ABSTRACTION challenges people to examine and imagine, with the varying perceptions of shapes, colors, and forms in a painting reflecting the viewer’s inner thoughts. This interplay of ideas sets abstract works apart from the representational.
Conrad Manila’s first exhibit in its regular “Of Art and Wine” series this year features the works of The Authenticity Zero Collective (TAZC), a Filipino architect-artist-educator group focused on abstraction.
Titled Machine of Thoughts, the exhibit aims to transport viewers to different dimensions through the abstract works on display. Before this exhibit, the collective mainly showed their works at art fairs and galleries including Art Fair Philippines, Gateway Gallery, The Grey Space, and the Manila Bang Show.
The group’s five members — Cocoi Base, Gab Brioso, Almi Domingo, Walther Ocampo, and Robin Ravago — each contributed pieces to Machine of Thoughts. The show invites visitors to interact with the material and the immaterial present in their works.
There are 53 works on view at Conrad Manila’s Gallery C.
The Tiny Dwellings collection of acrylic-on-canvas paintings are by Cocoi Base. His use of lines and dots orient the viewer amid splashes of colors and shapes, evoking a kind of organized chaos. Then there’s the Hyper Proun series by Gab Brioso, utilizing acrylic on 3D-printed polyester and plaster, an interesting intersection of a digital process and a tactile, amorphous output.
Almi Domingo provided three acrylic panel etchings that explore geometric compositions, while the series of painted “constructionals” by Robin Ravago dives into the formal qualities of the wooden material.
Walther Ocampo’s Mechanical Komorebi collection of paintings is multi-dimensional in its elements. At the exhibition opening, he said that everyone in TAZC is curious about where abstraction can take them.
“For me, my interest lies in anything with contrast, for example absence and presence,” Mr. Ocampo told members of the press at the exhibit’s launch on Jan. 7.
“I see the dimensions in the contrasting colors and elements in each work. It’s exciting for us as artists,” he said.
Nestor O. Jardin, the hotel’s resident exhibition curator, added that he had set out to look for an abstract artist to feature in the “Of Art and Wine” series. Thanks to TAZC, he ended up with five.
Mr. Base told BusinessWorld that their group usually shows in art fairs and art galleries. However, in hotels, there is a “well-established art market” that they’re able to penetrate.
“We venture into all kinds of platforms. This year you can also find us at the Xavier Art Fair, in February,” he said.
Of Art and Wine: Machine of Thoughts at Conrad Manila’s Gallery C runs until March 8. — Brontë H. Lacsamana