Faculté de la Sorbonne Paris, and the University of The Philippines. Noted for using ethnographic symbols of his material culture in the Cordillera region in the Northern Philippines to create contemporary works of art, his style fuses the wooden idols of the ancient Ifugao rice god, Bul-ul, along with diverse modern industrial materials such as steel, glass and neon lights.

Dexter Fernandez was born in Marulas, Valenzuela City. He pursued studies at the Technological University of the Philippines, graduating in 2005. He first worked as a graphic designer at a large format printing company and in 2006 left for Saudi Arabia to work as a mural painter at a private residence. Fernandez works with found images and material that he collages together to create fantastical figurative compositions, combining photographic reproduction with detailed, hand-painted motifs that “cast a bejeweled, patterned, quality.”

Arvin Flores works explores the language of abstraction with the abstraction of language, produced by a kind of writing in the form of gestural mark making, that involve texts that become abstract in both form and content He is a graduate of Columbia University, New York, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. He exhibits internationally, including shows at the Hampden Gallery of The University of Massachusetts Amherst, Aljira Contemporary Art Center New Jersey, and Southern Exposure Gallery SF, Root Division Gallery SF, a440 Gallery SF, and Skyline College Art Gallery in California. In Manila, he has shown at Mag:net Gallery, Finale Art File, and West Gallery.

Dina Gadia deconstructs signs from mass media conspiring to present a comedy of errors, reveling within while being lost in translation. Born in 1986 in Pangasinan, Philippines, she currently lives and works in Manila. She has had numerous solo exhibitions at Silverlens, Blanc Artspace, Hiraya Gallery, and her show Regal Discomforts was short-listed in the 2012 Ateneo Art Awards. She received her BFA Advertising degree in 2006.

David Griggs was born in Sydney in 1975, and currently lives and works in Manila. Griggs known best for his paintings, photography and installation projects works closely with various communities and artists. Creating highly active political humorous projects that have dealt with the incarceration of inmates from Manila City Jail to Halloween festivals in Sta Mesa. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia, Asia and Europe. Griggs is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, Kaliman Rawlins Gallery in Melbourne, Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill in Austria, and LOST projects, Manila.

Robert Langenegger creates “comically vulgar paintings that nevertheless retain a shocking and critical edge. Shades of the serious irreverence of Robert Crumb and Philip Guston can be discerned but filtered through a pronounced sense of felt experience and a profound understanding of repression and perversity.” Robert is a graduate of the University of the Philippines and has been shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Award and Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Aside from Manila, he has exhibited in Paris, Australia, Hong Kong and the US. Robert taught himself the art of tattooing and the science of horticulture.

Romeo Lee‘s paintings “give lease to the unconscious as it can be explored by the instinctual, biomorphic forms that painting allows. While resolutely figurative, his works nevertheless appear to have emerged from a painterly process that can allow chance forms to become robust representation, recalling, amongst other precedents, Surrealist methods.” Lee is highly regarded in the underground scenes of art, music, and entertainment since the 1980s. He has shown in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, United States, and regularly exhibits at Finale Art File in Manila.

Pow Martinez has held a number of solo shows in Manila at Pablo Gallery, Mag:net Gallery, and West Gallery where his show “1 Billion Years” earned him the 2010 Ateneo Art Awards. In addition to his work as a painter, Martinez is an accomplished sound artist, exploring sound like paint in the explosion and reconstitution of its material to evoke new experiences. Using expressive viscous paint across the surface of his canvases, Martinez employs an agitated shorthand transcription of “grotesque subject-matter with indelibly beautiful surfaces and a wide-ranging, daring, use of color.”

Jayson Oliveria applies end game strategies for making paintings and incorporates objects or sculptural elements to betray the uniformity of painting. Like most works that straddle along the discourse of the end of art, the works have an internal logic – knowingly of the contradictions within the work while displaying a keen taste for the obsolescence of style. He is the recipient of a CCP Thirteen Artist Award, an Ateneo Art Award, and has held residencies in Manila and Fukuoka. He exhibits extensively at home and abroad, including Nadi Gallery in Jakarta, the Tate Turbine Hall in London and spaces in Sydney, Hong Kong, Tasmania.

Carlo Ricafort’s work involves free-associative commentaries on society and history through innovative designs that blur representation with abstraction. His artistic process though having the appearance of being chaotic and eclectic, it is in this chasm of polar opposites – from the depths of his psyche to the superficiality of current events, where he looks for meaning. Born in Quezon City, Philippines, San Francisco based artist Carlo Ricafort received his B.F.A. in Pictorial Arts from San José State University and has exhibited at numerous galleries and cultural spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Manila.

Timo Roter’s works provide “a commentary on the formal nature of painting itself, revealing structural elements while also offering these elements for aesthetic deliberation.” Timo lives between Hamburg and Manila. He studied Filipino Culture and Language, Art History and Ethnology in Hamburg and exhibits internationally. He has been organizing shows on contemporary art in the Philippines since 2005. He is also one of the founder of 8. Salon Hamburg and the Seamen’s Art Club and is organizing and curating shows with international artists.

Gerardo Tan is a multimedia artist, working with objects and photo-based installations, artist books, collages and mixed media paintings. Composed of multiple layers of imagery taken from the world of art, and from mass media, Tan’s subsequent retouching and remixing of visual information in his work gives way to new itinerant meanings – “works that grapple with, the contemporary tradition of image appropriation and critical questions of originality and artistic authenticity.” Tan received his BFA in Painting at the University of the Philippines in Diliman and his MFA in Painting at the State University of New York in Buffalo on a Fulbright Fellowship grant. He is also a recipient of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 1988.

MM Yu works with different media “to explore ideas of excess, the unpalatable and failure. Her photography, paintings and installations also carry deceptively beautiful surfaces. She has photographed mountains of trash, disintegrating remnants from the changing face of contemporary Manila.” She received her BFA in Painting from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in 2001. She was a recipient of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award in 2009 and the Ateneo Art Awards-Common Room Bandung Residency Grant in 2007. Yu has participated in the Big Sky Mind’s 18th Avenue Artist Compound Residency in 2003 and in numerous group exhibitions since 1998.

Maria Jeona Zoleta is one of the newest voices to emerge in the Manila art scene and has already extensively exhibited her work in numerous group shows. She is a graduate of the University of the Philippines, and was nominated for the 2011 Ateneo Awards. Exploring the intimate and more taboo aspects of personal identity, she creates double meaning and contradiction in her sexually explicit works that become metaphors for the world (and art world) around her. Zoleta is currently a Fall 2012 Artist in Residence at TOPAZ ARTS.

 more about the artists > visit arteleriamanila.wordpress.com

download full press release here >

Bastards of Misrepresentation: New York Edition has been organized by TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. and by artist/curator Manuel Ocampo with the support of the Asian Cultural Council, at participating organizations Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Crossing Art, Queens Museum of Art/Partnership Gallery, Tyler Rollins Fine Art and TOPAZ ARTS.

TOPAZ ARTS’ Visual Arts Program is made possible, in part, by public funds from NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

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